PlanetWestminster

The Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill passed its Second Reading (approval in principle) stage in the Commons late last night.  It will now be considered in detail over 7 days in October.

I hope this will lead to a replacement of our current First Past the Post voting system, with us since 1885 and now so past its sell by date that it produces rotten electoral results.

The “debate” yesterday was all pretty low politics.  Jack Straw, enjoying his swan song at the despatch box, accused the government of “skullduggery” and “gerrymandering”.   The first was a bit silly and the second shows he doesn’t know what the word means! But I was encouraged by the fact that he confirmed that he and the Labour leadership still supported a Yes vote in the Alternative Vote referendum.  I will want to work with like minded Labour members in Bristol and the West of England to achieve this major change.

He was followed by a collective howl from the Jurassic era of politics, led off  by Margaret Beckett, who can see no wrong with first past the post.  Most of the fluster and bluster was about the date of  the referendum and of the scale of the boundary changes.

Apparently quite a few Tory, Labour and SNP MPs think their constituents are incapable of voting in a referendum and council or devolved assembly elections on the same day.  That’s odd. Most MPs are fascinated by American politics.  People there seem to manage to vote for the US President and their state’s Senator and local District’s member of the House of Representatives.  Then there’s the State Governor, a host of state wide offices.  Then there’s the local mayor and council, sheriff, etc.  And finally they have Propositions on a huge variety of issues from property taxes to gay marriage.  Do some of my colleagues think the British are more stupid than the citizens of California or Texas?

The boundaries issue saw quite a lot of spurious special pleading about preserving seats with small electorates.  As a born and bred Valleys boy my favourite was a south Wales MP saying each valley needed its own MP – a situation many of them don’t have now!

But I think the Bill does need to be amended to take account of a limited number geographical and cultural considerations.  Currently the Orkney & Shetland constituency (LD held) and Na h-Eileanan an Iar (the outer Hebrides archipelago held by the SNP) are protected.   I can see a case for adding in special treatment for the Isle of Wight, which should not be joined to Hampshire.   Cornwall can claim to be more than just an English county.

Next week will see the second big constitutional measure – the Fixed Term Parliaments Bill.  This morning my Select Committee took evidence on that from the Clerk to the House of Commons.  The Bill provides for a fixed term of 5 years, removing the right of the Prime Minister to call an election when he chooses.  The exception will be an early dissolution after a two thirds majority vote of all MPs.  Not as simple as it stands – I asked the Clerk whether this was 433 out of 650 or some other figure, given that Sinn Feinn MPs don’t attend, MPs could be ill or may not get into the Lobby in 8 minutes.  More amendments needed I think!

I think people have been missing the point when looking at the Phone Hacking issue.There is quite an important constitutional issue about MPs being bugged by someone privately and information collected. In a sense this has been swallowed up by the fact that the senior manager of the newspaper who was a) In place when this happened, butb) Who resigned because he took responsiblity for it

First day back – Home Office orals (done) and Adjournment Debate after votes at 10pm (still to come).

Two questions came my way: one on wheel clamping and the other on what resources we are putting into enforcing the law against female genital mutilation (fmg).

The first on clamping – as in my blog posts really – just when would it happen and what about the clampers. Given how much I’ve written about this already – there was nothing new that came up.

On seeing the question on female genital mutilation and seeing that it was the same question that Ann Clwyd MP had asked a previous Labour minister some years earlier  - I could tell the supplementary would be about why there had been no prosecutions since her Bill became law in 2003 when she asked it this time. She has campaigned tirelessly on this issue – credit to her.

Whilst prosecutions aren’t the answer to stopping the hideous practice – and fmg will be part of the strategy being formed to end violence against women which will be published in Spring 2011 – I was interested myself in understanding why none had been brought,.

I have no doubt that if a case was referred to the Crown Prosecution Service it would be prosecuted – but none have been referred by the police. Obviously in researching the answers – it came to light that there was an awful lot of work going on. There have been many investigations started – but none have produced the evidence needed to take the case all the way to prosecution.

Why? It would seem a number of reasons inhibit the collections of evidence. Firstly – the victim is usually too young at the time of the act to remember anything and doesn’t necessarily even know that she has been changed. The families do not want to give evidence and the communities that practise this  won’t often help the police as they want to carry on their customs. Also families often say that the child was ‘done’ before coming to this country in a country where it is not illegal.

There was a news item recently about Egypt – where the practise was banned two years ago – but still nine out of ten young girls are mutilated. So here in this country the government is putting its resource into education and public awareness – as only a cultural change will ultimately bring about the necessary change.

