House of Comments - 100th Episode Extravaganza!

Episode 100 of the House of Comments podcast "100th Episode Extravaganza" is out. This week Mark is joined by Emma and Nick as well as former House of Comments co-host from way back Stuart Sharpe and our first ever guest from back in 2009, LBC presenter Iain Dale to celebrate our 100th episode. Topics discussed this week are the Harriet Harman and Jack Dromey NCCL/PIE story, Labour's special conference (which Emma spoke at) and the move to One Member One Vote and also whether the Conservatives and Labour would be wise to rule out potential coalition in 2015 as a manifesto commitment.

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Should politicians have a sell-by date?

I was listening to Radio 4 a few weeks back (I think it might have been Front Row) and heard Harriet Harman being interviewed about her new role as shadow for the Culture, Media and Sport brief.

Dearie, dearie me.

She was given ample opportunity to show her more human side. Indeed the brief surely requires that the holder is able to show how they have enjoyed culture and hence inject a bit more of the personal? No chance from Harman. She came across like an "I speak your policy" robot. The only thing I can really recall her saying was about how vital the performing arts and film etc. are to the economy. When something like this is reduced to such technocratic terms it makes me want to weep.

But the more I have reflected on it, the more I am thinking that this sort of thing is inevitable. Harman has been an MP since 1982 when she was 32 years old. She is now 61 so that is almost half of her life and the vast majority of her adult life. In other words cutting edge television when she entered parliament was Game For A Laugh.

I know the pressure that is on MPs and the hours that they have to work so to expect an MP of nearly 30 years standing, with the last decade near the top of government, to be in touch with popular culture is unrealistic.

It further occurs to me that maybe this is part of the problem. I imagine if Chuka Umunna or Rachel Reeves for example had had that role they would have come across in a much more human way. Because they have lived a relatively normal life until recently where they would have had the time and inclination to keep in touch with popular culture.

So should there be a shelf-life for politicians? Should we say after maybe 20 or 25 years, thanks very much for your service but you cannot serve any longer than that an an MP (or in a reformed upper chamber)?

Harriet's boundary objections are objectionable

At PMQs today Harriet Harman asked about the government's plans for redrawing the constituency boundaries to even up the sizes. She particularly focused on the fact that there are lots of people (3.5 million according to her figures) who are not registered and implied that the redrawing of the boundaries would not be valid unless this was resolved. The crux of her point is here taken from Hansard:

The danger is that if the Prime Minister presses on in the way he has indicated, he will be making the system less fair, not more fair. As he said, the Deputy Prime Minister acknowledged to the House this week that there is a problem with the register. The Electoral Commission study found not just the number of people who are not on the register, but who they are: a third of all black people, half of all young people, and half of all private sector tenants are not on the register, despite the work that has been undertaken by electoral registration officers. Those people will not be counted if the Prime Minister redraws constituency boundaries now. He says he wants equal constituencies, but does he accept that he cannot have equal constituencies based on an unequal register?

Paul Walter has already suggested that this is an attempt to throw the political equivalent of a "police stinger" in front of voting reform.

The first point to make in response to Harman's question is the one that David Cameron did which is to point out that Labour had 13 years to sort this out if they consider it to be so vital. A related point is that the constituency boundaries were redrawn near the start of the last decade when presumably the imbalance was as bad as it is now, perhaps even worse. It didn't stop them then and nor should it have.

But perhaps a more fundamental objection to this approach is that if we were to accept Harman's principle that there should be no redrawing of boundaries until voter registration figures improve, what criteria would be used to determine success? A 5% improvement in each of the categories she states. 10%? Parity with the average? Parity with the highest rates of registration? Who would decide? What other minorities are also disadvantaged that would also have to be considered? How long does she think that will take to achieve? And what would happen in the meantime? Would we keep the existing (in some cases already woefully outdated) boundaries?

Don't get me wrong, I think Cameron's plans to redraw the boundaries are largely designed to improve things for the Tories and if I was Prime Minister there would be other reforms I would put before this one. However it is not easy to argue against the idea that the sizes should be more even in principle and they have conceded a referendum on AV as part of the coalition agreement which shows they are willing to compromise.

What we cannot have are spurious arguments that held no water when Labour were in power being used to scupper any change at all which would effectively be the result if we were to follow Harman's logic to its conclusion.

