Conservative Party Democracy Task Force

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Our View The fact that the Conservative Party have chosen to engage with the need for democratic renewal is a very welcome development and greatly increases the likelihood of achieving change.Many of these proposals, such as reforming the Royal Prerogative and increasing the powers of select committees are issues that Unlock democracy has campaigned on for some time. Unfortunately the Task Force explicitly ruled out examining the case for electoral reform. Giving Parliament greater scrutiny over government decisions, while important, will only have limited impact if, as is too often the case, the electoral system guarantees the government a huge majority in the House of Commons. Power to the People rightly draws attention to the gap between Parliament and the public and argues that there needs to be greater emphasis within Parliament on connecting with the public. On the broader issue of reasons for public disinterest in Parliament the suggestion is to have another investigation by a select committee, albeit a new one. If one of the problems that the task force has identified is that Parliament is too introspective how will another internal investigation help? If citizens are choosing not to engage with the legislature might it not be prudent to ask them why and involve them in deciding what needs to be changed? There have been vast numbers of reports on connecting people and parliament - we need action not words. More fundamentally in a paper entitled Power to the People the only mention of directly empowering people is in linking petitions to Westminster Hall debates. The idea of participation is bandied about but there is little idea of how this might be achieved. Strengthening Parliament in relation to the executive is essential and will help to make governance in the UK more accountable but it doesn't really empower people. Petitioning can be an important mechanism enabling citizens to put issues directly onto the political agenda. But any mechanism simply granted from on high is not going to convince people, the levels of mistrust are already too high. If public mistrust of politics and politicians is to be addressed then we need a new constitutional settlement with citizens given a direct say in how they should be governed such a in a constitutional convention. It isn't enough for the Democracy Task Force to increase the powers of Parliament. It has to address the severe disconnect between people and politics, and examine ways in which we can create a genuinely participatory democracy.

The aim of the Conservative Democracy Task Force is to restore faith in the democratic process by producing recommendations to make government more efficient, accountable and transparent. The Task Forces is chaired by Rt Hon Ken Clarke MP.

Contents 1 Trust in Politics 1.1 Party Funding Reform 1.2 The Honours System 1.3 Enforcing the Ministerial Code 1.4 The Advisory Committee on Business Appointments 1.5 Salaries and Remuneration for MPs 2 Power to the People - Rebuilding Parliament 2.1 Select Committee independence 2.2 Scrutiny of the executive 2.3 Control of Commons reform 2.4 Regaining financial control 2.5 Scrutinizing EU legislation 2.6 Approval of the Royal Prerogative 2.7 The right to petition Parliament 3 An End to Sofa Government - Better Working of Prime Minister and Cabinet 3.1 The Ministerial Code 3.2 Scrutinizing the executive 3.3 The Royal Prerogative

Trust in Politics

This is the third report published by the Task Force, and was written in response to the Governance of Britain green paper. The report argues that, while standards for public life in the UK are high compared to those in other countries, scandals over party finance and the honours system have undermined public trust in politics. Its proposals focus on party funding reform, a new honours system, oversight of MPs’ salaries and privileges, and a more transparent system for investigating breaches of the Ministerial Code.

Party Funding Reform

• The Task Force proposes placing a cap on donations to political parties from individuals or organisations, initially set at £50,000, and a “gradual winding down” of funding from institutions, corporations, or trade unions.

• Loans to political parties, except for loans from financial institutions on commercial terms, would be banned.

• The overall spending limit for general elections would fall from £20 million to £15 million.

• The Task Force recommends that individual donors should receive income tax relief on donations of up to £3,000 to political parties, and that a new publicly funded scheme should match small donations, in order to encourage political participation.

• Public funding of political parties could be linked to their levels of support at the last general election.

The Honours System

• The Task Force proposes combining the House of Lords Appointments Commission with Cabinet’s ceremonial unit to create a new Honours Commission with the sole power to recommend appointments to the monarch, so that there could be no link between party funding and honours.

• The Honours Commission would accept recommendations for the honours list from anyone, and would independently assess candidates based on their achievements, except in the case of recommendations to the House of Lords.

• The Honours Commission would recommend candidates for peerages based on their ability to contribute to legislative work, and on party political support in the country. The Commission would also have far-reaching powers to check on the backgrounds of candidates for the House of Lords, including not only any donations they had made to political parties, but also any loans.

Enforcing the Ministerial Code

• The Task Force recommends that the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards should take over investigating alleged breaches of the Ministerial Code, and should be given access to all relevant evidence.

• The Commissioner would decide whether to investigate a potential breach of the Ministerial Code and would publish his or her findings.

