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Accountability of MP's

Posted by MandolinKing on Tuesday, 20 February 2007 19:39:55

"MP's are too remote from the people they represent." That was a comment I heard the other day and I have to agree.

A vital part of any MP's accountability has to be publicly accessible surgeries in their constituencies where people of all political persuasions can meet their elected representative face to face to ask questions and raise issues. It also has the benefit for the MP of getting contact with opinions outside their local party inner circle.

My own MP has a poor track record when it comes to public surgeries. In fact, I have heard it said they do not happen for "security reasons".

Locking people out of being able to talk to their elected representatives is anti-democratic.

  • Shouldn't all MP's, as a condition of holding office, hold at least a monthly, publicly accessible surgery in their consitituency?
  • How many publicly accessible surgeries have you held for your constituents in the past 12 months?

I asked at the House of Commons for a copy of the contract MP's have, when taking up their positions. I was amazed to be told there is no contract as they are holders of Public Office, not employees.

The other duty of MP's is to take part in votes and debates in the House. A quick scan of theyworkforyou.com, together with the public whip show some MP's voting record struggles to make a double figure percentage. BBC Parliament also shows many speeches being made to empty benches. It would appear that most are failing to represent the people they are supposed to serve.

  • What attendance percent do you feel is acceptable during both debates and votes?

So Mr Cameron, how are we the people to hold our MP's to account between general elections?

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Posted by DaveGould on Wednesday, 21 February 2007 14:32:18

90% of MPs have an astonishing devotion to the party. You're going to need something pretty severe to counter that.

Forget surgeries. We'd need big townhall style open meetings to *embarrass* MPs into doing what their constituents want.

It would help if the public bothered to compare candidates rather than parties. But that might be expecting a bit much. Better to switch to STV so that parties have to field more than one candidate in a constituency.

Another idea - yearly referendums on MPs. Effectively it would work like this:
All local parties who have an incumbent MP have to field 2 other candidates once a year. If the another candidate wins, they become MP.

This ensures continuity of Govt (generally a good thing) but much more accountability of MPs.
Yes this is biased towards independent MPs. And that's a good thing too.