Oh and in case anyone is in any doubt of course I think we should do our best to improve voter registration. It just cannot be used as a way of holding all other reforms to ransom.

Cameron's first PMQs as PM - Review

I thought David Cameron did pretty well at PMQs today. The whole affair began in a fairly understated way largely due to the deaths this morning in Cumbria.

Harman asked some difficult questions about anonymity for rape suspects and deliberately chose a good wedge issue between Tories and Lib Dems on married tax allowance. Cameron handled all of this OK though in my view.

In fact (whisper it) but he seemed very statesmanlike at the dispatch box. Someone commenting on my live chat mentioned that he seemed to be following some pretty specific body language routine to appear so. That's probably the public school education coming through!

What most impressed me though was his willingness to actually try to answer the questions. Where Gordon Brown would have just reeled off a list of tractor statistics and then insulted his questioner I got the feeling that Cameron was trying to engage properly. He was a bit evasive in some places but if we are to be fair PMs cannot know the answer to everything. Cameron himself made this point when he said he would write to a member about an answer to which there was some heckling. His response then was that at least he was trying to give correct answers rather than making them up on the spot. This would be fair enough except that when Brown use to try that Cameron used to accuse him of dithering! Some level of hypocrisy would seem to be par for the course even in the "new politics".

The overall level of jeering and heckling seemed less than normal (although not totally absent). This can probably be partly ascribed to the fact that the Lib Dems (whose leaders always used to get way more than their fair share) are now in government. It is probably also due to the sheer number of new MPs who are still finding their feet. However it is welcome and I hope it continues and maybe even improves further.

An impressive outing for the new Prime Minister. It will be interesting to see if this sort of standard can be maintained as he it battered by events in the coming months and years.

Taxation without representation

Harriet Harman stood in for Gordon Brown during PMQs today. There was one point where she decided to turn a question from Vince Cable about tax evasion into a jibe against the Tories' non-dom problems regarding tax and Michael Ashcroft. Here is what she said (taken from Hansard):

We have been determined to take measures to stop tax avoidance, and we think it important that an example be set not only in this House, but in the House of Lords. According to an old saying, there should be no taxation without representation. What about no representation without taxation? We will introduce legislation to ensure that people are domiciled, resident and ordinarily resident in order to sit in this House or in the House of Lords.

Now I don't disagree with her point here (although she made it at the expense of avoiding answering Vince Cable's question) but she needs to be very careful how she makes this point. Let's just examine part of what she said again:

According to an old saying, there should be no taxation without representation.

She then goes on to talk about the House of Lords. That would be the unelected House of Lords. The one that Labour have had nearly 13 years now to reform and make elected. The House of Lords that in spite of some loosely observed conventions still often legislates on and amends legislation relating to finance and taxation. So in other words an example of taxation without representation in a chamber just across from the Commons where Harriet was standing that is her government's responsibility.

Perhaps Ms Harman should try to use a different form of words next time she wants to attack the opposition for fear of drawing attention to her own government's manifest failings.

Mobile phones and cars

I was not particularly surprised to read earlier today that the number of people using hand-held mobile phones in cars is now higher than it was two years ago before the new legal penalties for doing this came into effect.

I always thought the way that this law was configured was odd. It is illegal to use a hand-held mobile phone whilst driving. It is however legal to use one as long as you have a hands-free kit. However there is no evidence that using a hands-free kit is any safer than using a hand-held phone. It's the fact that you are making the call at all that is the distraction.

So the first problem with the law is that it seems a bit arbitrary.

Secondly, the type of hands-free kit that you can use is quite specific. I have an iPhone which comes with a pair of headphones with a control on them that allows me to take calls, speak into the control (which is hanging on the wire just by my mouth when I have the earphones in) and I can hear the call through the earphones. To all intents and purposes it is a hands-free kit. However because it is in physical contact with the phone, if I use this whilst driving then I am technically in contravention of the law. If I had some sort of bluetooth or other wireless earpiece then this would be OK though. However that, or other "proper" hands-free kits are more expensive and may involve cumbersome installation as well for the car. The headphones I referred to came with my iPhone for free.

So the second problem with the law is that it appears for no good reason designed to make money for the manufacturers and vendors of the specific, more expensive hands-free kits.

