Sunward I’ve climbed, and joined the
tumbling mirth of sun-split clouds

Last week, the Localism Bill was passed into law. I was glad to support its passage.  Through 13 years of New Labour, we witnessed continual moves towards centralised planning and micro-managing of our everyday lives. This new law will see central government interference cut and give power back to citizens, community groups and local councils.

To accompany the Act, the Government have helpfully updated the ‘plain English guide’ that was produced to accompany the Bill. You can read it here.

For councils this will mean: 

• Clarification of the rules on predetermination in order to free up councillors to express their opinions on issues of local importance without the fear of legal challenge;
• Abolition of Labour’s discredited Standards Board regime;
• Greater control over business rates.  Councils will have the power to offer local business rate discounts, which could help attract firms, investment and jobs;
• Cancellation of Labour’s unfair ‘ports tax’, which threatened to cripple key businesses, it simplifies the process for claiming small business rate relief to help small shops and small firms; and
• New planning enforcement rules, giving councils the ability to take action against people who deliberately conceal unauthorised development.

For local communities it will grant:

• The Right to Bid to run local services;
• The Right to Challenge by putting forward ideas to help their community;
• The Right to Veto excess council tax rises;
• The opportunity to draw up Neighbourhood plans;

However, there are caveats. I am an advocate of local referenda so I was disappointed to see that the Lords removed the flagship ‘local referendum’ provision from the Bill. That would have allowed voters to launch local referenda on local issues. Referenda do remain for council tax, right-to-build and neighborhood planning, but I know this will be a disappointment to some people in Wycombe.

Neighbourhood plans must, understandably, work inside some limits. If major infrastructure is decided upon at a national level, such as this benighted high-speed rail line, or if a strategic local plan calls for a certain number of homes to be built, then the Localism Act has safeguards to ensure neighbourhood plans do not override these wider ranging policies. Again, this will be a disappointment.

Nevertheless, I hope that the Localism Act will live up to its initial goal of radically decentralising power and fostering an environment where communities will have a greater say in their local area. We will see…

The Times is running two letters under the heading, Should the Upper House be a Senate? (£). The first letter calls for a federal senate with equal representation for each nation of the UK. (Quite why the smaller nations should be disproportionately powerful, I do not know.)  The second calls for a chamber of representatives from “leading professional and other expert bodies such as the Law Society, the British Medical Association, the Institute of Chartered Accountants, the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, and so on.”

In either case, the call is for representatives with special interests, whether regional or professional. This is an old and wrong-headed idea.

Mises’ 1927 book Liberalism: The Classical Tradition deals with this in chapter 4, section 3.  (Ah – recess reading!)  Amongst other things, he writes:

A parliament composed of the supporters of the antiliberal parties of special interests is not capable of carrying on its business and must, in the long run, disappoint everyone. This is what people mean today and have meant for many years now when they speak of the crisis of parliamentarism.

As the solution for this crisis, some demand the abolition of democracy and the parliamentary system and the institution of a dictatorship. We do not propose to discuss once again the objections to dictatorship. This we have already done in sufficient detail.

A second suggestion is directed toward remedying the alleged deficiencies of a general assembly composed of members elected directly by all the citizens, by either supplementing or replacing it altogether with a diet composed of delegates chosen by autonomous corporative bodies or guilds formed by the different branches of trade, industry, and the professions. The members of a general popular assembly, it is said, lack the requisite objectivity and the knowledge of economic affairs. What is needed is not so much a general policy as an economic policy. The representatives of industrial and professional guilds would be able to come to an agreement on questions whose solution either eludes entirely the delegates of constituencies formed on a merely geographical basis or becomes apparent to them only after long delay.

In regard to an assembly composed of delegates representing different occupational associations, the crucial question about which one must be clear is how a vote is to be taken, or, if each member is to have one vote, how many representatives are to be granted to each guild. This is a problem that must be resolved before the diet convenes; but once this question is settled, one can spare oneself the trouble of calling the assembly into session, for the outcome of the voting is thereby already determined. To be sure, it is quite another question whether the distribution of power among the guilds, once established, can be maintained. It will always be–let us not cherish any delusions on this score–unacceptable to the majority of the people. In order to create a parliament acceptable to the majority, there is no need of an assembly divided along occupational lines. Everything will depend on whether the discontent aroused by the policies adopted by the deputies of the guilds is great enough to lead to the violent overthrow of the whole system. In contrast to the democratic system, this one offers no guarantee that a change in policy desired by the overwhelming majority of the population will take place. In saying this, we have said everything that needs to be said against the idea of an assembly constituted on the basis of occupational divisions. For the liberal, any system which does not exclude every violent interruption of peaceful development is, from the very outset, out of the question.

If there was a “crisis of parliamentarism” in 1927, how much more so today.  Our slow abandonment of the classical British doctrine of liberty has indeed created a Parliament which disappoints everyone.  Moreover, we have mostly abandoned policy making by elected representatives in favour of rubber-stamping the work of officials, whether national or international.

What is required is a Parliament which works in the general interest, not one through which particular groups try to advantage themselves by force of law. That means a Parliament committed to the ideals of liberty under the law, which in turn implies a public persuaded that we cannot all live at everyone else’s expense.

However we proceed, special interests will continue to have their opportunities to lobby: they do not need to be elected. It would be crass to make this old error.

