Читать книгу Parliament - antony jackson - Страница 5

‘The knee-jerk reaction to our proposal was two-fold. The immediate press commentary was mainly unsympathetic. ‘Despite periods where government had been less than perfect, the parliamentary system had been tried and tested over the centuries. The country should not be subject to such a daft experiment which could only end in disaster.’ On the other hand the electorate seemed to appreciate the principles of true democracy that were being suggested.

The proposal had not been suggested without considerable thought as to how it might, in practise, be implemented. We explained in great detail how the conditionality would work, excluding criminals and levels of psychological or intellectual impairment for example, and requiring that only those eligible for full-time work could be considered. We had also considered how the changeover to the new system would work, with half of the sitting MPs remaining in post for two years to work alongside the same number of new delegates and for this revolving system to continue ever after on a four year cycle.

We were also careful to offer financial compensation to any sitting MP who did not wish to continue as part of the new system and extended this offer to all the unelected political appointees and hangers-on that were being paid, in one way or another, from the public purse.

This, as it turned out, was the masterstroke. Any warm feelings the public and papers may have still had about their old system quickly evaporated when the pigs started rushing to the compensation trough, abandoning on the way any of the high minded principles they had individually espoused before.

Good riddance to bad rubbish was, in the end, the majority opinion.

To cut an already over-long story short, I’ve now got to a point in the tale which you all know about already, given that you represent the sixth intake of appointed MPs to the modern parliament.

My colleagues and I have to deliver this lecture many more times over the next few days as your fellow new members congregate. I hope it’s been useful to set everything into an historical context and remind you, if you didn’t already know, just how important your role here will be.

Perhaps now would be a good time to break for lunch. This afternoon, at two o’clock, I’d like you to meet George Ling, one of the people who founded the Campaign for True Democracy.’

The meeting broke up. Imogen joined the others in the now bustling cafe-bar and they all squeezed around a couple of tables with their drinks and sandwiches.

‘What do think of it so far?’

The question came from John Parker, but sufficed for them all.

‘Myself, I think it’s a whole lot better than crawling about on roofs in the rain and I’m really looking forward to the whole experience’ he continued. John represented Suffolk South and was, therefore, a relatively close neighbour to Imogen. ‘How about you Imogen-a bit different to the Dragon wouldn’t you say?

‘I thought I knew you from somewhere. John? isn’t it. I would have recognised you earlier if you hadn’t been wearing a suit and had your hair cut. God -it’s a small world. I suppose you’ve already marked out the best pubs round here? Where’s your ‘residence’, as they say’.

‘It’s quite a nice apartment down towards Chiswick, not far from the brewery, to answer both questions in one. Not quite Adnams but Fullers will do for a while, and I can always top up at weekends.

‘Am I the only one who’s going to be travelling in each day?’

The question came from a still very attractive, middle aged lady, the only one of the group that seemed genuinely relaxed and comfortable.

‘ Amelia St. Beuve by the way. Dagenham, for my sins. I had the choice to stay in town but thought it better to try and continue a normal domestic life if I could.’

A quick role call established that Rowley Hoare was a car mechanic from Hereford, Archie Turnbull and Caroline Goubault were both shop-workers from Solihull and Swaledale respectively, Guy Simmonds was a farm-worker from Lincolnshire, Indra Chowdary a call centre worker from Portsmouth, Leonie Chichester a civil servant from Neath and Julie Smyth a GP from Winchester.

‘So, what do we think of it so far?’

‘For me, being selected in the Lottery seems a lot like winning the Lottery, if you know what I mean.’

Guy Simmonds. Up to now he’d not said a word to anyone. He’d sat through the events of the day with the beginnings of a wry smile permanently fixed on his face. A thirty year old farm worker representing the Fenland area of Lincolnshire whose only real first-hand experience of the outside world before now had been his bi-weekly trips to Kings Lynn for the markets and the occasional day-out in Norwich.