I think it is these two factors that bring the law into disrepute and have brought us to this situation. Like numerous laws brought in by this government it was ill thought through and there are at least two factors that allow the perception of it being arbitrary and/or unfair.

Perhaps this is why people like the Leader of the House of Commons and Deputy Leader of the Labour Party Harriet Harman felt free to disregard it.

Poppy fascism?

Mike Ion has written a piece on LabourList today where he takes Jon Snow to task for his comments about "poppy fascism". Snow said:

I am begged to wear an Aids ribbon, a breast cancer ribbon, a Marie Curie flower...You name it, from the Red Cross to the RNIB, they send me stuff to wear to raise awareness, and I don't. And in those terms, and those terms alone, I do not and will not wear a poppy. Additionally there is a rather unpleasant breed of poppy fascism out there - 'he damned well must wear a poppy!' Well I do, in my private life, but I am not going to wear it or any other symbol on air.

Mike says he is a big fan of Jon's but thinks he is wrong on this:

What is wrong with wearing a "symbol" on air? Why not make an exception? Jon's logic appears to be: "I can't publicly promote all of the causes that I am asked to support so I will not support any of them." This is a bit like arguing that because I can't give to all of the charities that ask for my help I won't give to any charity.

The poppy is the symbol of remembrance. We do not diminish anyone by wearing it, least of all the veterans. Diminishing the debt we owe our predecessors would be accomplished by resigning ourselves to the notion that we cannot comprehend what happened. We undermine the notion of Remembrance Day by lack of reflection, not flippantly wearing, or not wearing, a poppy.

I am afraid that I do not agree with the final line of the above paragraph. We do not undermine the notion of Remembrance Day by not wearing a poppy. The wearing or not wearing of one is individual choice and there may be many reasons why people choose not to. It doesn't mean they are not respectful of the sacrifice our soldiers have made. As it happens, me and my wife always buy poppies around this time of year and wear them. We will also be attending a Remembrance Day service on Sunday. However I fully respect other people's right to decide for themselves what they want to wear and I do not judge them if they choose not to.

The problem is that what ends up happening is that people are then criticised for not wearing a poppy and pressure is put on them to do so. I saw a little snapshot of this happen during PMQs last week. I was live tweeting it and started to notice a few tweets saying things like "Harriet Harman is not wearing a poppy" and "Where is Jack Straw's poppy?". This annoyed me and I did a couple of tweets questioning this sort of "poppy tyranny" as I described it. Harman and Straw may well have had reasons for not wearing one. It was still a couple of weeks before Remembrance Day for example. Perhaps they had just forgotten. Perhaps it was on their other jacket. I don't know and frankly it is none of my business.

Everybody should be left to make their own decisions about this.

John Prescott skewers Harriet Harman

Oh dear! All is not well in Labour ranks.

John Prescott has taken Harriet Harman to task on his blog about her rather bizarre comments that men "cannot be left to run things on their own" coupled with a call for the Labour party rules to be changed so that a woman always occupies one of the top two leadership positions.

Here are a few snippets:

I know you don't choose the headlines. But you did choose the words in the interview.

You said: "I don't agree with all male leaderships. Men cannot be left to run things on their own. I think it's thoroughly bad to have a men-only leadership."

Quotes like this just raise leadership issues once again just at a time when we should all be pullng together and defending our record.

KAZZAM!

Why take away from the party the right to choose its leaders on the basis of ability? You can't dictate equality in leadership elections. You must let the party decide.

I was beaten fair and square in the 1992 deputy leadership election by Margaret Beckett.

You yourself beat four men to become deputy leader in 2007.

In theory you were elected on merit, not your gender. The system works and I think we should keep it that way.

"In theory"!? Ouch! SPLAT!

You had a great opportunity today to use the Sunday Times and the Andrew Marr show as platforms to campaign, sell back our successes and spell out Labour's

forward agenda.

This is crucial, now more than ever, after a disasterous June election campaign you were supposed to be running and with a poll today saying we're 24% behind the Tories in the key marginals that you're supposed to be in charge of campaigning in.

KERPLOW!

I suspect that JP is just saying what many in the Labour party must be thinking.

Harman's latest comments are a distraction from the real issues and I suspect many of her senior colleagues will agree with Prescott's analysis, even if collective cabinet responsibility prevents them from directly criticising her.