This morning, I had one of my regular informal meetings with local senior NHS management. As you would expect, the present top-level political manoeuvring leaves senior NHS staff in a difficult position: how can they plan when policy is again up in the air?

Right now, the NHS is scarcely under democratic control. Whether it should be is another subject but the fact is that health is primarily state provided in the UK. You would expect the state to have a grip.

However, not only is the NHS out of democratic control, it is scarcely under Departmental control either. Before my election, I had cause to meet a number of the most senior Department of Health officials and the overwhelming majority began the conversation with, “This is not NHS HQ.” In then discussing how the NHS is organised, I quickly found that the structures are astonishingly complex and that senior staff get things done through informal channels.

So, here we have the world’s second largest employer, funded by taxation, and not in any meaningful sense answerable to the people who pay for it. Even Tesco answers to the people: we could choose not to shop there.

If that seems far-fetched, so is the notion that the NHS is under meaningful public control. That is what the Government’s reforms were about: getting healthcare under control by pulling the one available lever – structural reform.

And yet here we are: the Lib Dems seem to be threatening to veto changes which are, as John Redwood explained on the Today programme this morning, very much in line with the Lib Dem manifesto. We know why the conversation has taken this turn: their party and their leader just took a pounding. But Clegg signed the health whitepaper. He was fully behind these reforms but now there’s turmoil.

Why should the public or NHS staff tolerate these shenanigans? Health care is too important to be subject to politics like this. Whatever emerges from the present pantomime, reform should shift the balance of power from politicians and unaccountable officials to the public.

Only the public have the capacity and the will to ensure health services meet their needs and expectations. We should take the politics out of health.

N.B. This post comes from my first intern, Yana, whom I asked to reflect on her Parliamentary internship.

Having spent the past few months as an intern in the House of Commons, I would say I have experienced a fair share. Of course there were some good bits, some not so good, but I can definitely say that it has provided me with a great grasp of the ins and outs of Parliament and taught me a few lessons along the way.

Firstly, I would say there is a dramatic difference between what MPs are perceived to be doing and what they are actually doing. Part of me was expecting to come into the office and see them scheming about just how they can spend more of the taxpayer’s hard earned cash…

The reality, however, was far from that. I was taken to the office, 3m x 5m, which consisted of two desks and two filing cabinets. Unfortunately, we weren’t one of the lucky ones to get a window and had to console ourselves with a skylight. Steve spends barely any time in his office, due to his hectic schedule, and anyone who has ever tried to get a meeting with him will understand that it is extremely difficult: he is in meetings morning ‘til night.

In a few short weeks, the office had to help Steve prepare for a Ten Minute Rule Bill; an Adjournment Debate for a constituent; an Education debate in Buckinghamshire; a welfare reform speech; running an All-Party Parliamentary Group; helping to organise the 1922 Sub-committee on Defence, Foreign Affairs and International Development; scrutinising the Freedom Bill in Committee; and serving on the Transport Committee. And that does not even scratch the surface of the all the constituent case work, constituency correspondence, his weekly surgeries in Wycombe and all the local events he attends.

Anyone who thinks MPs are not value for money should read Steve’s recent blog post.

One of the most significant discoveries I have made has been the public’s general political apathy. I can’t help but feel that many have given up on politics because they are somewhat disenchanted with the whole political process.

Instead of genuine participation, what we mostly see is pro-forma national campaign emails, which I am inclined to believe do more harm than good to democracy. To receive dozens upon dozens of letters that all say exactly the same thing is not only monotonous, but also disheartening. This isn’t what the British founders of democracy conceived centuries ago. I know many people are extremely busy and may feel a standard letter from a national campaign is enough. However, a personal letter would express their concern in a much more significant way.

On a lighter note, whilst the obvious highlight of my internship has been passing Zac Goldsmith in the corridor, twice, I would say it was sobering to see all the work that goes on behind the scenes with the countless researchers, case workers, assistants, office managers and interns that dedicate all their time to you, the constituent.

Most of all I enjoyed being part of the political process, which I strongly believe people in this country take for granted especially when we work against the backdrop of the North African crisis.
Steve comments: I’m really grateful to Yana, not just for all her hard work supporting my Parliamentary Assistant, Tim, but for taking time to think about how Parliament and democracy works.

As I complete my first year as an MP, I’ll be reflecting on my own experience and Paul Goodman’s Policy Exchange paper, What do we want our MPs to be? There’s much to do and I am increasingly convinced Hannan and Carswell’s The Plan: Twelve Months to Renew Britain has much to offer, notwithstanding all the elements of it which have appeared in the Coalition programme…

I spent two three-hour sessions in the Protection of Freedoms Bill committee today, preventing me from attending Transport Committee, where Cadence Driver Development gave evidence at my suggestion. Between Bill Committee meetings, I agreed amendments to be tabled and then took back-to-back meetings on Kashmir, banking and economic reform until returning to the committee, where I spoke on the retention of DNA from those arrested, but neither charged nor convicted.

Next, I chaired a dinner with a major bank to discuss reform before finishing the day by voting on the budget, discussing a range of constituent issues with ministers and colleagues in the voting lobbies. My day ran from 09:00 to now, 23:15. This is all quite typical for a Tuesday, and I look forward to making time for my correspondence tomorrow.

And I find the Yes2AV campaign think MPs need to be made to work harder. Hmmm. Differently certainly…