BBC responds about dropping Jo Swinson from BBC Question Time #bbcqt

A couple of weeks ago, Jo Swinson was dropped from BBC Question Time at 48 hours notice. A number of Lib Dem bloggers were very unhappy about this, indeed Caron Lindsay even started a group on the Lib Dem ACT system to protest about it.

Some people (including myself) contacted the BBC to complain about this decision. It seemed a particularly bad decision given that was the week that Iraq war inquiry started (Lib Dems were the only major party to oppose the war) and it was the second time in four weeks that there had been no Lib Dem on the panel. There were some suggestions that Jo was dropped to make room for the SNP as the show was broadcast from Scotland but the Lib Dems have 12 times as many MPs in Scotland as the Tories and they still had a representative on the panel. Also, there were two non-politicians on the panel. Why could one of them not have been bumped.

Anyway I have not received a response to my complaint yet but Daisy Benson, a Lib Dem councillor from Reading (who blogs here) was one of the other people to complain and she mentioned on Twitter that she has received a response today. Here it is:

Thank you for your e-mail regarding 'Question Time':

We forwarded concerns on this issue to 'Question Time' Executive Editor Gavin Allen who explained that we constantly monitor the balance of the panel and that in light of their national electoral strength, the level of representation for the Liberal Democrats on the programme remains very strong. He added that on this occasion the panel was rearranged to reflect a change in the prominence of some of the issues due to be discussed on the programme and in order to facilitate debate by having representatives willing to question the central political consensus on these issues, of which the Liberal Democrats are a part. He also added that: "It was regrettable - but necessary - that the decision to replace Jo Swinson was taken relatively late, but we have to keep a constant editorial eye out for the best possible panel and this can of course mean last-minute alterations.

To ensure the widest range of political views are heard there are occasions across the series when nationalists or minority parties are invited onto the panel". We'd like to assure you that we've registered your complaint on our audience log.

This is a daily report of audience feedback that's circulated to many BBC staff, including members of the BBC Executive Board, channel controllers and other senior managers. The audience logs are seen as important documents that can help shape decisions about future programming and content. Thanks again for taking the time to contact us. Regards BBC Complaints

The bit I have highlighted in bold seems to be their main justification and yet it seems very vague and generic. Has anyone got any idea what he's talking about? The fact we opposed the Iraq war and a question on that was almost bound to come up strongly rebuffs his point about Lib Dems being "part of the central political consensus".

Anyway, I doubt the people who complained will be satisfied with this but hopefully the complaints will make this sort of thing less likely to happen in the future.

It's also worth noting that when I lodged my complaint with the duty log, the fact that there were two non-politicians on the panel when Jo was being dropped seemed unfair even to the chap who was logging it!

The case against Tom Harris' case for first-past-the-post

Tom Harris, the leading blogger and Labour MP has done a blogpost today which I feel needs a riposte. I know some people think I bang on about electoral reform too much but today I can honestly say a bigger blogging boy made me do it.

I have quoted his main points along with my thoughts below:

...even those of us who aren’t brainy enough to understand the arguments in favour of ditching first-past-the-post (FPTP) have valid reasons for keeping the system the way it is. And yes, one of those reasons is that it benefits the Labour Party – there, I’ve said it.

(”What?!” I hear you say, spitting your muesli onto your laptop screen. “A Labour MP wants a system that will benefit his party? Outrageous!” Yeah, and the LibDems support STV for entirely altruistic and principled reasons…)

I would not use the word "outrageous" but it hardly a good argument for someone to openly favour an electoral system that disproportionately benefits their own party for that reason. It's a bit more than this though because Tom is MP for Glasgow South which is a pretty safe Labour seat and hence he is personally also a strong beneficiary of the current system.

As for his comment about the Lib Dems not supporting STV for entirely altruistic reasons well I can't speak for the party as a whole but I was in favour of a proportional system for the Commons for many years before I joined the Lib Dems. Indeed it was one of the things that attracted me to the party in the first place. I know that there are certainly plenty of other members of the party for whom electoral reform is a point of principle. There are more than a few within Tom's own parliamentary ranks too.

One of the reasons (but not the only one) I support FPTP is that it enforces the two-party system, and that, as far as I’m concerned, is A Good Thing. FPTP forces the parties to make an effort to be as broad a church as possible and to try to include an impressively wide range of political views within them. That means having a degree of collective discipline, which I know is frowned upon these days. But that’s preferable to having a new party formed every time a party member goes in a huff at every policy decision he disagrees with.

Whilst the parties themselves may have a broad range of opinion within them, what FPTP actually does is make the party leadership focus on the 100,000 or so swing voters in marginal constituencies. These floating voters in those seats are not hugely interested in politics and tend to be part of what is often termed "Middle England". Therefore the parties are trying to crowd in on that territory and the needs and concerns of the millions of people who are not floating voters in marginal seats get sidelined. This is why our politics has become so anodyne and speeches by government ministers or opposition spokespeople are almost interchangeable. Then, of course once a "strong" government is elected with a sizable (and disproportionate) majority, then the concerns of these voters can be actioned because of course their votes will be needed again next time round. So the "broad church" is neutered as whipped vote after whipped vote is pushed through to satisfy this tiny minority. The bigger the parliamentary majority, the easier this is to do. For example in 2005, Labour got 55% of the seats on around 35% of the vote.

FPTP is also the best way of electing governments. Yes, of course general elections are about electing 646 constituency representatives, but it’s also about much more than that. Most people, I think would prefer to know exactly who is going to form the government and which manifesto they should hold them to.

Which brings me to the main point: PR (so not AV, usually) would give the smaller, annoying parties a proportionate number of MPs (which is bad enough) but an entirely disproportionate amount of power in the hung parliaments PR is designed to produce. I’ve seen it happen at Holyrood: the parties stand for election on their own manifestos and then, as soon as the electorate have their say, the leaders go behind closed doors, away from the cameras, and thrash out a deal without any reference whatsoever to the public or to the manifestos they’ve just voted on, bargaining away policy after policy in return for ministerial cars. That is not democracy: it’s the precise opposite.