‘I’ve been working on the land since I was fifteen. I love it. And when this is all over I daresay I’ll go back to it and love it all over again. You could never accuse my neighbours of being particularly open to the world and I’ve always thought it would be good to get out there and see some things. Do stuff. Now I’m being paid to do just that, and far more than I could ever expect to earn at home. I know it’s only temporary, but I think it’s great.

‘My dad told me a story once, about something that happened near me at the end of the last century. A school inspector arrived. He had to organise the amalgamation of two small village schools. Each was half way down its own drain, off the Dereham road, and only separated by about half a mile, line of sight across the fields. He knew he’d bitten off too much when he made his pitch at one of the village halls and someone stood up to say, ‘We don’t want nuthin to do with it, they’re a funny lot over there.’

‘He was proud of it. The world outside his drain was a very strange place indeed for my old dad. Thank God I’m not too much like him.’

The story drew smiles and laughter from around the tables and encouraged others to introduce the odd anecdote, so that in the end, although nobody had addressed the original question, it was clear that people were at least feeling comfortable. The ice had been broken, or at least cracked a bit.

___________________________________

’Good afternoon everybody’.

George Ling was a handsome old man with a full head of silver and an engaging presence. He looked like a little boy who had just been given ten pounds to spend on sweets and an airfix kit. And with good reason. He had been one of the architects of the new Parliament and had never grown tired of the pleasure it gave him. For him to deliver these little lectures every couple of years was a great honour and privilege, as it was to meet the product of his work.

‘My name is George Ling. I was one of the founder members of CTD. I know that John Parminter has been giving you his potted history of the new Parliament and I would now like to address you on other matters which I hope you will think important for the way you spend your time here. At some point in the next day or so you will be given a set of rules and procedures, and a provisional timetable for the work of the house. This will, of course, provide you with a diary of things you are absolutely required to do, but it will also describe how you can get involved in issues of particular interest to your constituents or yourselves. Although there are no longer ‘party politics’ there are plenty of pressure groups trying to promote one policy or another, and you will probably all develop your own sense of what you think is right or wrong with these proposals.

Everything that you do from now on must be down to you. If you feel strongly enough about something it is possible for you to present your proposal for change to your colleagues and, eventually, to have your idea presented for approval by the house or even by referendum to the country.

What I want to talk about is the relationship you have with your constituents, and to do that I need to talk about how things used to be done in what I think of as the bad old days.

Up until 2015 we had a party-political system. By some definitions it was a democratic government. About half of you here today will have voted in that system and have your own opinion of the value to you of that process. The method was that the voter was presented with a multiple choice of candidate, only one or two of which would have a chance of winning in their constituency. If you voted for a minor candidate who stood no chance of election you might think it a wasted vote.

The usual result of a general election was that the winning party would command just under a half of seats but would take overall control by coming to terms with parties from Northern Ireland, Wales or Scotland. Sometimes a government had a clear majority, but not often. A winning party generally gained between forty and forty five percent of the overall vote, which was itself about sixty five percent of the electoral roll. This meant, of course, that any government of whatever colour was only directly supported by about thirty percent of the electorate. The opposition parties, owing to the mysteries of the system, could even sometimes claim to have a greater support in the country than the government of the day.

You know that, over the next four years, you are going to be asked to contribute on an almost daily basis to the proper running of our country. Imagine, though, that you had been elected on the losing side of the old system. What was your role? how were you going to contribute? You could sit on the odd cross-party committee and nibble around the edges of power but you could never really influence the important decisions. Most of your time was going to be spent opposing, for the sake of it, the other party’s government. As far as you were concerned, if your leader told you black was red and green was blue and you had to vote for it, you would vote for it.

If half the MPs of that day were completely powerless then that also meant that more than half of the electorate had been disenfranchised. Their vote had been wasted for another four or five years.