BBC Question Time Live Chat - 2nd July 2009 - #bbcqt

It's BBC Question Time day again and the Live Chat on this blog will start at 10:30pm.

The panel will include Deputy Leader of the Labour Party and Leader of the House of Commons Harriet Harman MP, the former leader of the Conservative party Iain Duncan Smith MP, the Liberal Democrat MP David Laws, the musician and songwriter Jarvis Cocker, and the journalist and columnist Peter Hitchens.

You can also follow people's comments on Twitter via the #bbcqt hashtag (you can also follow me here on Twitter by the way).

Liberal Democrat Voice also always have an open thread for BBC Question Time which is usually posted just before the start of the programme.

Last week's chat was a bit unusual because the news about Michael Jackson started breaking during the broadcast so it was hard for us to maintain the focus on what was being said. Hopefully there will be nothing like that happening this week.

The chat starts from 10:30pm this evening. All are welcome.

Could Harriet Harman follow in Lady T's footsteps?

Just been idly browsing the Labour Party Rule Book (as you do). With the political situation as it is and many talking about Gordon Brown as if his time is almost up my thoughts have turned to what might happen if he does stand down.

Gordon Brown is an extremely proud man and I suspect if he stands down he could not bear the indignity of continuing to serve whilst his colleagues campaign to succeed him. Therefore I expect that he will cease to be PM immediately. If this does happen then the question becomes what happens next. Clause 4B.2e of the Labour Party Rule Book states:

Procedure in a vacancy

(i) When the party is in government and the party leader is prime minister and the party leader, for whatever reason, becomes permanently unavailable, the cabinet shall, in consultation with the NEC, appoint one of its members to serve as party leader until a ballot under these rules can be carried out.

Now it is not guaranteed but surely the obvious choice would be Harriet Harman. She is the only member of the cabinet with any sort of Labour Party derived democratic legitimacy for the role having been elected deputy leader in 2007. If this was to happen then as I understand it she would become Prime Minister, albeit only for a few weeks and thus be our second female PM following in the footsteps of Margaret Thatcher.

One thing that might scupper this is if she wanted to go for the job herself. In which case I expect the NEC would not allow her to fulfill the role she was campaigning to become permanent as it would give her an unfair advantage.

We could be in for some interesting times in the next few weeks....

Vince Cable - our not so secret weapon

Watching Newsnight yesterday where they interviewed a panel of voters in Watford about the MP's expenses scandal it was telling to me how the questions seemed to focus on Brown and Cameron. Clegg wasn't even mentioned but Brown and Cameron were both prompted for by the questioner.

In fact the only reference to the Lib Dems came as an aside from the questioner "What about the Lib Dems" and there seemed to be murmurs of approval but the audience really got animated when one of the mentioned Vince Cable. He was described as "always talking sense" and several people were quick to sing his praises. One person said he was exactly the sort of MP that they want to see and one voter who clearly had never supported the Lib Dems before said she was wavering because of Vince. It's so good to hear that he is appreciated beyond our own party like this!

It was also interesting to hear Harriet Harman afterwards try to claim that voters generally in Watford think Claire Ward (the local Labour MP) is a good MP. That's not what Sara Bedford (one of her constituents) thinks and a number of the comments on her blog post agree with her.

I don't care who is leaking this stuff - MPs must change

Guido is spot on with his post today about how the focus of anger of many MPs is on whoever is leaking embarrassing information about MPs expenses to the media.

This is exactly what I thought too when I heard last night that the Labour Party is trying to spin relevations that are coming out as politically motivated and being leaked by a Tory mole.

Frankly, I couldn't give a flying toss who is leaking this information and what their motivations are. I actually shouted at the TV last night (I try and stop myself but sometimes can't help it!) that this is utterly irrelevant. If the information is available in the first place then it is because MPs have been playing the system, even if it is within the rules it is clear that public opinion is massively against them and they have to face this and change their practises.

I was actually thinking about this the other day. When Harriet Harman was being questioned about Shred's pension she said that although his contract may be enforceable by law, it is not enforceable in the "court of public opinion" and hence the government would "step in". I wonder whether she takes a similar view about Jacqui Smith trousering over £100K by claiming that a room in her sister's house is her main residence whilst she has a huge house in Redditch where her husband and children live. It is clear that is also not enforceable in the "court of public opinion. Is she now going to "step in"?