This presupposes that what the electorate want is a manifesto that only just over a third of the country has voted for pushed through completely unopposed. What on earth is wrong with the idea that there may have to be some compromise? The manifestos of the parties are decided behind closed doors and presented to the electorate as a "take it of leave it" option at the moment. With coalition or minority governments, more interests are taken into account in decision making. That is more democratic, not less.

And while PR might well ensure that you can keep a particular party out of government, wouldn’t it be better to argue positively for a particular platform rather than rely on shifty electoral calculations to stymie a particular viewpoint? Had PR been introduced in the ’80s or ’90s, Tony Blair would not have had to argue that Labour should change; he would simply have phoned Paddy Ashdown and asked him how many Cabinet seats he wanted. Job done. And it was dashed inconvenient, afer all, having to ditch Clause IV and actually make an effort to engage with the views and aspirations of ordinary people…

That is just not true. If PR had existed in the 90s, Blair would still have wanted to reform his party. Just because a party is unlikely to achieve a majority of seats does not mean that it does not want to increase its vote. It's just that under PR, it will be able to do this without having to focus on a very narrow section of the electorate.

The Tories won more elections than the Left in the 20th century, not because of the electoral system, but because the public voted for them. They voted for them because they preferred Tory policies and politicians to ours. Democracy sucks, doesn’t t? Maybe if Labour had better policies they might have won more elections, yes?

As to the argument that electoral reform improves engagement and turnout, how much higher is turnout in the European elections now compared with the last time we used FPTP?

I don't know the answer to Tom's question about the European elections but the turnout for those has always been relatively low anyway. The more pertinent question is about turnout for national parliamentary elections and on this subject I saw research back in 2007, presented Steve Fisher of Oxford University which used a comparative study of electoral systems data across a number of different countries to show that changing from FPTP to other, more proportional systems does have a positive effect on turnout. What's even more important though is that the research showed that it is the least politically engaged who are disproportionately less likely to vote under FPTP. The gap between voting levels for the least and most politically engaged closes when we move away from FPTP systems (by 16 percentage points!). This demonstrates to me that a move from FPTP would help with the political engagement of the most marginalised in society, an outcome that I suspect Mr Harris would wholeheartedly approve of.

This whole debate reminds me of a story Tony Blair tells when explaining the evolution of his own particular brand of politics. He says when he was a local activist in London, he joined other party members distributing a local Labour newspaper to the residents of a godawful sink estate with huge levels of crime, unemployment and ant-social behaviour. What was the central message of the newspaper to its readers? “Join CND”.

There will always be "more pressing things" to focus on than the electoral system if such a narrow view is taken. This comment from Tom completely fails to take into account how much better all the other issues that people are concerned about could be represented under a proportional system.

AV would, I grudgingly accept, change precious little, but some of its advocates in my party want it simply as a stepping stone to further reform – a halfway house between FPTP and (shudder) STV. They actually see nothing wrong in spending the next ten years arguing about electoral reform, failing to see that such a debate will do precisely nothing to “engage” the electorate. Rather, the public will see it (rightly) as a vanishingly small political elite self-indulgently discussing the number of angels dancing on pinheads.

I hope some of the points I have made above address Tom's concerns about this being a self-indulgent political elite issue. It is fundamentally about how we are represented.

Also, there is by no means a guarantee that if we were to get PR, that the Lib Dems would always be king-maker and hence permanently in a coalition. This has not happened in either Scotland or Wales. Once people got more used to the fact that their votes really counted we would see all sorts of changes in voting patterns. I suspect that both UKIP and the Greens would get much higher vote shares and hence a decent number of MPs and we could end up with a realignment of politics. The point is it would be the people who decide.

What Tom seems to want to to preserve in aspic our current 2 party system when it is clear what the public wants is a more pluralistic system. I blogged back in July how in 1951, 93% of people voted either Labour or Conservative but how by 2005 this combined total was down to less than 68%.

Our current system is no longer fit for purpose.

Pod Delusion Podcast - Episode 12

This week's Pod Delusion podcast is out and is well worth a listen as usual. I appear as part of an ensemble in the final item....

Contents:

My Gay Straight Wedding (0:37) by Salim Fadhley

50 for 10: Support The Guardian (7:19) by Jon Treadway

Drugs and Steroids (14:40) by Owen Duffy

Simon Singh: The Movie (22:14) by Crispian Jago and the Pod Delusion Players

BBC Question Time Live Chat - 3rd December 2009 - #bbcqt

It's #bbcqt day again and as usual the Live Chat on this blog will start tonight at 10:30pm.

The panel will include the former foreign secretary and Labour MP Margaret Beckett, the shadow health secretary Andrew Lansley, the Liberal Democrats' treasury spokesman Vince Cable MP, the writer Clive Anderson and TV presenter Kirstie Allsopp.

Join us from 10:30pm below.

Sally Bercow is only human like the rest of us

The wife of the Speaker, Sally Bercow has given a fairly candid interview where she talks about some of the things she did when she was younger. Get ready to be completely and utterly shocked:

• Apparently, when she was younger, she used to drink a bit too much. It started when she was a student and continued until her early 30s when she decided it was causing problems for her and she stopped.
• She also, occasionally used to go home with men she had met in bars. That's right! A woman, used to indulge in casual sex. What's worse is that she found it quite exciting and does not appear to be utterly ashamed of her behaviour.
• She has political opinions! I know! A Labour politician, a Labour politician has views about David Cameron and that his party is for the privileged few!

[/SARCASM]

Unsurprisingly Nadine "I block people who disagree with me on Twiter" Dorries has waded in:

We desperately need to restore both authority and respect to Parliament. What this interview has done is remove any painstaking progress Parliament has made and reduced the Speaker and his office to that of a laughing stock. How can we ask the people to trust us, when the man who holds us to account has such poor judgment that he allowed his wife to give such an appalling self obsessed interview?

So apparently the fact that the wife of the Speaker has the temerity to have had a life when she was a bit younger has removed "painstaking progress" from parliament. WTF!? I know Nadine rarely engages brain before mouth but this is complete nonsense. There is a real vein of misogyny running through Dorries' comments here. A man has "allowed" his wife to do an interview. I'm sure in many other contexts the idea of a man trying to shut up a woman would appal her but in this case because she hates John Bercow he and his wife are fair game for comments like this.