Even worse, in some respects, was the effect of ministerial government, whereby MPs of the ruling party elected a leader, or had a standing leader already, and he appointed a select group of like minded MPs to be responsible for particular management roles. Because all MPs thought they would always be an MP, their single-minded desire was to climb the greasy pole to the heady heights of cabinet, as it was called, to share in the power, influence and financial rewards that would come with it. All he or she had to do to ensure their chance at this great prize was to look intelligent and show undying alliegence to the party bosses.

This meant, if you apply a critical analysis to the subject, that of the six hundred and thirty elected members perhaps only two dozen, or even fewer, had a direct influence on policy and actions taken. The country was, effectively, ruled by a self-appointed elite.

In those days, if you wrote to your constituency MP about a truly local thing, say, asking why the light at the corner of your road hadn’t been working for the last six months, despite your calling up the council about it six times, there was a very good chance that the light would be working two days later. You will find yourselves that you have great influence locally. But, if you wrote to your MP suggesting a change of policy in some department of government, you would receive, some months later, an anodyne non-specific thank-you for your letter which had been ‘passed on to the department’ of whatever. As a constituent, because of the structure of government, it would be impossible for you to either have your voice heard or, if it were heard, respected.

I’ll tell you about my own experiences at that time, and the events that led to the formation of CTD.

Back in 2008 or so the country was just entering yet another recession. This time it was caused by the astonishing behaviour of the world banking industry backed up with some truly eye-watering government borrowing and spending. Although it was obvious that the huge financial losses and the need to repay public debt must have a significant effect, in the main everybody went on with their lives as if nothing had happened. While many observers felt that the writing on the wall was going to be huge new unemployment the government appeared to do nothing to address the situation. What policies they had just nibbled around the edges but, whenever a senior politician was interviewed about economic matters, and particularly about unemployment, the same old mantra was, ‘We are confident that we are heading in the right direction and we are doing all we can to promote jobs.’

It took no genius to know that, if an economy shrank in size by ten percent, then the overall effect on employment would be far greater than that, given that the only real option for any business whose profit margin was three or four percent would be to reduce the only cost that it could easily control - the workforce.

Against this background I came up with a scheme that I felt could be useful for employment, particularly employment in manufacture.

Whether or not my ideas were good ones is a discussion that we could have another day. That is not what I want to address. What I want to talk about is the difficulty in getting heard. I was just an ordinary guy. I didn’t have any influence or connections and I wasn’t involved in any special interest group. The same as most of you sitting here. All I had was an idea and an absolute certain belief in it. My idea was well documented and a model and business plan well developed. All I needed was an audience with government and, I felt sure, the overpowering logic of what I had to say would be absorbed and reflected into an exciting opportunity.

OK, so I was an idiot.

In the four years that I spent writing letters and sending emails, many hundreds of both, I never once had certain knowledge that my missive had been read by the intended recipient.

You’re all looking confused now, and I can understand why. You’re used to a system that demands and requires that members, whether they be in Parliament like you are now, or serving in local government as others are, take proper account of the needs and ideas of the electorate. Your secretariat has standing orders to bring to your attention any matter raised by a constituent that could be put into an ‘ideas’ basket, and you are required to either read , agree with and sign the secretarial reply, or write and sign your own reply.

The reason for this is at the very heart of our modern system. It is this - If we do not accept that someone else can be just as intelligent, or more intelligent, than us, and what he or she or they have to say could be valuable to our society then we dishonour the foundation of our system which has been rooted in the right of every individual to be part of government.

You are not here to serve yourselves. It’s never going to be your career. You’re never going to get rich from being here. While you are here you are Miss East Suffolk or Mrs Dagenham and the energy that you have should be used to ensure, as a priority, that your constituents have their voices heard.

I digress. But you’ll all understand that, for me, these are the building blocks of society and, therefore, paramount.

