One of the panelists was former Director General of the BBC Greg Dyke and he had some very interesting things to say about reform of parliament. He suggested that there should be some sort of citizen's convention or jury which could take the reform decisions out of the hands of the political classes. However he did describe some of the reforms he would like to see. Amongst them he suggested that:
- Parliament could be physically moved to Birmingham, Manchester or another city well away from London.
- Halve the number of MPs.
- Electoral reform to a proportional system for the House of Commons.
- An elected second chamber.
- Abolition of the whips.
At the end of the meeting I managed to grab a couple of minutes with him and asked him a couple of further questions about his time at the BBC and the likelihood of his reforms being implemented:
Did you miss or deliberately avoid the joke about the current DG interviewing his predecessor?
ReplyDeleteIf you get to collar him again, ask what lessons you could learn from his experience as an aspirant news and media hound... lol
I thought it might have been a sore point so I steered clear of it!
ReplyDeleteYou're soo diplomatic - I'd have tried to sell it to him as an opportunity to get a dig in.
ReplyDeleteGood job fearlessly cornering him though and fitting two good questions and answers in two minutes.