The police in the form of Project Azure have made some progress and take the issue very seriously. For those women who are against the practise but feel too weak or unable to sustain the hostility from their families or community – the police help them sign a pledge not to mutilate the daughters and then they use the written and signed document to show their families that the practise is against the law.

At Heathrow Terminal 4 (which fly to those countries where parents take their daughters at the beginning of the summer holidays to be ‘done’ and come back at end of holidays when they are healed) the police have been approaching likely families and explaining the law to them – not just about the law if the practise is carried out here – but also that it is illegal to take them to a country elsewhere to have it done.

Each year since 2003 when the law was introduced the number of investigations by the police have increased – so the trend is in the right direction  – but there is clearly still a very long way to go!

The highlight of the day was a meeting in the afternoon with the Bangladesh Frozen Food Exporters Association. They represent the owners of the shrimp processng factories and is made up almost entirely by shrimp industry. Unsurprisingly they have a very different view of the problems in the factories and the whether workers rights are [...]

Two people working for the most powerful media corporation on the planet are jailed for the illegal hacking of phones belonging to members of the Royal Family, but suspicions remain that more people w...

The events of the last few days have been a real rollercoaster, from the highs of the election campaign and the surge in Lib Dem support during the campaign, to the lows of polling night, through several days of tense negotiations to finally agreeing to a five-year coalition deal last night. I know that to many people the place where we have ended up will seem at the very least suprising, so I thought I would put down my thoughts.

My starting point is that we have to respond to the hand that the electorate deals us. No party got a majority of MPs, and even the most successful party didn't get much more than one third of the votes cast. In that situation, one party trying to run the country on its own was unlikely to be sustainable for the long term. I suspect a Conservative minority administration would have been followed a few months later by another General Election. In that election the Conservative demand for a clear mandate and 'strong government' would almost certainly have resulted in a five year majority Conservative government.

Against that backdrop, the only alternative was some form of co-operation between two parties - something that the Lib Dems have always argued is quite normal in most democracies.

Working with Labour would have raised a number of issues. With Gordon Brown kept in post, many people would have accused us of thwarting the will of the electorate. With Gordon Brown gone we would have ended up with a second successive Prime Minister who had not been elected through a General Election. Furthermore, even Lib + Lab votes would not have been a majority in the Commons and the instability of relying on Nationalist votes would not have given us a stable government.

In the end, it was clear that Labour MPs were not ready for joint working, as many said publicly. In particular, there was no appetite for a move on reform of the electoral system which in our view is the key to unlocking more progressive politics.

This left only one option - a coalition with the Conservatives. We had always said we would negotiate with the largest party first, and the Conservatives proved willing to adopt a large number of Lib Dem policies, including putting through legislation to give a referendum on a preferential voting system, as well as fairer taxes and a greener economy.

Clearly, the jointly agreed programme does not give us everything we want as Lib Dems. But it means that a lot more Liberal Democrat policy and principles will be put into practice in government than any of us could have dreamed just a few weeks ago. Let us hope that we can now demonstrate that different political parties can work together for the good of the country.

Starting with a Bang

The long parliamentary recess has started - weeks without time being spent in the weekly grindingly boring train ride to London and back. Mind you its a hectic pace back at Southport but you can control your agenda better.

Yesterday I found a little time for light exercise the odd game of table tennis and a workout with heavy weights.
I've done the latter all my adult life and it has a slight addictive quality. If you don't do it for a while you actually feel muscle cramps only relieved by putting the old system under pressure.
Constraints of time often mean I forego all the warm ups and warm downs etc. So there I was on Tuesday doing a few front squats in excess of 300lb. I finished, replacing the barbell on the shoulder-high squat stand or so I thought. The stand was not aligned right .It tilted sideways as I released the weight and as the weight crashed to the floor the stand was pulled rapidly down by it pausing on its way to hit the stooping me on the head and catching me on the hand.
If you wanted to dramatise it , it might be compared to being hit on the head by a 20 stone man with an iron bar from a short distance. I thought I'd better take a break. We've had enough by- elections recently
When the family saw me with a lump as though a tennis ball had been buried in my scalp I was advised to pop into A&E. So clutching a plastic bag filled with ice cubes to my temple and bleeding from my finger I was run there and tested by some very nice jolly staff who established so far as we could tell that there was no skull or brain damage.At any rate I could still recall who the Prime Minister and reigning monarch was. I left a wiser man with a determination to avoid photo opportunities for a few days.