Sally Bercow can do what she likes. She does not need permission from her husband. She is an active Labour politician and nothing I have seen from her past is any different to the experiences of millions of people in this country.

I for one am grateful that she feels able to speak out like this and I very much hope it does not affect her political career one iota.

Partisanship

I was corresponding with a member of the Labour Party earlier today who claimed that he could not think of a single Lib Dem stance on anything past or present that he had agreed with. That's right, anything. Ever.

I intend to pursue this with this particular individual further to see if I can find a policy or position we have taken that he actually does agree with. Of course he could just say "no" to all of them no matter what arguments I use so this is potentially an invidious task and I would be relying on him being honest with me and himself.

A wider point on this though is that his position just does not seem credible. I doubt there is any mainstream party (and indeed most fringe parties) with whom I cannot find something they say (or have said in the past) that I support and in some cases many more than one I suspect. For example just off the top of my head I thought Labour bringing in the minimum wage was very good and necessary and the Conservatives privatising the telecoms industry was a great move.

The idea that someone could credibly claim to never have agreed with a single stance of one of the major political parties in this country just strikes me as partisan nonsense and the sort of thing you would get from an unthinking party hack.

Am I being unfair?

AV is the wrong change

Ever since the expenses scandal broke and people started to question whether the safe seats gifted by our rotten electoral system might have had something to do with it, senior politicians have been doing their best to look like they are doing something about it. The thing is, the reforms implemented and planned really do not abolish the safe seats.

The Conservatives have gone for Open Primaries (or more usually caucuses) where they give the opportunity to voters within a constituency to select their candidate. There are numerous problems with this approach. One of the main ones from my perspective is that CCHQ is still in control of the shortlists, so for example in my constituency in Bracknell where an "open" caucus was held back in October, no local candidates were allowed to stand. I know for a fact that there were local Tories who wanted to stand but they were not shortlisted. I suspect this has happened in other seats as well. One of the losing candidates in Bracknell has already been selected for a completely different seat. A number of these candidates are now doing the rounds at all sorts of different open primaries until they get selected. It is the same sort of faces who would previously have put themselves before a selection committee. It gives the veneer of reform when in practise it is nothing of the sort. Allied to this, there is currently no suggestion that a sitting MP would be challenged for their seat so once selected for a safe seat, we are back to the same old situation.

And now Labour are apparently going to legislate for a referendum to change the electoral system to use the Alternative Vote method. Although the referendum could not happen before the next election they hope to legislate in such a way that a successor government would have to specifically legislate to overturn the decision to hold a referendum during the next parliament which would put e.g. a Prime Minister Cameron in an invidious position looking like he was against reform. All very clever-clever politics (and typical Brown tactics) but aside from all the politicking AV is not proportional. In fact it can be less proportional than our current First Past the Post system. Perhaps most importantly though in the context of doing something about the safe seats, it does not get rid of them. There will be almost as many safe seats under AV as there are now.

I should just stress that I am not being partisan here. It is likely that AV would benefit the Lib Dems and we would end up with more seats. However it is the wrong change. Electoral reform to Single Transferable Vote with multi-member constituencies would give a roughly proportional result and completely get rid of the safe seats.

The two main parties are trying to get away with as little change as possible whilst looking like they are reformers.

Tory Bear and Recess Monkey on House of Comments podcast - Episode 6

The latest "House of Comments" podcast with myself and Stuart Sharpe of the Sharpe's Opinion political blog is now live. The website for the podcasts is here and the sixth episode which we recorded on Tuesday 1st Dec is available to download via this page here (raw mp3 file here if you prefer). You can subscribe to the podcast via iTunes here.

The format as usual is to invite one or two other political bloggers each week and discuss a few of the stories that are making waves in the blogosphere.

This week, we were joined by Harry Cole (AKA Tory Bear) and Alex Hilton (AKA Recess Monkey). We discussed the ongoing saga of MPs' expenses, Zac Goldsmith's non-dom status and the impartiality of the Civil Service.

Lib Dems should not ditch the in/out referendum pledge

Ming Campbell has indicated on The Daily Politics today that the Lib Dems may be moving away from their pledge on an in/out referendum for the EU. If this is true then I think this is a mistake.

I have been a bit back and forth on the Lib Dem's approach to the Lisbon treaty. I tried to sum up my views in a blogpost early last month:

I think that the EU hugely over complicates these treaties and makes it difficult for non-technocrats to understand them. I certainly haven't the time or inclination to wade through it. I don't really understand why they can't keep it simple. Something like the US constitution is clear, concise and simple enough to be understood by schoolchildren - indeed it is taught to them in schools. Does anyone seriously think that say the Maastricht Treaty or Lisbon could be taught in a similar way?

Unfortunately, that is not how these things are done in Europe (perhaps more learned people than me could explain why in the comments) so because it is so complicated, it was not a good idea to pledge a referendum. How many people would read and fully understand it before voting? That is where parliament should earn its money by debating the treaty and voting on it.

However the Lib Dems and Labour did pledge a referendum and because I think parties should honour their pledges, we should not have gone back on this. I know both parties had their arguments: "It's no longer a constitution" in the case of Labour, "The real question is in or out" in the case of the Lib Dems but to most people it seems like a reneging on pre-election promises. I find it very hard to argue against that.

Now that we have done though, I actually think our current policy is more sensible than our original one. The ongoing saga of Europe needs to be settled. The last referendum was 35 years ago and on a completely different question.

I genuinely think that a referendum on in/out would be close and may go "out". I would not want to see this outcome but I am a democrat and we need to allow the public to make up their minds on this in order to settle this issue at least for the next political generation.

So my conclusion was that I would not have got to where are via the same route but that an in/out referendum was the correct policy. It is genuinely brave for a pro-EU as there is a real risk of losing but it is also principled and won or lost would settle the question which has dogged our politics for many years.

I also think it is a vote winner. Both the Conservatives and Labour are not offering anything like it as they both fear the consequences of an "out" vote. Having it as one of our policies makes it easier for people who may like some or lots of our other policies but may not agree with our pro-EU approach to vote for us as they know they would ultimately be given the choice by us anyway.

