I have published this video this morning. In it, I ask how we can have a serious parliament that can do its job when there aren't enough seats for all MPs and when so many of parliament's systems are so antiquated it's hardly got into the 20th century as yet, let alone the twenty-first. Isn't it time it got its act together?
The audio version of this video is here:
The transcript is:
The House of Commons is at this point in time trying to prove that it is the most ridiculous of places in which to work.
There are all sorts of reasons for saying that.
There are, of course, 650 members of the House of Commons, each of whom has quite a number of staff. Four or five in my experience. So, there are lots of people located in and around that building that we're used to and over the road in something called Portcullis House. But, at this moment, none of them have an office. So, there are hundreds and hundreds of new MPs turning up at Westminster, and it might take weeks for any of them to be allocated a space in which they can work. In the meantime, they're sitting on the edge of a cafe desk.
That is ludicrous. If ever I heard of a use for AI, it would be to allocate the offices of new MPs in the quickest, most efficient manner possible, so that our democracy can function in the way that it should.
But it's not just that. In the chamber of the House of Commons itself, there are never enough seats for everyone to sit down at once. Which is crazy. It was actually designed that way, apparently. It was thought that it would be good to have some people standing up. It would add to the stress and presence of the moment. Which I think is daft.
But it's even worse still when we have the current imbalance between the government and opposition benches because there are the same number of seats on both sides of the House. But right now, there are 411 Labour MPs, and given that Sinn Féin don't sit and the Speaker's got their own chair, well, there are about in total another 215 MPs who need to sit on the Opposition benches.
So, there are near enough double the number of people wanting to sit on the Government benches from the Opposition benches right now. And the Labour Party whips - God bless them for their wisdom and not a lot else - have decreed that no Labour member is now allowed to sit on the Opposition benches. So, whenever there is a big parliamentary event, Labour cannot turn up in total. They simply won't have the places to sit.
This is farcical. And even more farcical, after those two points have been made, is the fact that, where are they meant to put their computer? And, how are they meant to vote?
They haven't got a space for a computer. They haven't even got a charging socket to keep themselves going when they're sitting in the House of Commons because they're not meant to be looking at their phone, although, we know that some have in their time, looking at some things which were wholly inappropriate.
But that said, why aren't they allowed to? And why can't they just vote on their phones? If I can put my finger on my phone to prove that I have the right to access my bank account, why can't MPs put their finger on their phone to prove that they have the entitlement to vote in the Parliamentary Division, which is what they call a vote, and vote the way that they are required to by their whips, which is frankly what they do almost all the time.
But apparently, no, that isn't possible.
We have a House of Commons that is not designed for the 20th century, let alone the 21st.
There are going to be billions of pounds spent on updating this House of Commons one day, whenever they finally get around to deciding what they're going to do to make the wiring 19th century fit, let alone 21st century fit, because it is dire, and when they get around to removing all the asbestos with which the place is riddled and which makes it thoroughly dangerous. And, when they also get around to removing the leaks come to that because there are hordes of them.
So they've got billions of pounds to spend and they still won't bring the place into the 21st century.
Isn't it time we took our democracy seriously?
Isn't it time we said let's have a workspace for our politicians that reflects the productivity that we require of the rest of the country?
Shouldn't they have basic facilities like proper offices and proper opportunities to interact through the web, which everybody would expect wherever they're working, including when they're hot desking? Isn't that a simple thing to suggest?
And wouldn't it be wise in that case to just turn that existing building into some form of tourist attraction and build a new office block somewhere else to replace the House of Commons, which clearly does not work?
It would be possible. We could get rid of, for example, Horse Guards Parade. Do we really need to have a giant space sitting very near Parliament that is just marched around by a few soldiers once a year to celebrate the King's birthday? I don't think so. I think we could put that to better use. And there are other similar spaces available, I am quite sure.
My point is simple. How can we have a democracy that doesn't take itself seriously and then expect those who are participating in it to govern us properly? It's not happening right now and I think we need to get Parliament to move itself well and truly into this century.
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It is a ghreat pity that as one of the vistorious powers in WW2 we never saw fit to adopt the measures we enforced on the losers.