• Anyone could request an investigation, including the prime minister or an accused minister.

The Advisory Committee on Business Appointments

• The Task Force recommends that the work of the Advisory Committee on Business Appointments should be made statutory under the Civil Service Act and the Ministerial Code.

• Ministers, senior civil servants, and special advisors would be required to consult the ACBA before taking up a new position in the private sector, and could be penalised for ignoring the ACBA’s recommendations. This would allay fears that ministers, civil servants, and advisors might favour particular private businesses or lobbying groups they hoped might employ them in the future, or that their inside knowledge of government might give their new private employers an unfair advantage.

Salaries and Remuneration for MPs

• The Task Force recommends that MPs’ salaries should be set by the Senior Salaries Review Board instead of being approved by MPs.

• MPs’ salaries should be linked to a benchmark, such as the average national wage or the average wage for the public sector.

• The system of final salary pensions should be replaced with a defined contribution pension scheme, in which the Senior Salaries Review Board would establish levels of employer and employee contributions, so that MPs’ pensions would be lowered to bring them in line with private sector pensions.

• MPs’ expenses that are paid directly by the House, like staff salaries and stationary costs, should be reported separately from expenses that are paid to the MPs, like compensation for travel expenses, to correct the public perception that all MPs’ expenses are incurred at the MPs’ discretion.

• The rules governing what costs MPs can claim as expenses (for example, under the Additional Costs Allowance) should be clarified.

• Expense allowances should still be set by the Senior Salaries Review Board, though employing outside independent auditors to review MPs’ expenses should be considered.

• There should be more public information available about how MPs’ expense claims work.

• The Task Force proposes eliminating the £10,000 Communications Fund given to MPs to communicate with their constituents, because it gives the incumbent an unfair advantage in campaigning and raises the cost of local political campaigns.

Power to the People - Rebuilding Parliament

This is the second report published by the Task Force and focuses on strengthening Parliament in relation to the Executive.The proposals focus on the legislature’s ability to scrutinise the government, particularly by strengthening the committee system. Furthermore, there are recommendations to give Parliament greater control over its business timetabling and its finances.

Select Committee independence

• Commons Committees should be made more independent from the executive.

• The paper proposes that the role of chairman for all Select Committees should be elected by secret ballot, once Chairmanships have been allocated amongst the parties.

• Individual Select Committee members would be made freer by the election of the Chairman for the Committee of Selection, and the removal of party Whips that currently dominant nomination.

• The Public Bill Committees should be open to speculative application from backbenchers to the Committee of Selection, which would loosen the dominance of the Whips and open up membership to a more diverse range of views.

Scrutiny of the executive

• The proposals assert the requirement of the Committees for more powers in requesting witnesses and documents. Where restricted in access, a Committee could appeal to the Liaison Committee to represent to the Leader of the House or the Prime Minister as appropriate.

• The role of Committees in holding ministers to account would be enhanced by making it a requirement for the minister to inform the relevant Committee of an appointment, which may then by subject to a hearing. The Committee might have the power to express reservations but not veto an appointment. This, the paper argues, would give ministers an incentive to ensure responsible selections.

• Opposition debate time is a further effective means for Commons to scrutinise the government. Government currently decides on the allocation of Opposition time. If the right to demand time within five days were given to the opposition, the paper suggests that more timely challenges to government might be made.
• Also, the opportunity to trade debate time for topical questions would improve the procedure of scrutiny. Select Committees could follow the same model of trading debate time for urgent questions in the Chamber or the House.

• At present, the Prime Minister is subject to Prime Minister’s Question Time, plus six-monthly meetings with the Liaison Committee. The Task Force suggest making appearances quarterly to allow more topical questioning. The current large composition of the Committee should be reduced to around a dozen of the most senior and relevant Committee Chairman, to improve the focus of meetings.

• A Business Committee, as suggested by the previous Task Force paper, could assess the timetable of the government’s legislative program, providing a framework for Parliament’s scrutiny. The government could be limited to setting an end date for Bills.

Control of Commons reform

• The Modernisation Committee has implemented changes with mixed results, often favouring the executive at the expense of Parliament.

• It is proposed that the Modernisation Committee be merged with the Procedure Committee, with a Chairman elected by the whole House from the Opposition. An aim of the merged Committee would be to regain parliamentary control of timetabling from the government, supported by the Business Committee.

Regaining financial control

• The report argues for the enhancement of the Commons’ role in directing public spending, but balancing this with the committees’ potential to champion increased spending in their respective policy field. The Public Accounts Committee, supported by the National Audit Office, retrospectively scrutinise expenditure.

