The report of the Power Inquiry, to which I submitted written evidence last year, is now available online.
I’ve had a read through the Executive Summary (the whole report is 311 pages) and there’s lots of good stuff.. Those of us who’ve long recognised the need for constitutional reform will not be surprised by many of the sensible recommendations: elections to the House of Lords, lowering the voting age, codifying executive powers. It doesn’t go quite so far as to call for proportional representation for the Commons, but recognises that first-past-the-post has had its day.
Some of the recommendations are rather vague. “Limits should be placed on the power of the whips” isn’t a particularly helpful statement. The reason whips have power is because backbenchers want to stay on the good side of their party leader, in whose gift are (shadow) ministerial posts. The report recognises this but makes no useful proposal to deal with it. Other recommendations are strangely naive. “A new independent National Statistical and Information Service should be created to provide the public with key information free of political spin.” The Office for National Statistics and the National Audit Office will be wondering what they did wrong.
There is one absolute clanger of a recommendation regarding Lords reform:
To ensure that this part of the legislature is not comprised of career politicians with no experience outside politics , candidates should be at least 40 years of age.
My jaw dropped when I read that. In a document which calls for the age at which people can stand for the Commons to be reduced to 16, this is an extremely odd suggestion. Well meaning, certainly, but woefully misguided (and I can hear James Graham muttering the word “gerontocracy” as I type). Apparently David Cameron is old enough to be considered a potential prime minister but too young to sit in the second chamber.
What message does it send to young – or even youngish – people, telling them they are not suitable for one of the two chambers of the national legislature? It is naive to think that this age limit would rule out career politicians: the previous twenty years could be spent in local politics, in the House of Commons, or in political research jobs. If the public doesn’t want political careerists to be elected (just as if the public doesn’t want 16-year-olds in Parliament), it’s the responsibility of the public not to vote for them. That’s how a democracy works.
Trying to rig the system to fill a legislature with the “right sort of people”, however well-intentioned, is utterly undemocratic. An elected House of Lords is an important step forward. Barring half the population from standing for it would be ludicrous.
I’ve not read any of it, but thanks, Will, for an excellent digest. It’s a bizarre piece of facing both ways even for Labour.
And it’s not even middle-aged people who can stand for the new upper-not-sure-what-to-call-it-place, though, Will. At 34, I’m surely middle-aged, yet still barred 😉
Still, good news for middle-aged chaps like me who’ve been arguing for votes at 16 since we were only a few years past it and once had big fights with party leaders over the issue…
It does seem a bizzare suggestion. I’ve heard arguments in favour of very long terms,barring subsequent election to the commons and term limits as ways of stoping careerists but never a age limit. I suppose they pinched the idea from the US Presidency.
But then again as Jed Bartlett said ” we have term limits. they are called elections.”