Brown's ignorance shows why we need Commons reform

Watching the debate in the House of Commons yesterday about the Queen's Speech I found my jaw dropping at the rudeness of Gordon Brown. Watch this clip where David Cameron is trying to get Brown to respond to the question of why there was nothing about MPs' expenses in the Queen's Speech:

Twice Cameron offers to give way so that Brown can clarify the position and twice he declines. My problem however is not so much with him declining (although that does show that Cameron had him on the rack in my view) - it is in the way that he declined. He spent virtually the entire time Cameron was raising this issue talking to Harriet Harman. He seemed to be doing his best to be as rude as possible to Cameron by treating his point with such disdain that he made out he wasn't even listening.

I have blogged before about how I think the behaviour of MPs with all the heckling and jeering etc. needs to be much improved and the above sort of rudeness is exactly the sort of thing that needs to be stamped out (indeed it was one of my submissions to the POWER2010 campaign). The Speaker should insist on better behaviour with proper sanctions for MPs who transgress from the chamber. It would probably only have to happen a few times before the embarrassment it caused would ensure all MPs got the message. I am not trying to make a party political point here. The bad behaviour is endemic within the chamber and I have seen examples in the past from all sides.

Can you imagine attending a business meeting where this sort of thing happened? Imagine if you stood up to give a speech at a business conference and had to do so whilst enduring hecking, barracking and rude comments from those you were speaking to.

Coincidentally, Lynne Featherstone has done a blogpost today where she is talking about how the Commons would be better if it was more representative in terms of women and other currently under-represented groups and she has made a similar point to me in that post:

Certainly there are aspects of the way our political system works which typically appeal more to men or are more off-putting to women, but those are not aspects that are engraved in stone and always have to be that way. Take the bear-pit performances (and I use that word kindly - embarrassing shambles might often be more appropriate) of the PM / Leader of the Opposition exchanges at Prime Minister's Questions, with massed ranks of people sat behind each and shouting at each other. That sort of behaviour would be completely unacceptable in a work place - imagine running a meeting at work where people behaved like that. And there's no essential need for PMQs to be like that - look around at how other walks of life and other countries manage to have question times that are meaningful and dignified.

Lynne is spot on. It doesn't have to be like this and it needs to change.

Queen's Speech - where's the beef?

As I expected, the Queen's Speech was a bit of a damp squib. There are various measures in there that are worthy in so far as they go but many of them will not see the light of day on the statute books as there is just not enough time.

The most astonishing measure for me is the "Fiscal Responsibility Bill" which will put into law the promise to halve the defecit within a set timeframe. I have just been listening to John Healey, government minister on Radio 5 Live try to defend this measure and he did not do a good job. The question was repeatedly asked, why do the government need to bring in a law to make sure they do what they have already promised to do? Mr Healey did not have a good answer. It strikes me that the government are using legislation as a way to try to send out "messages" to the markets that they will be responsible. If they have to use the Queen's Speech to do this then it speaks very ill of their reputation. They are basically saying that they understand they might not be trusted and they have regularly moved the goalposts in the past so they are going to put a legislative lock on themselves. It is not clear what the penalty would be if they were to fail to halve the defecit and hence at the moment it is not worth the paper it is written on.

Another measure that made me raise my eyebrows is the one that "gives" parents the right to demand certain standards from their schools. The thing is, as Mr Healey talked through what the mechanism for that would be it became more and more clear that the mechanisms already exist for parents to appeal to various authorities to get the required standards including the Head, the Governors, the LEA etc. As far as I can tell this measure does nothing. It just seems to be a way of looking like they are doing something.

The big omission from all of this of course are substantial plans to deal with the reform of parliament in the wake of the expenses scandal. Callers and commenters to the Radio 5 Live show I was listening to were incredulous that in the Queen's Speech directly following the parliamentary session which has had the worst crisis in confidence for MPs in living memory there was nothing to address this in the Queen's Speech and I expect that feeling will be widespread. This shows just how out of touch this government has become that they didn't even consider it necessary to tackle any aspect of the rotten system in its final legislative programme before the election.