So, there I was, four years of disinterest behind me when, out of the blue the first Ten Times petition arrived. It was written by a chap called Joe Hickey, the Chairman of a small help-the-homeless charity in Birmingham. He was another ordinary guy, like me, but he had the advantage of being extremely savvy in communication technology. His database had been built to include the electronic contact details of many hundreds of thousands of people around the country and he chose exactly the right time to send out his petition.

I know you’ve already gone down this route with John this morning, so I won’t flog it again except to say that this single action, and the sudden awareness of how truly powerful the people could be when they spoke with one voice was awe-inspiring for me.

It set me to look a bit further down the road, to begin to understand that if the nation could react so effectively to a certain stimulus once, then it could carry on doing so in the future.

I had often spoken with friends and family before that time about what I thought would be the perfect democracy. It involved putting a pin in a random page of every local phone book to find that area’s representative. The advantage of this idea was that, at a stroke, it removed ‘politician’ for a career option and also ‘party politics’ from Westminster. The disadvantages were all about implementation. What structure would six hundred random individuals need, to work effectively? In my argument I had no concern about the essential machinery of government, only with its abuse. The civil servants, at whatever level, were doing a proper job. The judiciary was doing a proper job. The police and other services were doing proper jobs. All that was needed, I proposed, was a way to make an effective connection between the new ‘MPs’ picked out from a phone book, and the existing system of national administration.

At that time I had a number of quite wealthy and influential friends, one of whom had, not long before, been subject to what he felt was a gross abuse of power. He had lost out in his bid to renew a long term government administered franchise in a manner which, he felt, raised a number of questions. Whether he was right or wrong is irrelevant for this discussion, but he was furious. Foaming at the mouth would be an understatement. Another was a regional newspaper publisher with very strident views about politicians and their lifestyles. There were a number of others.

I rang around my friends and arranged an informal meeting to discuss the idea which was beginning to take shape in my head.

Six of us met in the summer of 2014. My proposition was that, with the financial and organisational muscle round the table we could have a go at altering the political system. I proposed a two stage attack. The first would be to facilitate the registration of candidates for the 2015 election under one general non-political banner. The second stage would be to get each of these candidates to sign up to an unpublished future course of action, should the project be substantially successful. This second was to ensure that we didn’t just replace one set of self-serving career politicians with another. Our discussions went on for some weeks of late night meetings and, finally, we all agreed to a plan. Those that could, contributed substantial funds into our war-chest. The budget was some millions of pounds. We established an office and started recruiting a small admin team from within our existing staff numbers. It was all very low key.

By the Autumn of 2014 we were ready to go public and, soon after the recruiting of the first candidates commenced.

As you know already, the qualifying candidates were to be non-political in the party sense of the word. Their social politics were relatively unimportant to us, within limits. We were never going to accept those who expressed extreme views, either to the right or to the left, but did want our ‘party’ to be representative of the more general spread of ideas through the population. The thing most important to us was that each candidate understood that they were, in our perfect scenario, only going to serve for a very short time and that any vision of a long term political career should be forgotten.

John Parminter has already taken you through what happened next, so I won’t labour on too much. Suffice to say that we more more successful than we had thought possible and were able to enact our ‘unspoken’ strategy far more quickly than we had ever imagined.

The only major sticking point we had was, at least partly, due to this rapid success. However careful we were in our selection we still managed to end up with a group of new members who, once they had been let into the system decided that they didn’t need to ally themselves with CTD or our programme. At that point we published the agreements all candidates had signed up to and most were bought back into line by their constituents. Those that weren’t were just treated like sitting MPs and ignored, in the full and certain knowledge that they wouldn’t be able to make any difference to the plan.

After the election of 2015, CTD had its first, and last, conference. Over a few days the new members thrashed out the electoral system that has bought you all to Parliament. At the end of the conference CTD was disbanded in favour of the new House Rules, the introduction of which, to law, was the first act of the Modern Parliament.