So the idea that we now might be ditching this policy seems odd to me. Even more odd is Ming's comment that there is "no public appetite" for a vote. That really does not seem to tally with the views of a decent chunk of the electorate in polls that I have seen. There may be little appetite amongst our political classes but that is a very different thing.

I very much hope that Ming was just flying a flag and that we keep this policy.

Lib Dem tax proposals - £10,000 could be a winner

I have written a piece this morning for Left Foot Forward which summarises the Lib Dem tax plans that were announced yesterday and also initial reaction from within the Lib Dems and outside.

One thing I didn't say in the piece is that putting aside the arguments of how it is paid for, I think the £10,000 starting threshold for income tax will turn out to be very popular as it is a concept that people can easily grasp and is clearly designed to benefit the least well off in the working population. I would not be at all surprised if this idea was "borrowed" in some form by Labour and perhaps even the Tories between now and the election...

Mark Reckons - November 2009 STATPORN

In November I had 11,084 Pageviews from 9,272 Visits and a total of 6,426 Absolute Unique Visitors.

My top 5 blog posts were:

1) What is Nadine Dorries on?

2) Fiscal Responsibility Bill is a landmine for the Tories

3) The Sun smears Professor David Nutt's family

4) Sir Jeremy Bagge: "Women, Know Your Limits!"

5) Five years for handing in a gun to the police?

Top 5 referring sites were:

1) Twitter.com

2) Iain Dale's Diary

3) Lib Dem Blogs

4) Order-Order.com

5) Lib Dem Voice

2,582 visits came from search engines and the top 5 search terms were:

1) mark reckons (233)

2) sir jeremy bagge (162)

3) elizabeth truss (118)

4) dr les king (72)

5) jeremy bagge (56)

What is Nadine Dorries on?

Nadine Dorries, the controversial MP for Mid-Bedfordshire has been tweeting again. Yesterday she decided to try and tackle an issue that I have covered many times on here, drugs policy. Here were her first couple of tweets:

So she was trying to rebut Norman Lamb's comments about alcohol being more dangerous than some currently illegal drugs (the same point that Professor Nutt made backed up with evidence before he was sacked recently) by saying that she has never seen booze being sold at a school gate unlike presumably illegal drugs. Firstly, just because she has never seen it does not mean it does not happen. Indeed Jason Lower was quickly able to find this news story about older children selling alcohol to younger children at the school gate from the Daily Mail a few years back and tweeted it back to Nadine. No response. Secondly, there was no engagement from Nadine in response to the many tweets that people sent back to her asking how much this problem of drugs being sold to youngsters was exacerbated by the fact that the drugs are illegal.

She then went on to make the preposterous point:

At this point I could stands no more and I tweeted back:

Her implication that it is only illegal drugs that cause problems and wind people up in prison is off in cloud cuckoo-land somewhere. Maybe the same place where nuclear weapons are not weapons of mass destruction.

j_alcoholfree pretty quickly dealt with her claim via this tweet:

The link is to a BBC report from 2007 which reports the findings of an Alcohol Concern survey of prisoners.

Nadine continued:

All things caused by the illegality of drugs, not the drugs themselves. Nadine should perhaps study American history between 1919 and 1933 to find out what happened over there when alcohol was made illegal. She would find that all the pernicious effects that occur due to drug prohibition in the UK at the moment happened there as a direct result of that policy.

She then moved onto her thoughts about what to do:

I'm also not sure how an increase in methadone scripts proves that abstinence rehab works. All that proves is more scripts are being given out. However I would just draw her attention to the fact that in 1970 there were 2,000 heroin addicts. Now there are over 200,000 under the current drugs laws. Also, the figure she quotes is how much it has cost over 10 years, not one year. Despite many people tweeting this to her she has not corrected this figure.

So it looks like Nads' solution to the failing "War on Drugs" is to fight the war harder and send out a strong message to all users. In other words rather than accept that this is a "war" that can never be won she wants to spend even more money trying to fight it and "sending out a message". Er, but hang on a minute, isn't that what governments of both stripes have been trying for 40 years? Brace yourselves for more of the same from a potential Tory government...

Her comment about rehabilitation orders is about the only good thing she says. I am not sure about them being compulsory though. After all, an addict will only get clean when he or she is ready so Nadine's talk of compulsion could easily be throwing good money after bad.

As El_Cuevro tweeted, HM Prison Service says that 33% of female prisoners are in for drug offences. Nadine's figure of 100% can only be because she must have visited a drug offenders institution. So I am not sure what point she is trying to make other than to imply that all offenders are in for drugs offences which is blatantly untrue.

All in all this was a dispiriting Twitter session for me and I suspect everyone else who tried to engage with her. She did tweet a couple of responses to people towards the end but the ignorance of one of our members of parliament on this issue made me want to weep.

For someone who so clearly wants to keep drugs illegal she seems to be in very real danger of making the opposite argument. I would suggest that she researches this issue more carefully before wading into the public arena with ill-founded statements like these.

Barbara Ellen's double standards

I read this article in the Guardian yesterday with a deep sense of unease. Barbara Ellen is essentially arguing that Madeleine Martin, the 39 year old RE-teacher who was recently jailed for 32 months for having an affair with a 15 year old male pupil should not be treated the same as a male teacher would be in similar circumstances.

Barbara's argument seems to be that boys at 15 are "up for it" and having sex with a 39 year old woman for them would be seen as a conquest whereas for a 15 year old girl to have sex with a 39 year old man would be very damaging for them.

This seems to me dismissive of the harm that cam be caused to boys in this sort of situation. just because they might be "up for it" does not mean that they would not be emotionally damaged by having an affair like this.

Anyway, I was going to do a longer post but the comments below the article do a pretty comprehensive job of pulling apart Ms Ellen's arguments so I will instead direct you to them.

Why Iain Dale is wrong about Zac Goldsmith

Numerous bloggers (including plenty of Lib Dems) have commented on the story in the Sunday Times today that Tory Richmond Park PPC Zac Goldsmith is a non-dom and currently avoids UK income tax.

