Home page Participatory democracy for the citizen - Part 1 Jack Straw and Gordon Brown are stated to be preparing to announce some important constitutional changes which will help "involve" the people of Britain in the democratic process. They have mentioned the relative powers of the Executive and Parliament as well as participatory methods such as citizens juries. These are matters addressed in the recent work, "The Briton's Quest for Freedom - Our unfinished journey...", published by HPC (Hambrook Publishing Company). Agence Presse Européenne (APE) asked the author of this work, Hector McNeill, to respond to some specific questions on this topic and his replies make up a two part article on this topic. This article is concerned with the issue of the relative powers of Parliament and the Executive. Part 2 covers how best to enhance inclusion through the involvement of the electorate in policy development and legislative processes. The first question APE presented was: "What is the significance of the relative powers of the Executive and Parliament?" Hector McNeill's reply is given below: The first point is to qualify that question. The main issue is the power differential between Government and Parliament with the Executive being part of the Government, often being considered to be the Prime Minister and the Cabinet and/or leading ministers. People's frustration with not having a direct say in the decisions which affect them relate to the fact that British Parliamentary democracy does not have a free-voting Parliament of representatives who reflect the will of the people by voting according to constituency wishes on legislation proposed by the Government. This problem arises from three separate elements 1: the failure of general elections to determine real electorate preferences the de facto conflict of interests in representation between political parties and constituencies the failure to separate the operation and the powers of the Government from Parliament Real Electorate Preferences On the matter of the determination of real electorate preferences the general election only assesses a response to preferences which have been predetermined by political parties themselves supported by incomplete information. These are presented as a list in a manifesto. All that voters can do, under such circumstances, is to indicate pre-decisions. No final decision is possible because the public does not know what is involved until the legislation is unfurled in Parliament at a later date. At this point they are not permitted to reassess their pre-decision to end up with a final decision. It is of vital importance to understand that voting for a political-party-preferred-policy is not the same thing as the electorate indicating what they think policies should be. In statistical terms the sweeping statement that the general election reflects the "preferences of the electorate" is a misrepresentation of the facts. The changes between a manifsto promise and what appears as legislation can be so different that, as explained in "The Briton's Quest for Freedom", such a claim is invalid and, under some circumstances, pledges can be considered to be fraudulent. Representation Members of Parliament do have a community tag in the form of a name of a Parliamentary constituency with which they are associated. However, in Parliamentary voting MPs represent first and foremost their political party and not the constiutuency which elected them. As mentioned the British general election involves a misleading process in which the electorate is asked to use their single vote to select many less than clear policies in a manifesto. The MP for a constiutuency is that individual who by default is selected on the basis of a specific political party gaining most votes. The understanding, as far as the political party is concerned, is that the MP will represent and vote for the party in Parliament. People in a constituency are somewhat duped into thinking that their MP represents them in Parliament. This is not strictly the case since they will normally vote in line with the party whip and not usually take any account of constituency views. Since there is no process to change electorate pre-decisions to final decisions, MPs have no basis upon which to determine the view of their constituency at the point of their voting on each legislative propostion. As a result Parliament does not reflect the free will of the people but rather it reflects a will entirely controlled by the political party machines. Separation of Powers On the matter of separation of powers we have a confusing system where ministers of state and junior government operatives, who are provided with their jobs through Prime Ministerial patronage, do not work as a Government in a separate location; they all remain seated in Parliament. This has been the state of affairs for some time but the effects are often not fully appreciated. The first significant issue is that Parliament, the very assembly expected to "debate" and "vote" on Government legislation, cannot operate in an independent fashion. This is because the first-past-the-post electoral system creates disproportionate majorities for government parties with less than 20% of the support of the electorate. The tactic to ensure that the government party wins all Parliamentary votes, even although about 80% of the electorate never voted in favour of such legislation, is to keep the Government sitting in Parliament so that they vote on their own legislation and thereby guarantee their majority; the whip ensures compliance. If the power of Government were separated from that of Parliament, then constituencies whose MPs became part of Government would have to be provided with a by-election to find