From this point all decisions taken in the House became subject to certain levels of vote and certain levels of consultation, dependent on their potential effect. You will already know, for example, that there are referenda now and again that require a certain level of voter attendance and a certain level of voter agreement in order for the proposed subject of each referendum to be passed into law. Not that it has happened but, should there be a proposal to send us to war in a third country for example, that would require a seventy percent approval from an eighty percent ballot. A structural change in some level of social security payment would require a sixty percent approval from a seventy percent ballot, and so on. As you know, responding to a referundum is now obligatory. You’ll find out more about the background to these figures as you go on.

That’s about it from me. We’ve got a bit of time left before your next bit of induction so I’ll be happy to take any questions you may wish to ask. Fire away. Perhaps you could introduce yourselves at the same time.’

‘Hello Mr. Ling’,

‘George please’,

‘Hello George. My name is Leonie Chichester, I’m the member for Neath, in South Wales. Until now I’ve been working as a civil servant at GCHQ in Cheltenham. I’m not even sure I’m supposed to tell you that, come to think of it, but perhaps parliamentary privilege overrules the Official Secrets Act? I’m only thirty so, for me, the old system is only a vague memory but, on the other hand, it is something much spoken about at work. Many of the old guard feel that the modern system has made us less able to react quickly to emergencies. What are your thoughts on this?’

‘Well, Leonie, this has been a recurring subject over the past ten years and, I daresay, will continue to be so. I suppose my view is that, historically, the ability of a small clique of government to make far reaching decisions on national security has not been to our advantage. The question relates to one of the CTD’s original mandate principles, vis, the larger the electorate, the better the decision. In the twentieth century, and at the beginning of this century, Britain became involved in a great number of conflicts around the world. Many were just causes, and many weren’t, but all had one common factor. We were sent to war without consultation. This meant that there would always be doubt in the nation about the decision and this could, at the very least, be used by detractors and pressure groups to undermine what may well have been very lucid and convincing arguments for involvement. I think that, if we are going to be involved in anything other than a defense of our own land, it is essential to have the whole country supporting the action through a democratic referendum. One other important element to take into account is the role of the armed forces in our democracy. Previously there was a very close relationship between the ‘generals’ and government. Armed forces, by their very nature, want to go out and show how good they are at fighting wars. So, when asked for their opinion late at night in some crisis room or other would tend to project an optimistic scenario that imagined a nice quick military solution to any given problem. Unfortunately, many politicians of the past were all too willing to agree with these people, and happy to take advice which they could later use in defence of their actions. I prefer a more considered approach.

Incidentally, new members such as yourself who have particular knowledge about something, such as national security, should not be shy to introduce themselves to the various committee groups that meet to discuss these issues. You’ll find a list of these in your induction notes.’

‘Anyone else?’

‘Hello George. My name is Indra Chowdary. I was a call centre worker in Portsmouth, and now I’m here representing that city. I’m thirty two, so, like Leonie, I didn’t have much experience of the old system. I’m the son of Indian immigrants, although I’ve never been to India and consider myself to be completely British.

I live in a pretty run-down part of Portsmouth. There’s a lot of unemployment and not a lot of well-paid work and, to me, nothing much seems to have changed over the last ten years. Can you comment on this?’

‘Portsmouth is one of quite a few cities and regions around the country that, one could say, have not really benefited yet from the modern system. The reason is that the demilitarisation of the past ten years has really badly hit areas, like Portsmouth, that relied on the Navy, Army or Air Force activity in those areas. On the other hand, for you to say that things have not changed much at least suggests that things are not getting worse, so I find that encouraging. Don’t forget that we are still very much in the economic doldrums and far from achieving some of the targets outlined by progressive governments. Perhaps you and your new colleagues will have something to say about that?

‘That’s all very well, but I’ve got no education to speak of and I can’t see myself making great speeches like some of the MPs we see on telly. How am I going to make a difference to anything?