Iain Dale has had a crack at a defence of Mr Goldsmith. In a blogpost entitled "Tofftastic" he says:

There was lots of sanctimonious guff on Twitter from assorted lefties last night about the Sunday Times story that Zak Goldsmith is a 'non dom'. They even tried to suggest that he should resign as a candidate or David Cameron should sack him. Er, on what grounds exactly? What law has he broken? Yup, that's right, none. His tax status is a matter between him and the tax authorities. If they are satisfied with it, it's rather difficult to see why Kerry McCarthy (for it is she) shouldn't be. In any case, Goldsmith has decided to withdraw from 'non dom' status before the election so that's rather spiked the guns of those who seek to do him down.

I'm afraid that that is just not good enough. Whilst Mr Goldsmith has indeed not broken any laws, what Iain is ignoring is how important it is that politicians are affected by the same rules that govern ordinary people. This was one of the big issues that the expenses scandal threw up that MPs were not subject to the same sort of scrutiny regarding expenses as the rest of us and Iain knows very well just how well the defence of "it was within the rules" went down there. If Mr Goldsmith has not been subject to the same tax laws as the vast majority of UK citizens then surely he has put himself in a similar category at least in the eyes of the average taxpayer.

Iain's claim that Zac's decision to withdraw from non-dom status before the election has "spiked the guns" of those who are questioning this cuts no ice with me. Reverting to domestic status at the last minute just before an election where to do otherwise would be politically suicidal does not spike anyone's guns.

I met Zac at an event we were both speaking at a couple of months ago which I blogged about here. He is a very charismatic and charming man and he has some very good, strongly held views about the environment. I liked him on a personal level and I could not really find much that he said politically that I disagreed with either. Indeed I think the Parliamentary Conservative Party would be a much better place if they had lots more MPs like him. However this revelation is immensely damaging to his campaign. It has nothing to do with the "Toff" tag as Iain is trying to imply with the title of his post and everything to do with a sense of fair play.

As Paul Walter mentioned in his blogpost on this, Mr Goldsmith's own website points out that "Zac grew up in Richmond and went to school in Richmond. He has lived in Richmond most of his life." I think many in Richmond will struggle to reconcile that statement with his tax status. You can't credibly play the local card if you don't pay tax in this country.

I think Susan Kramer's chances of retaining her seats for the Lib Dems in Richmond Park just got a lot better.

Why do Boots stock homeopathic "remedies"?

It has long been a source of confusion to me that Boots stock homeopathic "remedies". There is no evidence that homeopathy has any effect beyond placebo and it has been tested many, many times.

On the always excellent Pod Delusion podcast this week (declaration of interest, I sometimes contribute to it myself) Andy Wilson of the Merseyside Skeptics Society read out in full an open letter that the society has drafted directed to Alliance Boots. The letter makes a strong argument for why in their view Boots really should not be stocking homeopathic products.

I have reproduced the letter in full here but their site is well worth a visit for the blog and podcast sections.

An Open Letter to Alliance Boots

The Boots brand is synonymous with health care in the United Kingdom. Your website speaks proudly about your role as a health care provider and your commitment to deliver exceptional patient care. For many people, you are their first resource for medical advice; and their chosen dispensary for prescription and non-prescription medicines. The British public trusts Boots.

However, in evidence given recently to the Commons Science and Technology Committee, you admitted that you do not believe homeopathy to be efficacious. Despite this, homeopathic products are offered for sale in Boots pharmacies – many of them bearing the trusted Boots brand.

Not only is this two-hundred-year-old pseudo-therapy implausible, it is scientifically absurd. The purported mechanisms of action fly in the face of our understanding of chemistry, physics, pharmacology and physiology. As you are aware, the best and most rigorous scientific research concludes that homeopathy offers no therapeutic effect beyond placebo, but you continue to sell these products regardless because “customers believe they work”. Is this the standard you set for yourselves?

The majority of people do not have the time or inclination to check whether the scientific literature supports the claims of efficacy made by products such as homeopathy. We trust brands such as Boots to check the facts for us, to provide sound medical advice that is in our interest and supply only those products with a demonstrable medical benefit.

We don’t expect to find products on the shelf at our local pharmacy which do not work.

Not only are these products ineffective, they can also be dangerous. Patients may delay seeking proper medical assistance because they believe homeopathy can treat their condition. Until recently, the Boots website even went so far as to tell patients that “after taking a homeopathic medicine your symptoms may become slightly worse,” and that this is “a sign that the body’s natural energies have started to counteract the illness”. Advice such as this directly encourages patients to wait before seeking real medical attention, even when their condition deteriorates.

We call upon Boots to withdraw all homeopathic products from your shelves. You should not be involved in the sale of ineffective products, because your customers trust you to do what is right for their health. Surely you agree that your commitment to excellent patient care is better served by supplying only those products whose claims can be substantiated by rigorous scientific research? Or do you really believe that Boots should be in the business of selling placebos to the sick and the injured?

The support lent by Boots to this quack therapy contributes directly to its acceptance as a valid medical treatment by the British public, acceptance it does not warrant and support it does not deserve. Please do the right thing, and remove this bogus therapy from your shelves.

Yours sincerely,

Merseyside Skeptics Society

53% of people can name their MP

The BCS (The Chartered Institute for IT) has published some research today as part of their "Savvy Citizens" campaign which aims to help people get more from Information Technology.

They conducted a survey which asks various questions. The one that they clearly think is the most headline grabbing is the fact that:

Shockingly, just 53% of Britons can name their MP

Of course I wish it were higher but is that really so shocking? We know that the turnout at the last general election was only just over 60% and that in each seat usually less than 50% of those actually voted for the MP. We also know how few people take an active interest in party politics. Viewed in that way it could actually be seen as encouraging that more than half of UK citizens can name their MP.

There is some other interesting information in the survey:

• 83% want information about government and public services to be more freely available
• 48% have visited their local council’s website
• 31% have signed an on-line petition
• Only 5% are members of on-line discussion boards

As an IT professional myself it is encouraging to see the BCS taking an interest in these sort of stats relating to politics and people's engagement with it through IT.