a replacement. Even if the powers of Government and Parliament were separated one still faces the stark reality of the degree to which political parties fail to reflect the views of the people by "locking in" the general election outcome based on pre-decisions. Thus, because MPs do not represent their constituencies but rather their parties, there is no incentive to agree to a separation of powers since they would not be sure that the by-elections in seats, when their MP has joined the Government, would result in their own party adherents being returned. Broadly speaking one would imagine the same party would be returned but this is not certain. Permanently Crippled Parliament The unfortunate outcome is that such bold and reassuring statements which refer to the Unitary principle, that is a supreme Parliament which "decides" and "keeps the Executive in check" represents no more than an illusion. The most serious issue is all of this activity of general elections, government formation and legislation occurs without the political parties making any persistent effort to determine what the real preferences of the electorate are. All that the parties know is what the public feel about a completely separate issue, this is their views about the predetermined policy preferences of the political parties themselves. This is why there is no such thing as a truly reflective "balance of representation" and, more seriously a Parliament, populated on such a misleading basis, can never represent the free will of the people. Strategic Implications British political parties have a total membership equivalent to less than 1% of the electorate. It is more than apparent to the people of Britain that our system, with single parties dominating governance, results in governments with an inadequate critical mass of intellectual ability or experience. This is referred to as "talent" by Gordon Brown. Indeed his "Government of all the talents" is an admission of the lack of qualified individuals within the Parliamentary Labour party. This has always been apparent with Cabinet reshuffles involving any British political party, where diminishing marginal returns set in very fast. The negative strategic implications of this deficiency in governance created by the amateurism of political parties is exacerbated by the insistence of political parties placing their quest for power over the interests of the people. It is more than evident that what is presented at general elections as their predetermined preferences can never be assumed to represent the most appropriate or the best options. Since the political parties never find out what the people want, where is their starting point? No matter what "performance criteria" governments apply to sharpen up the "delivery" of their policies, the likelihood is that the policies themselves are suboptimal and not always what people want. Certainly in Britain today we have a government with the support of less than 20% of the electorate talking about a "mandate" and the importance of political party discipline in delivering their manifesto "commitments". This depth of serious commitment to preferences which did not come from the people but rather from the parties themselves, fails to establish any priorities resulting from the free expression of the people of Britain. This has two strategic consequences. First there is the question as to the legitimacy of a minority faction imposing its will on the majority. Secondly the insistence on following such a course of action, in any other domain, would be considered to be reckless. This is because it is bound to be associated with high levels of technical, economic, financial and social risk. This is because more public resources are committed to activities for which 80% of the electorate have never expressed any support. There is little evidence, I would say no evidence, of such activities being subjected to objective decision analysis and evaluation to determine whether or not, outside the perspectives of parisan assertion, they represent the best solutions. There is a tendency for politicians to react to a failure in policy achievement by "helping things along" in the desired direction by providing more cash. Certainly this can result in achieving the stated objective, of course it can, but it also hides the suboptimal nature of the policy and sustains a semblance of achievement at what can be an unacceptable cost. The problem is that the political system is structured not to deliver the best simply because of the lack of objectivity of general elections and the substitution of a faithful constituency representation by political party representation. People are further excluded from decision-making because there is no rational separation of a non-partisan free-voting Parliament reflecting the will of the people in scrutinising, improving and deciding on the legislative proposals from a separate Government. The only way this can happen is for representatives to be free from political party influence. Parliamentary representatives cannot serve two masters, the will of the people and the will of their political party. Representatives in Parliament should serve the more worthy master, the will of the people. This failure of our political system to achieve for the people of Britain a faithful representation in the form of a government of the people reflecting the will of the people is caused by the objectives and priorities of the political parties not being the same as those of the people. 1"The Briton's Quest for Freedom - Our unfinished journey...", pp.47-114, Chapters on The Majority Principle, A General Election, Parliament, House of Lords, Juries and Life, HPC, July 2007, Updated 5th July 2007; First posted 2nd July, 2007