• Strengthened Select Committees, it is argued, would enhance this scrutiny via the use of the Comprehensive Spending Review; and also assess future projects for their likely budgets at the Committee review stage.

Scrutinizing EU legislation

• The Chairman of the European Affairs Select Committee would be empowered to summon the relevant Secretary of State prior to a meeting of the European Council of Ministers, with the option to debate in the House if not satisfied.

Approval of the Royal Prerogative

• As reported in [‘An End to Sofa Government’] the Task Force believes that Parliament should have the right to approve deployment of troops and ratify treaties that have effects on finance or sovereignty, except in situations of emergency. In such instances, retroactive approval must be secured by the Prime Minister.

The right to petition Parliament

• The ancient right of petitioning for parliamentary debates is a means of countering the perceived remoteness and inaccessibility of government. Currently there is a method of petition on the Downing Street website, but it is frequently met with little response, so, it is argued, that an alternative method is viable.

An End to Sofa Government - Better Working of Prime Minister and Cabinet

The paper argues that the dominance of media presentation has disempowered ministers, who have become vehicles for the policies of executive appointees, and effectively destroyed Cabinet government in favour of a Presidential-style executive. The report focuses on the machinery of the government and the systems that support it, namely the civil service and political appointments.

The Ministerial Code

• The Task Force proposes a strengthening of the Ministerial Code by a parliamentary resolution to entrench collective cabinet decision-making.

• The new Code would define the responsibilities of the Prime Minister and Secretaries of State.

• Monitoring of the process would be the remit of an audit office responsible to a Parliamentary Committee.

• The roles and stages of decision-making would be more prescribed and ordered to make the procedure more amenable to public scrutiny. Currently the Prime Minister is the judge of his own actions, which is clearly unsatisfactory.

• Government decisions must only be made after submission of all relevant papers to Cabinet with an opportunity for full approval, or ratification by a Cabinet Committee. This would restore the prominence of the formal Cabinet meeting to counter the movement of debates to specialist committees, ad hoc gatherings and informal bilateral meetings.

• Attendance at meetings should be collated and made public, while special advisors and civil servants should be excluded.

Scrutinizing the executive

• The Prime Minister and the Treasury will inevitably be involved in formulating policy, but the paper argues that this should be via Secretaries of State rather than by directing their departments. While the Code ensures that the Prime Minister is accountable to Parliament as the political head of the Cabinet, Secretaries of State would be responsible for the initiation and development of their respective policy areas.

• An executive Legislative Committee would be charged with pre-legislative scrutiny for necessity and coherence, matched by a Commons Committee. Ministers thereby have an incentive to ensure the quality of a piece of proposed legislation.

• A Commons Business Committee is suggested to examine the legislative program in advance and assess likely parliamentary debate time. The government decides on timetabling but where recommendations have been ignored, Parliament is alert to the possible need for greater scrutiny.

• It is suggested that the number of political special advisors should be halved and their role reduced to advice rather than the current power, granted by an Order in Council in 1997, to direct civil servants.

• The independence of the civil service should be entrenched via a Civil Service Act. While ministerial responsibility for the respective department remains, the efficiency of the Civil Service could be improved, according to the report.

• The Civil Service Commission could be put on a statutory basis to investigate breaches of its Code, and the Civil Service Commissioners must be able to make appointments without influence from the political hierarchy.

• Permanent Secretaries should be accountable to Parliament for implementing managerial disciplinary procedures with staff, parallel to their responsibility for the use of public money.

• Furthermore the Task Force suggest that the Office of National Statistics should be statutorily granted a fully objective status to audit the government’s use of statistics.

• Government publications should be regulated by a Code of Conduct prepared by the Committee on Standards in Public Life. This will combat the rise of publicity documents over papers suitable for policy analysis.

The Royal Prerogative

• The Prime Ministerial use of the Royal Prerogative to commit to war or international treaties should be subject to Parliamentary approval. It is not suggested that the Royal Prerogative powers should be fully relinquished because it is believed that business of Parliament is already too dense. Rather the individual power to commit troops should be subject to a Parliamentary Convention, as suggested by the House of Lords Constitution Committee. Following the debate on Iraq, it would be difficult to conceive of a Prime Minister refusing Parliament the opportunity to debate on an issue being argued all over the country.

• Under the Ponsonby Rule treaties must be placed before Parliament twenty-one days before ratification, although the process can be waived in emergency situations. The use of prerogative powers, like that of other conventions, is subject to judicial review but Parliament may only debate, not amend, a treaty. The paper suggests full parliamentary approval for treaties with financial or sovereignty implications. Other treaties would obtain automatic assent if not challenged in twenty-one days.