BBC Question Time Live Chat - 26th November 2009 - #bbcqt

It's #bbcqt day again and as usual the Live Chat on this blog will start tonight at 10:30pm.

For the second time in four weeks the panel will not include a Lib Dem. This has caused someconsternation in the Lib Dem blogosphere, especially as Jo Swinson was dropped at 48 hours notice and in the week that the Iraq Inquiry has started (of course the Lib Dems were the only one of the three largest parties to oppose the war). Caron has commented on it and Liberal Revolution had a couple of posts (here and here) as well.

The panel will however include the Labour peer Lord Falconer, the former shadow home secretary David Davis, the Deputy First Minister of Scotland Nicola Sturgeon, the columnist Melanie Phillips and the comedian Marcus Brigstocke.

Join us from 10:30pm below.

House of Comments podcast - Episode 5

The latest "House of Comments" podcast with myself and Stuart Sharpe of the Sharpe's Opinion political blog is now live. The website for the podcasts is here and the fifth episode which we recorded on Tuesday 24th Nov is available to download via this page here (raw mp3 file here if you prefer). You can subscribe to the podcast via iTunes here.

The format as usual is to invite one or two other political bloggers each week and discuss a few of the stories that are making waves in the blogosphere.

This week, we were joined by Charlotte Gore, and Constantly Furious. We discussed hung parliaments, cyberlockers, sawn-off shotguns and blog regulation.

Lord Digby Jones wants to legalise drugs

It always amazes me how sensible the views of government ministers can be once they leave office.

Lord Digby Jones who until a year ago was Minister of State for Trade is a good example. After leaving the government he was quoted as saying that his time as a junior minister was "one of the most dehumanising and depersonalising experiences" anyone could have. Perhaps his comments last night on Newsnight reveal part of why this might have been as it is clear that Lord Jones favours legalisation of drugs which as we know is anathema to our current government.

Lord Jones was asked as part of the "Politics Pen" segment for ways to reduce spending and/or raise more taxes. He could have chosen anything. Here is what he said:

It’s a time for desperate measures because we are in desperate times. I would legalise prostitution. I would regulate it and out of it I would produce billions of pounds of revenue. I could also appoint a working party to look at a form of legalisation, regulation, clinically clean up and taxation of drugs, in a form. (My emphasis)

He also suggested a flat tax as his final point.

OK, so he hedged it a little bit with appointing a working party (although this sort of approach is sensible and probably necessary to ensure it was done in the best way) and used the words "in a form" or "at a form" twice (old obfuscatory habits clearly die hard) but there is no mistaking what he is saying. There is no fundamental reason in his view why drugs cannot be legalised. It would just come down to the details of how exactly this was done. Good on him for speaking out like this.

So the next time a government minister tries to paint the idea of legalisation and regulation of drugs as a far out, wacky idea on the margins, just remember that the eminently sensible and mainstream Lord Jones (former DG of the CBI and Knight of the Realm) was until recently a member of the government and he doesn't think so.

Then ask yourself how many more in our government actually agree with him but cannot speak out because of the straitjacket of collective responsibility.

What will David Cameron do about Andy Coulson now?

I was going to do a more detailed post on the Andy Coulson/bullying case but Anthony Painter has pretty much said what I was going to here.

All I would add to what Anthony has said is that tribunals don't usually give out £800,000 for nothing and David Cameron needs to think very carefully about the message that his potential action (or inaction) about Mr Coulson regarding this could send out.

Mark Reckons is one year old

Yesterday, this blog passed a milestone. It is now a year since I did my first blogpost as a Lib Dem on here. It was about the BNP leaked membership list by the way and was entitled "BNP List - My Thoughts" and according to my analytics, 4 people read it.

I'm happy to say that the readership has picked up a bit since then and I am very grateful to the more than 40,000 people who have visited this blog in its first year reading over 80,000 pages. The idea that I would get so many people visiting and reading my posts would have seemed improbable to me a year ago and I would also like to thank everyone who has linked to me, tweeted links to me etc. in the last year.

My top 5 posts out of the almost 600 that I have done since I started are:

1. MPs Expenses and safe seats correlation - update / Has our electoral system contributed to the MPs expenses scandal? (I've lumped these two together as they were on the same subject. These posts were what started getting me widespread attention from the blogosphere and some in the mainstream media)
2. I attended Andrew MacKay's meeting and I think his position is now untenable
3. "Commentariat vs Bloggertariat" event review - #eiblogger
4. Fascinating research into public perception of the drugs issue
5. Daniel Hannan's opponents are using playground tactics

Cheers!

(Hattip to Aquafornia for the picture. That was their actual first birthday cake for their blog last year! I might buy one later if I get the chance...).

John Redwood's high handed arrogance

Following yesterday's poll which suggested the Conservatives might only have a 6% lead over Labour, there is a lot of talk about hung parliaments.

John Redwood has blogged about this today. He starts his post with some very sensible comments about this showing that the Conservatives cannot take victory for granted and emphasising the size of the task that faces them.

However towards the end of his piece he demonstrates the sort of arrogance that I sometimes see from members of the parties (Conservatives and Labour) that benefit hugely from our rotten First Past the Post system. He had already mentioned that UKIP and the Greens were on 3% each in the poll. He then says:

What these polls also show is that UKIP and the Greens are unlikely to win any seats. Their prospective voters can back their chosen cause, or they can vote for either Labour or the Conservatives to help choose the government. If they do the former they will have to accept whatever others decide to do.

Now I like reading John Redwood's blog. He is a very thoughtful and thought provoking commentator. I don't always agree with what he says of course but he is very capable of making compelling arguments and is very well informed on numerous issues including the economy. These comments I have quoted from him however are arrogant and beneath him. There is no attempt to address the underlying unfairness that the fact that a party may get 3% of the vote and 0% of the seats, just an attempt to get these supporters to vote for one of the two main parties. That approach is completely disenfranchising and the worst sort of "vote for the least worst option of the two main parties rather than who you actually agree with" tactics.

