BRITISH PRIME minister Gordon Brown has been accused of considering a change to the system for electing Westminster MPs in order to “fix” the outcome of a general election he expects to lose.
The inevitable charge was levelled by Conservative leader David Cameron after Mr Brown’s Commons statement yesterday further detailing his proposals to “clean up” and modernise politics in response to the MPs’ expenses scandal. In his first appearance at the despatch box since surviving the latest bungled plot against his leadership, Mr Brown suggested he was staying on in power “to lift our politics to a higher standard”.
He confirmed plans for legislation prior to the summer recess effecting Westminster reforms already agreed with the other parties – while calling for a debate on possible changes to the voting system allowing for some element of proportionality.
Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg said he welcomed this seeming “deathbed conversion” to the possibility of electoral reform by a man who had “blocked reform for the last 12 years” – but only if changes were actually put in place before the next election. Anything less, he said, would be “a betrayal of the British people” who were demanding “the rotten way we do politics” be changed for good.
Mr Cameron claimed copyright on elements of the prime minister’s package affecting MPs, while dismissing his latest promise of constitutional reform as “a sorry attempt” to distract attention from the crisis surrounding his leadership. Mr Cameron confirmed his opposition to any form of proportional representation for Westminster elections, describing it as “a recipe for weak coalition governments”. The Conservative leader also charged that the best way to restore public confidence in politics following the expenses scandal was through a first-past-the-post system that would enable voters to remove a Labour government he said had brought the country to the brink of bankruptcy. In reference to the growing support among some Labour MPs for the “alternative vote” system, Mr Cameron declared: “It’s not the alternative vote people want right now, they want the chance to vote for an alternative government.”
Mr Cameron pressed Mr Brown to rule out the possibility of a pre-election referendum on voting reform, and was less than satisfied with the prime minister’s reply, twice repeated, that he had “no plans for that”.
Mr Brown also promised to deal with the question of remaining hereditary peers in the context of wider proposals, to be published soon, for “the final stages of House of Lords reform”. The government is already committed to making the Lords a wholly or at least 80 per cent elected chamber. The prime minister also affirmed his personal support for a wholly written constitution, and called for the fullest possible public debate.
The new Bill creating a statutory code of conduct for MPs will introduce a new system of sanctions to be taken against MPs found guilty of misconduct or corruption, “including potentially the options of effective exclusion and recall”. The government is also considering extending the Freedom of Information Act to allow more information and transparency about expenditure by other public bodies, probably including the BBC.