Sep 15 2009
The humiliation of Parliament
At 10.30 am yesterday I was sitting in The Victoria Hall at Reading Town Hall offices along with 20 other MPs for the first meeting of the South East regional grand Committee. It had all the atmosphere of a Soviet press conference, as it was a stage set for the government to tell grateful victims of the recession that government would intervene to make it right in the end. It was as democratic as a show trial.
There was the unchallenging motion, talking of growth in unspecified “sectors of the South-eastern economy”. I had been told firmly that I could not seek to amend the motion in the traditional Parliamentary way. We could not call a division on anything of importance, and could not seek to get the Committee to discuss its undemocratic way of proceeding. There was insufficient time for us all to speak, and we were told at 12.20 we could no longer intervene and ask questions either, as for some unknown reason proceedings had to stop at 1pm.
82 MPs are automatically members of this Committee by virtue of being elected for places that Labour choses to lump into the non existent “South East”. Oxford, Thanet, Hastings and Reading apparently share an economy, yet this is unconnected to London’s economy which is a different region! The 21 who turned up at the beginning were sufficient for proceedings to take place, as the quorum is 17. At one point the Minister needed to leave the room temporarily, only for there to be panic that numbers may have fallen below 17 leading to an immediate end of the proceedings! The 50 plus MPs who decided this was a waste of time and did not come at all were right.
There was one junior Minister present to put the government’s case and to answer questions. He wanted the session to be about subsidies and other government help to parts of the economy. He mentioned a carbon capture and storage scheme for the South east. I asked how much it would cost and how much the taxpayers would have to pay for it. He said he would write to me with an answer. So there’s good control of the spending then! Maybe they have given up costing promises, as they have no intention of implementing them. I asked him about the inflationary impact of quantitative easing on the South East economy, as that will have a far far bigger impact than his penny packet subsidy schemes. He took exception to this question, and told me I should have asked a different question about his schemes.
Colleagues asked about “cuts”. The Minister kept on about how Conseravtives present never came up with cuts of our own. This was bizarre, as we urged on him the ending of regional government and the end of the complex audit and target regime afflicting local government as two big cuts we wanted. He carried on with his script regardless. He could not handle us offering cuts.
This whole sorry episode shows just how low Parliament has sunk. Labour wanted a polite conversation between MPs concerned to discuss detailed matters about a few million pounds of subsidy schemes, when the government refuses to reconvene Parliament to debate the printing of £175 billion, the £175 billion deficit, and the rising tide of unemployment. The government is acting as a lackey to the EU regional scheme, wasting our money on futile attempts to create a bogus sense of regional identity in regions that make no sense. The sooner all this regional baggage is wound up the better. It is just another example of how there could be some popular cuts in spending.
15 Responses to “The humiliation of Parliament”
John Redwood has been the Member of Parliament for Wokingham since 1987. First attending Kent College, Canterbury, he graduated from Magdalen College...
So, I presume John, you will not be going again to prop up this ‘tyranny’? Though this expose is useful.
reply: I hope that will be the last of these reigonal show trials in the South East
So when you get into Office, wind up the regional baggage. If the EU complain, tell them it’s OUR country and we’ll run it the way we want to. And then cut the UK’s contribution to the EU budget. If we don’t want regionalisation, why should we pay towards it.
Maybe the seventeen of you who DID show up could have clubbed together and decided to abolish the whole thing?
It may have had no power to affect change but it would have been a really funny headline. “South-Eastern MPs abolish own region!”
Reply: We voted against all this in Parliament. We were not allowed to table a motion for abolition – that is the whole point.
Mark M Reply:
September 15th, 2009 at 8:16 am
“We were not allowed to table a motion for abolition”
Now if that doesn’t sum up the current state of the country, I don’t know what does.
We have thousands of quangos that we want rid of, but we have no control over their existence, and the one body in the country that decides among its members that it should be abolished isn’t allowed to do so.
True Belle Reply:
September 15th, 2009 at 8:32 am
Yes, good stuff– It is pointless being timid- need some verbal muscle don’t we?
It seems like you had a wasted morning, though I suppose there is a tragically comedic side to it.
Dr Madsen Pirie’s “Zero Base Policy” recommends doing away with pointless intermediate levels of Government and establishing a Parliament of England that sits in the palace of Westminster and is constituted of English MPs.
I had a long reply detailing how shoddy this ‘government’ are on every level. However, there does not seem anything to add to this excellent post. I just want to weep for what has been done to my country and my impotence in being able to do anything about it.
I have read a lot of Dan Hannan about the EU parliament. The really scary thing seems to me to be the fact that this Regional offshoot of European Parliamentary procedure mirrors Europe, not UK parliamentary procedure.
People blandly assume that anything with the word “Parliament” and “elections” in it must be the same as Westminster used to be before it was debauched.
Not so.
The sooner we restore proper parliamentary government the better.
If things are not discussed, then ridiculous laws get passed (Climate change carbon capture? This ISA scandal? The bank Regulation fiasco?) and we soon pass into Eastern Europe under the Communists (who never managed any computerised database) or, if the BNP get power, to Germany under the Nazis.
“He mentioned a carbon capture and storage scheme for the South east. I asked how much it would cost and how much the taxpayers would have to pay for it. He said he would write to me with an answer”
In a previous life, when I was working for a PLC developer, had I gone into a room to present a novel but not been able to tell the board how much the scheme would cost (including detailed discounted monthly cashflow) and funding sources, I could have expected my P45 that afternoon.
Again the lack of real world experience amongst these people explains our current financial malaise. Dogs bark, cats me-ow and Labour bankrupts Britain ~ every time they are elected.
The value in attending is to be able to make this expose as to why SEERA and its like should be abolished. Case made: boycott it from now on until abolition. I would suggest that Conservatives appoint one duty MP to turn up and attend should a future meeting threaten to be quorate, just to act as observer and reporter. All the others should announce their boycott and stick to it.
As far as parliamentary humiliation is concerned, one of the worst, in my opinion, is the FSA. I heard Lord Turner, when he was appointed, say how he would change the bonus culture in our financial institutions. I wrote to this blog rather scathingly about this, and was moderated to non publication. I see now that Brown is appalled that the bonus culture of our financial institutions is alive and well. No mention of Lord Turner or the FSA. So another quango which costs a fortune and does nothing. All swept under the carpet as usual.
regional government is a rabbit hole into the new world order, if you chose to delve into it.
They cannot abolish it, their entire system would collapse.
I really do appreciate these posts where, as your piece proceeds, you are clearly getting more and more irritated and irrascible just by being made to think and write about all such utter, well crap, really. Trouble is Mr R, the Beeb and others also know this and are not willing to grant you a proper democratic platform to make this irritation, and the reasons for it, clearer to a wider audience. Methinks you need a ‘Daniel Hannan MEP / Euro Parliament / Gordon Brown / youtube’ moment. Can this be engineered?
Keep hammering, Mr Redwood. And I wish you all success.
Truly, as we are privileged to have it, democracy has turned out to be a sad chimaera and will destroy us all. I suppose the theory was that if people were equal in all opportunities, sufficiently educated, and principled, it would work. The outcome has been a disaster. I am appalled at what we are handing on to our children and grandchildren.
The concept of polite discussion to an agenda commensurate with the elected government’s intentions obviously doesn’t suit the self seeking and tendentious tories, fearful of a fourth election loss in a row.
Reply: We need to show some anger and passion about the mess we have been placed in. The issues the government wnated to talk about are too small to make a difference.