In the European elections a few months ago, UKIP got 16.5% of the votes and came second both in terms of vote share and number of seats. This is the sort of thing that happens when there is a system that allows a fairer share of seats allocated for the votes. One of the main reason that many of the voters who vote for UKIP in the European elections do not at national elections is because they know they cannot win! The First Past the Post system has such a high barrier to entry that even a party which has demonstrated very strong breadth and depth of support at national level, coming second in a national election cannot get a single seat in a Westminster election. And John Redwood thinks that all this tells us is that people should vote for either Labour or the Conservatives. Not that our electoral system is utterly broken.

If people want to vote for UKIP or the Greens at the next election they should damn well vote for them and ignore the overtures of people like Mr Redwood.

Why we should not be afraid of a hung parliament

With the latest Ipsos MORI poll for The Observer showing a reduced Conservative lead to only 6% (Con 37%, Labour 31%, LD 17%) talk of a potential hung parliament has reared its head again.

Indeed if these figures are put into the UK Polling Report swing calculator then we get the following:


So, the Conservatives would be only 2 seats ahead of Labour as the largest party but 38 seats short of an overall majority.

Before I continue I will just caveat that this is the narrowest lead for the Tories for almost a year and it could turn out to be a blip or an outlier. It is possible that Labour got a fillip from its recent by-election victory and that the polling numbers will return to within the range of the more typical recent trend in the next week or two (i.e. over a 10% gap).

However, for the purposes of the rest of this blogpost I want to discuss the practicalities of a hung parliament and what that might mean for the Lib Dems, seeing as various other bloggers, pundits and commentators are speculating on this today following this poll.

I have seen comment along the lines of "Lib Dems have most to fear from a hung parliament". Indeed Andrew Rawnsley writing in the Observer today on this subject says:

The prospect induces a jostle of emotions: a rare sensation of hope for Labour people, a creeping dread within Tories and a combination of both thrill and terror among Lib Dems.

Later in the same article he says:

For the Liberal Democrats, a hung parliament is usually seen as a dream scenario which would elevate Nick Clegg from also-ran to kingmaker with the power to choose the government with a twitch of his thumb. It would not work out like that. A hung parliament could as easily be a total nightmare for the Lib Dems. Imagine that the Conservatives have the most seats. Even if the Tories were interested in a coalition with the Lib Dems, the Conservatives are implacably opposed to electoral reform, the sine qua non if Mr Clegg were to try to sell a Lib-Con pact to his party. It is most likely that David Cameron would form a minority government, produce a Queen's Speech and a first budget, probably one full of cuts suggested by Vince Cable, and then dare the Lib Dems to defy the will of the electorate and look "irresponsible" by voting it down. This approach to governing without a majority has worked well for Alex Salmond's SNP government in Edinburgh. Cameron would likely try to copy Harold Wilson. He governed for a short period after 1964, when Labour got a very small majority, and after February 1974, when Labour did not have a majority at all, and then went for a second election to seek a stronger position.

I'm afraid I don't buy this "nightmare scenario" for the Lib Dems. A hung parliament is the sort of scenario that the Lib Dems been waiting for for years. It would finally give us a chance to wield some real power and exert our influence on policy and politics in a way that had been denied to us previously.

Let's have a quick rattle through the scenarios and see how they could all result in a "win" for us. I am going to assume for the purposes of this that the votes and seats are as outlined above.

1) In this scenario the combination of the Lib Dems with either of the two main parties would produce a workable majority. This would be the point of maximum leverage as we could negotiate with both Labour and the Conservatives. For me and I suspect many of my party colleagues the sticking point would be a commitment to a referendum on electoral reform. Labour may go for this, (although I am sure Brown would have to go as Rawnsley suggests elsewhere in his article as a pre-condition) although I accept that propping up a Labour administration would be very fraught. However if this was the price of getting the holy grail of a referendum on electoral reform then it may be that my party considered it worthwhile.

2) Another option is to go with trying to forge a coalition with the Conservatives. It may be very difficult to get them to accept the price of a referendum on electoral reform as part of the deal given their implacable opposition to this. However it is not impossible. The referendum could be proposed with the agreement that the different parties could campaign for or against it. Just declaring a referendum need not imply that they wish for the change to be implemented. It would simply be giving the people the option and allowing the debate to take place. Even this might be too much for the Conservatives of course but it is at least an option that could be explored.

3) If neither of the above scenarios come to pass then the other option is for the largest party (in this case the Conservatives) to form a minority government. In this situation they would require the support of at least another 38 MPs each time they wanted to pass a bill so the Lib Dems would be well placed to provide this voting block and would likely have their views taken into account as part of the legislative drafting process. The idea that Cameron could try to corner the Lib Dems as Rawnsley suggests above I do not think is likely to work. It would be perfectly reasonable for us to support the things we agree with and oppose those we do not. If that meant voting down a Queen's Speech (if we were forced into that position) then so be it.

I think scenario 3 is most likely and I do just want to finally explore a potential unintended consequence of it that I have not seen discussed anywhere else.

If Cameron was to form a minority government and then have to use all his political and diplomatic skills to try and govern like this by convincing enough non-Conservative MPs each time he wanted to pass a piece of legislation then he could find he begins to undermine his own case against electoral reform. One of the major arguments against a proportional system is that "First Past the Post" produces "strong government", i.e. big majorities which seem to be seen by default as a good thing. However in this situation, not only will FPTP have thrown up a hung parliament (proving that even FPTP does not always prevent this as its proponents often imply) but its primary cheerleaders, the Conservatives will find themselves having to disprove their own case in order to be a successful government. If they are successful in doing this then one of their key planks against a more proportional system is kicked out from under them, by themselves.

Any of thse scenarios would also of course give the Lib Dems the chance to show what we are capable of when we are in a position to wield some real power and influence on the executive either from inside or outside the government. It would be up to us to seize this opportunity and prove to the electorate that we can do a good job in this position and hence that it is worth voting for us. That is an opportunity to relish, not be afraid of.

I think we can derive significant "wins" from any of the situations described. All it would take is the will to do so.

Professor David Nutt's account of events regarding #NuttSack

Correspondence has been released between various protagonists in the saga of the sacking three weeks ago of Professor David Nutt from his position as chair of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs.

