8 Steps to address the Failings of MPs and the House of Commons #FPTP2.08
Legally Binding Oath: MPs swear, “I serve the people of the UK, their welfare and resources first, under law.” Break it—and before the courts: Fines, suspension or removal.
Monthly MP Reports: MPs post online bulletins—votes, actions, input. Voters judge work; accountability is mandatory.
Transparent Lobbying: Every lobbyist meeting—who, what, perks—reported monthly. Skip it? £5k fine. Lie? £10k. Three strikes: Local re-election. Meals okay; holidays or more not.
Mid-Term Re-election: Poor MP? Over certain %, petition triggers re-election vote. No five-year wait—serve us or leave.
AI ‘VAR’ for the Speaker. Live flags: green for answers, yellow for waffle, red for dodges. Forces MPs to answer or say ‘I don’t know.’ No more time-wasting. Speaker Calls it out.
Mixed seating like committees—less tribalism for Parties
Whips Limited: Whip only manifesto pledges; free votes otherwise. MPs represent us, not just party HQs.
Weighted MP Votes “Individual MP Voting Strength” Commons votes match party’s national share. 34% gets 34% clout, not 63% of seats. Fairness without PR’s chaos. The same proportion allocates Party questions in the daily timetable of the House.
“Individual MP Voting Strength” Can be found right here under “Future UK Electoral Systems: FPTP & PR”
I disagree with most of this, but I’ll address points individually.
We don’t want the courts and judges determining what is in the best interests of the British people. I could go further, but that point alone is enough to shoot down this policy.
I fear that this encourages ‘fake work’. I.e. politicians looking like they are doing work by doing flashy, big-ticket, short-term payoff projects and eschewing the long-term, challenging but more important work. There is a big problem with people looking like they are working rather than actually working right now, we don’t need to make that worse.
I worry that all of the ethics rules and regulations in parliament are making our politicians less ethical and less accountable. What I mean is that quite often with bad behaviour that is obviously bad behaviour, politicians will point to the rules or the law and say “well I didn’t break that so it is okay”. They then refer themselves to ethics advisors who will determine whether the politician was ethical. I feel (but might be wrong) that by relaxing the ethics rules, but by having a stronger impetus on public moral expectations, we can get better behaved politicians who will feel like they have to defend their actions and be held to account for their immorality.
See points about short-termism.
Firstly, let us not open the can of worms that is AI being anywhere near the levers of power. Secondly, this is something that I think that the electorate should be doing, not so much the speaker.
Meh, I don’t care.
How do you define a manifesto pledge? How do you enforce this? As much as I don’t like the whip system, I don’t think you can easily do away with it. What you need are politicians to have more of a backbone to resist the whipping.
It would be too confusing and you then have the problem that places who voted for the winning party have effectively less voice. I discuss my preferred solution (AMS with a winner top-up) in my constitution series.
Courts would not decide fate of the people: the MPs Breaking a legally binding oath in extreme cases: No one is above as is seen by MPs that have broken Law in the past.
Does not encourage fake work and MPs need to be brought back from pantomime & obscurity to transparency & accountability.
Inc 2 above
ditto
I can’t see see a mechanism for the electorate. Can you?
ditto
Parties publish manifestos, Whipping only by a party only on its pledges contained in it. I don’t like whipping either, it seeks to support party lines over MP constituency representation.
Weighted MP Votes “Individual MP Voting Strength”: Basic maths done inside the House. No more complicated than walking trough turnstiles for MPs: Same ballot slip for the electorate. Don’t like AMS. usually fiddles with closed lists; Regard them undemocratic as they are party nominated candidates: nominated candidates can lead to cronyism.
Much appreciative of your thoughts and comments. Regards
Then how is this enforced? We have private prosecution in the UK, but it would only be enforceable via the courts. Right now, judges interpret the law and have the ability to end trials if they consider that there is not enough evidence. Plus, who is to say legally what is in the national interest? I don’t think that there is one single answer or one single set of policies which is legally correct. I think this is just a minefield.
Except that this would not make them more transparent, and arguably makes them less so. MPs would only be as transparent as they were legally required to be, and transparency would no longer be a virtue among MPs. Furthermore, you are objectively wrong about not encouraging fake work. You should look into Goodhart’s law to exemplify this. Any performance metric which is transparent and easily understood will create perverse incentives.
We have these things called elections where the electorate have the power to remove MPs who they don’t like.
I think what you are missing is to do with theory of mind/theory of knowledge. What is or is not a manifesto pledge is debatable. Pledges are often wooley-worded things that can be interpreted in many different ways, not specifically drafted policy initiatives. Furthermore, policy is all interconnected, so a policy to reduce the deficit could see you whipping to pass a bill ordering the execution of all disabled people. That is an extreme example, but one does relate to the other and could be used in this way. So once again, you have the problem of “who decided that it is or is not a manifesto pledge?”
The problem isn’t how hard it is to do, but how hard it is for the electorate to understand, and how fair it seems. “one person, one vote” seems fair and is easily understood. Each MP having a different vote weighting is complicated and feels confusing to people.
I would recommend that you check out my policy proposal for AMS. It isn’t a closed list, or a list system at all and would probably deal with your concerns better.
Maybe working towards concentrating on finding really good people with a moral compass, brains and guts, to stand as our MP. Political parties parachuting candidates into constituencies is fine, if they are really good, but it has become a horrible centralised system. we have to reclaim our democracy by choosing good people. Perhaps the parties have had their day? A big subject.
The first post addresses Parliament issues without a complete redesign:
A) Fairer MP power system proportional to UK-wide votes for party policy and voter representation.
B) MP disloyalty to UK people.
C) Lack of transparency and accountability.
D) Disrespect for Parliament’s role as the debating and lawmaking center.
E) A better working democracy.
I agree that “really good people with a moral compass, brains, and guts to stand as our MPs” are essential and improve the status quo. Parliament fails systemically to represent people proportionally. “Parties” will always exist! I believe policy should bridle them. It’s a big subject!
Its is indeed. A in theory is covered by the commission that sets boundaries. B is shockingly true, hence my comments about parties. The loyalty should be to constituents, country, then party, but it doesn’t seem to work all that well. C is true in all respects. We could take a leaf out of DOGE’s book in the USA, where they are being totally transparent. Generally, there should be no need for freedom of information requests, with certain national security exceptions. The data should all be available to the public, but if it was, the Permanent secretaries would have no power, which could be good news!.
I think many have raised some of the practical problems with the above so I won’t reiterate them. I would agree with the general intent. However, one straightforward one to add would be random drug tests. They are required by many employers including the armed forces. Results to be made public.
It might be better even to make them monthly and mandatory as “random” would end up being bent to suit the Government.
