Do We Still Need A Parliament?

That's a good question!

Now that much of what little power remained to the British Parliament has effectively been handed over to Brussels, and with Scoitland and Wales making many decisions independently of Westminster (and with their own funds to implement such decisions), what purpose does the London-based Parliament now serve? It would appear to be very little, but at just as great expense to the taxpayer and ever more intrusive dictator-style politicking in order to justify its continuing existence.

My somewhat radical approach has been for some months (and I have posted about this in other on-line discussion media) to look critically at this whole subject, with a view to seriously considering scrapping the parliamentary system if it can no longer justify its existence.

Under my way of doing this, all taxes would (as they should!) come to local communities directly, and those communities would effectively sub-contract some kind of national organisation to deal with the relatively few matters that truly belong there. Some subjects do belong there, but not many -- and certainly only a fraction of the issues that are currently handled via remote dictatorship in Whitehall, or beyond, for that matter.

This would also remove the possibility of fiddling of local government finance that has generated the budgetary difficulties within the best-run councils such as Medway, just because we have been an embarrassment to the Labour Government, putting their own councils to shame. There are other reasons too, but they are all purely party political, and nothing to do with right and wrong, as is easy to see from official sources of information, many of which I have on file here, so I've already seen this for myself.

It would also make all elected representatives taking decisions on what happens in this country truly representative of the community or communities that would be affected by those decisions. Again, no dictatorship by "outsiders"! Obviously, to make this work fully would need withdrawal from the new European Superstate -- but that is a separate issue, and I did start this post on the premise that the so-called Reform Treaty will in fact come into effect here in Britain, as seems likely...

An English Assembly or mini-Parliament, as some people are already suggesting, could be created to deal with national (and international) matters, and this would not only re-balance the currently skew between England and the other three parts of the United Kingdom, it would eliminate the issue of (for example) Scottish MPs being able to vote on purely English matters. That's just one possibility.

Obviously this idea of mine isn't necessarily the best possible solution, and I am sure that many would throw up their hands in sheer horror at the thought of getting rid of the "mother of Parliaments". Even so, it is this kind of thinking that could well help to restore the trust in politics that is so sadly lacking in this country at present (and has for many years) and bring decision-making at all levels much closer to the people who will be affected, via their elected representatives who will also be affected and whose doors can easily be knocked on by discontented residents living nearby.

Local politicians are also far more dependent upon even relatively small groups of voters -- typically only a couple of thousand electors will turn out to vote usually two or three in (or out!) at a time in a ward: tens of thousands vote for a solitary MP -- and they do need to be satisfied that their views, needs and aspirations are genuinely being taken into account when decisions are made.

As recent years' experiences have shown here in Medway, local MPs care little or nothing for local people's wishes, and are generally far more interested in promotion within their party in government. They can get away with the broadness of their constituencies and the consequent lack of genuine local accountability. They don't even get called to account, unlike (say) a council Portfolio Holder -- as we had before us at Scrutiny just yesterday evening, for example.

That would all change if and when the anachronisms that are MPs are scrapped, along with their loose and woolly behavioural regime, to be supplanted by the much more tightly regulated local Councillors for all matters that impact communities rather than the entire nation. We'd have no more threats of an international airport on the Hoo Peninsula, our schools could have major investment (currently specifically denied to Medway), and we would decide our housing numbers and densities, to suit local needs and capacity rather than some externally imposed requirements. It is the only possible way that we can take back control of our localities, and thus by extension much of our country.

Now that's what I'd call representative democracy in action!