‘Just by being you. By voting for things that you think are important. Your vote weighs the same as any other member and, when your constituents see you voting for their interests, rather than for the interests of some other pressure group, and there are plenty of those by the way, then they will thank you for it.

The discussion went on for some time. George Ling had noticed that, by comparison to the first few times he’d been asked to take part in this induction process, there were far fewer questions about the philosophical role of the modern parliament and far more about what could, or should, be done by this system. Perhaps it had now come of age and was accepted as the way things were. He certainly hoped so. It had been a long road.

Eventually the group split up and went back to their ‘residences’, flats by any other name, dotted around West London, or, in the case of Amelia St. Beuve, back to the family home in Dagenham.

Imogen Black and John Parker had swapped numbers and, subject to anything more important happening, arranged to meet up at the pub later that evening.

Everybody was, to some degree, suffering from shell-shock. Each drawn away from their natural environment at the whim of a lottery and now each beginning to understand the enormous importance of their new role, and worrying about how they would fit in.

Still, the real work didn’t start for another few days so, hopefully, the rest of the induction would make things a bit more obvious. After all, it wasn’t as if they were the first new MPs of the modern age. There had already been more than eighteen hundred who had served or were still serving and there was some comfort in that.

Imogen and John had arranged to meet at the Bell and Crown on the river, a pub both of them knew from an earlier life. Imogen had been a student in London and John had often had building jobs in the West End. Neither had ever had the full and certain knowledge of a substantial salary stretching four years into the future though, and this was to be celebrated.

John Parker, in his late forties and with a slight limp, the result of a roof-fall some years before sat contentedly, holding his pint with an ear to ear grin on his, as Imogen already thought it, handsome face.

‘Do you know. I can’t ever remember getting my round in without thinking, on some level, how much that left me to live on’

‘Nor me. Life as a barmaid in Bungay has its attractions but good pay is not one of them. How weird is it to be getting about forty thousand a year after tax, and the rent paid as well. It’s going to take a bit of getting used to. I can already understand why those old bastards used to try and hang onto their jobs, even if it meant selling their souls. I found those presentations today really interesting. How about you?

I’ve been a self-employed builder all my life just about. When there’s been work I’ve often made quite a bit, on a weekly basis, but there’s always the lean times to allow for so I’ve never felt confident about money. I’ve never owned a house because I could never really show how the mortgage would be repaid and now it’s probably too late, although I suppose this lot may make a difference.

‘So, what do you think of it all so far, Immogen. Just to repeat my unanswered question.’

‘Well, I’m feeling quite excited by the whole thing. I’ve always been interested in environmental issues, the effects of global warming in particular. This new position I find myself in might give me a real chance to boost the speed at which we’re tackling the legacy.

It’s true we, the world, have begun to regulate some of the causes, significantly lessening CO2 emissions, but as we know, the harmful effects will be felt for hundreds of years into the future. Just look at what the world has become. Flooding rivers have drowned our small coastal towns, while large areas of the planet are bone-dry and barren, producing nothing. Then there’s the extinction of so many thousands of species, drought eliminating their food supply.

We all remember how the growth of solar power came as a burst on the world in the early years of this century, after we witnessed the beginning of this obliteration of our wildlife. That woke the world with a start, making us take notice of the warnings that had been rippling for years about how badly we were treating the Earth. Of course, some things have already changed for the better - I believe even the Speaker’s wife has acquired a solar-assisted electric bicycle!

Plenty is being done to try to back-track the disastrous lack of attention to the dangers of GW in the early late nineties to the early twenties, but I think we must do more. For instance, we need to look at the way we feed ourselves. We just eat too much meat and too many dairy products, even though we know the devestating effect of methane gas , not to mention how acre-rich is the requirement for growing their food. If we can persuade people to eat less meat, that would go some way to helping the problem. Once we’ve managed that, we might aim even higher, er.. or lower.

Oh dear, I seem to have climbed on that horse again! Anyway, yes, I’m looking forward to this new opportunity.’