‘Reducing the number of MPs is at best a bit of populist posturing that ignores the practical costs and difficulties of a boundary review and sharing a growing workload between fewer MPs. It will give more power to the executive and the party whips, not save much money if at all, and if combined with cutting costs of registration and allowing constituencies to cross county boundaries will be a recipe for gerrymandering and seats that do not correspond to any sense of local communities.’ – Lewis Baston, director of research at the Electoral Reform Society
‘Cameron is right to criticise the subsidisation of MPs’ tofu and
tipples in parliament – they earn a decent salary and shouldn’t need
cheap food and drink. But as ever with the Tory leader, he ignores the
impact that this change will have on the ground. The vast majority of
people who use the canteens in parliament are in fact lowly paid
parliamentary staff, who will now be even less able to afford to work
for a pittance. We need to pay parliamentary staff on proper rates, not
out of MPs’ allowances, so that they are adequately rewarded for the
important job they do for democracy by enabling MPs to communicate with
their electorates and chase up case work. The last thing we need is for
parliamentary staff roles to be filled by people who are independently
wealthy. Finding ways of opening up our parliament and extending our
democracy is important, but gesture politics such as Cameron’s takes us
further away not closer.’ – Jessica Asato, acting director of Progress
‘Conservative interest in reducing the number of MPs has little to do with lowering the cost of politics and everything to do with partisan interest. But the real issue isn’t the number of MPs but instead the number of ministers, of which there are far too many. The growth in the payroll vote in recent decades, combined with the increase in the number of unpaid Parliamentary Private Secretaries, has compromised Parliament’s ability to effectively hold the executive to account. Indeed reducing the number of MPs without cutting the number of ministers would further weaken the power of parliament vis-a-vis the executive. The cap on the number of ministers – both paid and unpaid – therefore needs lowering. Less ministers would also help the localist cause since the more ministers there are the more the centre likes to meddle.‘ – Guy Lodge, associate director at the ippr
‘In his speech yesterday on cutting the cost of politics David Cameron, when implying Britain’s Electoral Commission was not value for money, made reference to their Indian counterparts, arguing that they only employed twice as many people to oversee sixteen times as many votes at one tenth the budget.
In saying ‘we’ve never had lower turnout and we’ve never had more corruption’ the Tory leader not only misunderstood the responsibilities of the Commission but catastrophically chose the wrong country to compare us with.
Set against the relatively small number of expense-fiddlers in Westminster many of the MPs in Delhi are in a league of their own; 150 of them face criminal charges, 17 have been charged with murder, 19 with attempted murder and three with multiple charges of murder – and that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
Maybe Mr Cameron and his advisers should think carefully about the next bandwagon they jump on.’ – Shamik Das, Left Foot Forward