It is a shame nobody asked her this at PMQs last week.

PMQs - how much Q&A is there?

Something I have noticed before about PMQs and it was apparent again today is that a fair proportion of the time is spent not asking or answering questions but in paying tributes or other statements of this nature.

Now, I need to tread carefully here as what I am about to say could easily be misinterpreted. I think it is absolutely right that the House of Commons pays tribute to fallen soldiers. I think they do it well and with heartfelt dignity and it is the least our servicemen deserve. However, the tradition that has become apparent recently of announcing the tributes at the start of PMQs and for the two main leaders to respond with their own tributes has the effect of reducing the amount of time available for questions and answers within the allotted 30 minutes. Perhaps the time for the session should be extended to 35 or 40 minutes to allow the tributes to be paid but for it not to impinge on the 30 minutes for questions.

The much more debateable thing that I have noticed is encapsulated in the following exchange from today's PMQs copied from Hansard:

Q5. [260228] Mr. Andy Reed (Loughborough) (Lab/Co-op): Last week, we laid the first bricks in the £4 million extension to Rainbows children’s hospice, which is in my constituency but serves the whole east midlands. We still need another £1 million, plus £2.5 million each year to keep the hospice running. When are the Government finally going to act to ensure that children’s hospices do not rely for 95 per cent. of their funding on local residents and fundraisers, and finally get them to the level of adult hospices, for which about 40 per cent. of the funding comes from the public purse?

Ms Harman: I would like to take the opportunity to pay tribute to all those in the NHS, both in hospital care and in the community, who help with palliative and end-of-life services, but I would also like to pay a very big tribute to the hospice movement, the voluntary movement that has spearheaded new ways to care for people at the end of their lives. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health has made that a priority, investing £30 million extra for palliative and end-of-life care and announcing additional support for all hospices and hospice home services for children up to the age of five. There is a great deal of progress under way, and it is very important indeed.

Can you spot what happened here? A very important question was asked about children's hospices and the funding for them which predominantly comes from charitable donations. Harman had a stab at answering the question in the end (a bit disingenuously I thought as I have no idea if the 30 million makes any difference in the context of the question) but the first half was taken up with a load of waffle about "paying tribute" to hospices. Now, again I need to tread carefully here. I am not saying that hospices do not deserve tribute being paid to them. However I see this sort of thing happen so often that I feel like it is sometimes being used as a way of burning up the available time so that there are less questions allowed to be asked. It also helps to divert attention from the original question which deserved a direct answer.

Nobody in the country would disagree with the sentiment Harman expressed and therefore it is not necessary for the answer. It is basically platitudinous waffle to pad out the answer. If the government wants to show its commitment to children's hospices it should answer the question properly and act upon it to ensure the scandalous 95% charity figure comes down substantially.

Gordon Brown is on record as claiming that there is no need for a televised debate between the leaders in the run up to a general election because that's what PMQs is for. However, the questions are often not answered (unless they are a plant from their own side and then it is just a way of scoring political points) and there is a lot of sometimes unnecessary padding.

I know that today PMQs went on beyond 12:30 (I suspect because Mr Speaker recognised that some time had been lost) which is a good thing but that does not often happen and as it is the only time of the week that our representatives get to hold the Prime Minister to account directly, I think more thought should be put into how the structure can be adapted to work as it needs to.

Am I becoming one of them?

Watching The Daily Politics earlier today and their coverage of PMQs where the deputies stood in, I thought that Harriet Harman did quite well and managed to skewer Hague a couple of times with well chosen political points (apparently he has taken £30,000 from RBS for public speaking recently and also used some of his own words about deregulation when he was Tory leader against him). Sure, she was a bit stumbly but no worse than many I have seen at the despatch box and even Hague stumbled over his words a couple of times.

But during the discussion afterwards, most of the public who had contacted the show thought she had done really badly and that Hague had won hands down. The consensus among the pundits was that she had done quite well and certainly done her incipient leadership bid now harm. Andrew Neil questioned if that is the Westminster bubble insiders view and people outside see things very differently.

Does this mean I am now thinking as if I am inside the Westminster bubble!?