One of the letters is from Professor Nutt to the Science and Technology Select Committee outlining the sequence of events from his perspective. As Evan Harris has already made clear in a very detailed blogpost here the sequence of events and the behaviour of Professor Nutt was in accordance with the rules and regulations he was working under. You can read Professor Nutt's letter for yourself here to see what you think of his comments on this.

Two things struck me about the letter. The first is in one of the things that Jacqui Smith said to him when she called him to discuss the "esctasy and horses" comments he had made:

9th Feb 2009 – I received a phone call from the Home Sec in my out patient clinic, criticising the ‘equasy’ paper and stating that her office had received multiple complaints about the article from parents whose children had been harmed by ecstasy. She claimed it was not logical to compare the harms of an illegal drug with those of a legal activity. I explained that for a drug to be controlled under the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 there had to be some threshold of harms exceeded so it seemed reasonable to explore what this threshold might be by examining other harmful activities. She did not accept the value of this approach and demanded that I apologised to the parents. I explained that I had not intended to offend anyone and was simply trying to put some balance into the drug harms debate. However, under the pressure of a phone call from the Home Secretary in the middle of my clinical working time, I apologised, through her, to any families that were upset by the article. She also asked if I was a “legaliser” and I replied that I was not and had repeatedly made statements to this effect in public.

This last comment seems almost sinister to me. Is it illegitimate for scientists, having looked through all the evidence to conclude that drugs should be legalised (and regulated)? It is far from an uncommon conclusion for people to draw once they have studied this subject for a while.

It actually seems almost McCarthy-like for this question to be asked. The implication seems to be that is he was a "legaliser" then there would be no way that he could advise the government. If the government is so sure of its case, surely they should welcome robust debate with people who may wish to challenge them? Not that this is what Professor Nutt was doing of course, he was simply presenting the evidence as we know.

The other thing that leapt out at me is the last thing that Professor Nutt says in his letter:

Relevant aspects of the code of practice defining my roles are

representing the ACMD to the public or the media as arranged by the secretariat

and

acting in the public interest

sharing in the general responsibility to consider the wider context in which their

expertise is employed;

acting with a presumption of openness

I my view my actions in relation to the Eve Saville lecture and the subsequent

reactions of the media and the government have been fully within this remit. Indeed

one could take the view, as I have, that many of them are required by it.

I also refer you to the Seven principles of public life one of which is:

Openness

Holders of public office should be as open as possible about all the decisions and

actions that they take. They should give reasons for their decisions and restrict

information only when the wider public interest clearly demands.

Professor Nutt is right here. He did what was expected of him given his responsibilities. In my view drawing the committee's attention to the "Openness" principle is spot on. He followed that principle exactly.

The problem of course is that despite all the words the government spews out about wanting to be "open", when it comes to drugs policy they are not interested. They just want to close down the debate for fear of the tabloid headlines that could come their way if they are seen to do anything that goes against being seen to be "tough on drugs". So this is a situation where their supposed principles clash with what they actually wanted to do, i.e. ignore the evidence but not be straight with the public about why they are doing so because it would show up their lack of an evidence based approach and also their political cowardice.

I'm on this week's "Pod Delusion" podcast again

I'm on this week's "Pod Delusion" podcast again which describes itself as being about "interesting things":

From scepticism to lefty liberal things, it's commentary from a secular, rationalist, 'Guardianista', sort of perspective. A bit like From Our Own Correspondent but with more jokes.

This week you can hear me discuss the way the media handle numbers and statistics related to politics and economics.

BBC Question Time Live Chat - 19th November 2009 - #bbcqt

It's #bbcqt day again and as usual the Live Chat on this blog will start tonight at 10:30pm.

The panel will include the Immigration Minister Phil Woolas MP, the shadow home secretary Chris Grayling (Alan Johnson's mini-me), the Liberal Democrat MP and former leader Sir Menzies Campbell, the broadcaster Nick Ferrari (Richard Littlejohn's mini-me) and the Independent MP and former thorn in Tony Blair's side Clare Short.

And for anyone wondering where I disappeared to half way through last week's chat, sorry abut that but I had a dog/carrot emergency to attend to! Luckily, Dazmando was hosting it anyway.

Join us from 10:30pm below.

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.

Fiscal Responsibility Bill is a landmine for the Tories

The more I think about it, the more I am coming to the conclusion that the Fiscal Responsibility Bill that was outlined in Labour's Queen's Speech yesterday is actually a landmine set to go off under a potential future Tory government. The bill will say that the deficit must be halved in the next four years, by law.

Yesterday I was saying it seemed bizarre that the government would feel the need to try and put a legislative lock on itself like this and that it would appear to be more to do with sending a signal to the markets because Labour knows that it cannot be trusted and has moved the goalposts before.

However I think there is more to it than that. Brown is nothing if not a political calculation machine. Ask yourself why the timeframe is 4 years. That would coincide roughly with when a first term Conservative government (were they to win the next election) would be getting into gear for a general election. If there is a law in place that forces them to have halved the deficit within 4 years then it will be difficult for them to get around this. I suspect they would want to try and do this anyway but Brown is trying to bind the hands of a successor parliament by passing this law and forcing this timeframe upon them. It would be politically very difficult for Cameron to rescind the law if he became PM. With the law in place, a Labour opposition would then be able to attack a Tory government for cutting spending and raising taxes, even though they would have had to do exactly the same. The political capital they probably reckon they could make out of this could be considerable even if the Tories were to hit the target in that scenario. If they don't hit it the Labour could use that against them too insisting that they would have done "look, we even legislated for it - of course we would have done it" - I can hear Labour spokespeople now.

In my view there is no more eloquent statement that Labour think they will lose the next election than this bill.

Brown's ministers looked silly yesterday trying to defend it. It does not serve any real purpose other than as a political landmine for a future government. This is Brown at his worst. Calculating, scheming, using legislation as a trap for his political opponents. He has learnt nothing from his failed previous attempts to do things like this (e.g. 10p tax rate abolition).

Although I suspect some of yesterday's bills will not make it onto the statute books you can bet your bottom dollar that the Fiscal Responsibility Bill 2010 definitely will.

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.