Please note that the post below was published more than ten year ago on 21st November 2009 Nick Herbert MP, shadow cabinet member for the Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs, was in Cumbria this morning to see the areas affected by the flooding. He writes on Conservative Home about his visit. Here is an extract. I’ve been in Cumbria today to see the areas affected by the floods. I arrived early in Keswick where I met officials from the Environment Agency. Although the river levels had fallen considerably and homes were no longer flooded, the damage to homes had been done. And the water which had got into houses wasn’t just from the river – it was foul water which had risen from the drains. I talked to fire crews who were pumping flood water back into the river, and discovered that they were from Tyne & Wear and Lancashire. They had been called in at an hours’ notice and had been working on the scene ever since, staying at a local hotel. You cannot fail to be impressed by the
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No party should be able to dictate the way an MP votes. You see people elect an MP to represent them in the house of commons, That is what the MP is supposed to do! For example, when people in copeland are up in arms because the majority of them do not want to sign up to the Lisbon treaty then the MP for copeland is supposed to vote NO in the HOC. not vote yes because the party wants him to. Its ok for an MP to have a mind of their own, but remember said MP only gets 1 vote this may be added to the will of the people of their constituency, and in some very tight polls it may make a difference, but even when things are not going the way the MP would like, they should still vote to represent their constituents. THAT IS SUPPOSED TO BE THEIR JOB!
Also its important to introduce an effective method of re-call. Thus once an MP is not doing THEIR JOB, then the employer (that being the constituents) have the power to sack him/her and elect someone who will do it
There is sometimes tension between the two, and I don't think there is or should be any absolute rule about how you resolve that.
Nor is it wrong to recognise working with other like-minded MPs as being in the national interest. If there was no co-operation between like-minded parliamentarians - what has become known as a party system - you's have one motion and dozens of amendments and they'd all get voted down.
And voting for what you believe is right for your constituents does not always mean voting for what will be popular with them. Edmund Burke made a speech to the electors of Bristol - his employers as their MP - two hundred years ago in which he argued that a representative owes his electors his judgement, not just to do what was popular with them. It is still very relevant today.
I also agree that some form of recall system is needed. It was in the coalition agreement. I hpoe something workable will be agreed and implemented, provided that the threshold to trigger it is organised in a way that ensures it is only used when the ordinary constituents have genuine reason to be upset and not as a means of allowing the opposing political party to try to over-turn the result of the last election.
"I agree that an MP's first duty is to vote for what his or her conscience believes to be in the best interests of his constituents and his country."
No, it is an MP's duty to vote the way the majority of his/her constituents tell them to. To be honest I do not really care what an MP thinks is in my best interest, I will the MP what is in my best interest. If enough people disagree and I am outvoted, then that's fine, I can live with that. Its not for am MP to tell me what is in my best interest and then force me to do so under threat of prison.
And voting for what you believe is right for your constituents does not always mean voting for what will be popular with them.
Well I guess you could go down the same road as Mr Barroso and Mr Schultz and complain a lot about my "extreme populist" ideas. Alternatively you could do like I prefer and replace the term "extreme Populism" with its true word that being Democracy.
There are people who believe that MPs, or councillors, or other elected people should do exactly as they're told. There are others who think they should do what they think is right, but be willing to be held accountable.
When we had this debate when I was a student we used to call it the debate about whether MPs should be representatives or delegates.
For either view of democracy to work you have to be honest upfront about what you are going to do and after the event about what you did. And believing that MPs should be representatives rather than delegates doesn't mean that ignoring the wishes of the public is a good thing. So this is a 45 degrees difference rather than a 180 degree diametrically opposed difference.
Before deciding which of these approaches is more democratic, it is worth thinking about some of the bodies which use each approach:
Group 1: Examples of "democractic" bodies whose members are delegates who have to do what they are told by the people who elect them:
* The UN Security Council and General Assembly
* The EU Council of Ministers
* Labour party conference
* The TUC General Assumbly
* The National Union of Students conference
Group 2: exmples of bodies whose members are representatives and have some degree of autonomy over how they vote, though still accountable to the people who elect them:
* The UK Parliament
* US Congress
* The parliaments of most other commonwealth countries
I rest my case.
Not bad going, and I do appreciate at least you are willing to debate things.
Group 1 should read : the government of Switzerland. After all that is the only democratic country on Earth.
Group 2: well insert them here, there are enough to choose from
Also its worth pointing out the difference between the UK government and the US congress is supposed to be that the US has a written constitution, that is supposed to keep the congress in check. Over time the constitution has became more and more ignored you can see this with unconstitutional acts like the Federal reserve, Leaving the gold standard, Obama care, and now the talk of overriding the 2nd amendment.
It just shows that the constitution route does not work, Its just ignored when its convenient and instead you only end up with our problem that is "selected dictatorship"
You must see this Chris, you must.
The last government left us in total dire straights, they did not ask us if they could spend the money the way they did, they just did it. Who is on the hook for the bill? that's right us. Why and for what? what do we have now we did not have before all that money was "spent"?
Now if the people in their collective form agree to spending the money on something stupid, that is ok, after all it would be the people in their collective form that are on the hook to pay the bill.
And if you really rested your case on your last comment, then I am sorry but you don't have much of a case do you.
You must see a conflict of interest there, and whilst i can acknowledge perhaps you may want to think "oh dear the populist is right" and stay quiet. Its still no excuse for any party to go on and tell me how to live my life, and whats best for me.
To me Switzerland is the exception that proves the rule. Most of the countries or organisations which work on a "delegate" or "mandate" view of democracy end up by suppressing opinions which they would be well advised to listen to.
I don't know if you were ever a delegate - and I do mean delegate -to a National Union of Students conference, but I was: I attended six of the things in my time as a student and it put me off that model of "democracy" for life.
With regard to the question of who represents the electors of Witney or Tatton against the government, I fully accept that this is an issue with our system, and yes, it can be seen as a conflict of interest. So I've accepted three of your points in one day.
There are two factors which limit the extent to which this is a problem in practice.
1) There are both legal and practical limits to the number of MPs who can be ministers - the legal limit was imposed for precisely this reason, the practical limit is that the more people there are in a government the harder it is to run - and as long as there are many more backbench MPs than ministers they have the capability to form a check on the government. If they have the guts to do so. Sometimes I regret to say, there have been supine parliaments which were not robust enough in doing so, and the answer to that is in the hands of the electorate.
2) Even the most senior MP or minister who gest too far out of line with his constituency can be voted out of office by them: it's rare but not entirely unknown.
The only instance of a sitting PM in one part of a parliament losing his own seat in the folloowing General Election is Arthur Balfour in 1906, but there are rather more cases of cabinet ministers losing their seats at the following election - Michael Portillo, Shirley Williams, and Jacqui Smith being were three of the more memorable examples.
There is no such thing as a perfect system and I certainly would not claim that either ours or the US system is perfect. There are things we could do to improve and I agree that a recall system would be one of them.