Oct 19 2007
Part time Parliament
It was perhaps fitting on a day when the government gave away so much power to Brussels to govern us that it should also announce yet more time off from Parliament. Apparently the government does not have enough legislation to put through so we can have more time away from Westminister.
As far as I am concerned it amounts to a lock out from my place of work. I am pleased there is not going to be more useless legislation. We need instead far more time to cross examine Ministers and to debate how to put the public services into better shape, how to spend the money more wisely and which legislaiton we should repeal because it is not working well.
If the government wants to know how we could use more time, it just has to listen each Thursday to the long list of matters MPs wish to debate during the weekly question session to the Leader of the House. The whole of local government only receives 30 minutes of questions a month in the Commons. Popular debates regularly restrict MPs to ten minute speeches only. There was no debate in government time to advise the PM on how he should handle the EU negotiations at Lisbon.
The public is not getting value for money from its Parliament, because this government prevents us from meeting enough.
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John Redwood has been the Member of Parliament for Wokingham since 1987. First attending Kent College, Canterbury, he graduated from Magdalen College...
Is there any point in having Parliament any more? MPs cannot alter most legislation because it comes from Directives and Regulations. It’s almost when the King ruled directly.
Our democracy built up over centuries has been destroyed quickly and easily in 35 years. Well done Heath, Thatcher, Major, Blair and Brown. You can stand up and be proud of yourselves.
Reply: Our democracy is being badly damaged by these huge transfers of power, but it it is still Parliament which could vote to change it, if only we can get a Eurosceptic majority elected.
It suits Labour’s purpose to have less parliament and less scrutiny. This is a government that rules by top-down directives and sees parliament as a rubber stamp. Labour made their contempt for parliament clear when they chopped PMQs in half leading to less accountability and less scrutiny. Labour are taking away our right of redress by degrees.
My understanding that Parliament’s only option would be to repeal the EC Act of 1972. That is an emergency release rather than the ability to change the treaty as such.
If Brown gets away with no referendum, will the Conservatives be standing on a re-negotiation ticket at the next election or will they just say “oh well” and move on?
Reply: I will stand on a renegotiation ticket, as we cannot live with this big surrender of power, or some of the other surrenders made under previous Treaties. That is my understanding of what the party generally will do. The Economic Report pledges us to roll back Brussels regulation. The party has adopted the deregulation process in the Report.
All part of Commissar Brown’s grand plan to make this country into the totalitarian state of his dreams. This man is a serious menace to our democracy and should be treated as such.
John,
I agree with Ed.
If Parliament passes the proposed amendment to the ECA, ratifying the constitutional treaty, for that is what Brown has agreed to in Lisbon, then what is the point of Parliament? All that we will see is more and more legislation emanating from our new masters in Brussels - the European Scrutiny Committee is already a largely toothless wonder.
Of course Brown can give more MPs time off, he and his Ministers realize how superfluous the Palace of Westminster is becoming. It is a real shame that the “mother of Parliaments” has been brought to her knees, by the undemocratic EU.
What really annoys me with this whole European fiasco is that MPs are elected to represent the interests of their constituency, not to blindly hand power to a centralizing bureaucracy in Brussels. Since 1972, MPs of all parties have failed to do their job in this regard and I suspect we will all live to regret it.
I often wonder what the government would say if every business announced more holidays.
Given that there is obviously already not enough work for the British MPs to do and as the new Constitution, Mr Brown will force through Parliament, passes even more power to Brussels, would now not be a good time to radically cut the numbers of MPs. This would not only save the taxpayer a lot of money but would indicate to the British public where in reality the power to run this country resides.
Or perhaps you could tell us which of the 558 new EU laws which impact on this country that were issued by Brussels between 27th of May and the 21st September, were debated on the floor of the Commons in British Parliament, which if any new EU laws were voted against.
Reply: Of course there should be fewer MPs - and we should abolish all unelected regional government in the UK. I want us to debate Euro laws before the government signs up to them in Brussels, as there is little ppoint in debating afterwards.
I do not think for one moment that any other public service that outsourced anything up to 80% and rising of its workload, would be allowed to maintain a full workforce and all the perks and privileges that go with the job. Can anyone imagine a British Fire Service where the firemen we paid to the job just sat around all day whilst the fires were put out by the EU fire service, which of course we also would have to pay for.
So I did not mean cutting out a few MPs, I mean really changing the place so that all we have is a single chamber EU authorising cabinet. Whilst we are at it we might as well get rid of the Law Lords and the rest of the British Constitutional establishment and we might as well bite the bullet and recognise the Monarchy would then have no place in the constitutional government of Britain.
I do not see that debating EU laws before they get to the EU level is a starter, after all they begin life in the EU and the final decision will not be made in Britain. The best we could hope for is that our Minister heading off to Brussels with a mandate from the British parliament, would not be outvoted, because if they are then we get the legalisation in any case, so the whole exercise would be a waste of time and money.
In the EU but not Ruled by the EU is not an option, is it, the only option we do have to save the nation state of Great Britain is to leave the EU and renegotiate a much loser arrangement, one in which only those laws voted on by the people we elect in our own parliament have any effect in this country, one in which the highest Law Court in the land is the British High Court, anything else is just posturing.