Parliament neeeds to break away from the vision of a 19th Century Gentlemans club and embrace the 21st Century
Even the Weimar setup, post WW1, was infinitely superior to 21stC UK.
Both constitutionally, if you take out the very low voting thresholds for representation and Article 48, and in terms of structure and peronal rights. Just one example….
Germans had the right to assemble peacefully and unarmed without prior permission. (Article 123)
We don’t really have that right in 21stC UK.
Once the asbestos has been removed and the electrical wiring renewed it should be turned into a British history museum. A new parliament should be built up North somewhere!
The whole Parliament building is a Victoria phantasy world, complete with weird Arthurian Legend style murals in the Lords area. Building environments enormously impact behaviour patterns. The weird interior labarynthine mix of ecclesiastical public school colonialism is a wholly dreamlike experience. Being so unlike the real world outside, is very damaging to the psyche and will be immensely shocking to the new cohort of MPs. Yes, move it north and set it close to nature.
Absolutely. I suggest they choose the place with the worst transport links they can find (no railway station, for example). and it won’t stay that way for long. Then for the next parliament, choose the place with the next-worst links. Only half-joking.
Why joke??? It really is not a bad idea.
I am curious, what is the geographical center of the UK (including Northern Ireland)?
Apparently Ordnance Survey has declared Dunsop Bridge the exact centre of the British Isles.
https://maps.app.goo.gl/Z5taNYZTkXGTiezk7
Don’t tell Yorkshire
My vote is to build a new UK Government Center at Dunsop Bridge!
Dunsop Bridge is in the middle of the Forest of Bowland. One of the most remote places in England. Just the job I should think.
Dunsop Bridge presumably is based on land area, not population; and includes the north of Ireland?
Whether the first measure, or population, is better to, could be discussed.
The second is, for me, objectionable.
And then there’s the matter of Scotland…!
On the other hand, there’s a very large brownfield site outside Doncaster, which local (Labour) politicians obsess about reopening as an airport, to the continued destruction of the planet. And plenty of relatively cheap new housing in the vicinity, which would help cut those astronomical second home expenses for MPs!
@ Nigel
Dunsop Bridge is/was owned by the Towneley family.
Very much traditional estate owners.
Bowland has long had one of the worst records for raptor persecution, presumably by their natural enemy, the gamekeeper.
Other major Bowland landowners are the Windsors, a privatised water company and 18,000 acres by the Duke of Westminster. What a perfect cross section of British landownership.
Lady Towneley was a very keen horsewoman and strongly supported the designation of the Pennine Bridleway, so ‘noblesse oblige’. MPs could even bike to work.
It would be perfect for a new Parliament in that its ownership pattern is very much the establishment elite, thereby reinforcing traditional British values and respect for authority.
That is, until the compulsory purchase orders for building the new complex start rolling in.
Speeded up planning processes by the new Labour government would really facilitate this development.
That should guarantee Reeves’ popularity. Lots of luvverly GDP growth too.
The obvious way to allocate offices for MPs would be simply to match up a list of available rooms, which I assume exists, with an alphabetical list of constituencies. This could have been done well before the election took place.
That makes no sense. Parties need to be near each other and the room allocation is much more complicated for committee chaairs, and so on.
Hmm… I would have thought that the sort of computer network common in large multi-site FE colleges 25 years ago would obviate the need for parties to be near each other.
Being able to talk with your near neighbour is really important
The English built New Delhi for the British government in India so I cannot phantom why they cannot build a new “city” for British government in England!
We could do a lot then that is no longer possible
I always wonder how this country ever came off town gas and went onto natural gas, for example. I suspect the transition would be impossible now. Any number of obstacles would be out in the way.
There are also a wide difference in quality of rooms. So some are windowless internal rooms, some have lots of mouse droppings, some are near toilets.
Richard is right though – an AI room allocation system (or even an old style expert system AI), can easily manage all these different criteria and has the benefit of at least claiming some impartiality. These programs already exist for schools and universities, and businesses.
An episode of Yes (Prime) Minister demonstrated that an office adjacent to ‘the gents’ was rather desirable, because conversations that were thought to be off the record, and not overhead, were!
The present Houses of Parliament won’t survive rising sea levels. Build replacement facilities elsewhere, preferably outside the Home Counties. The new debating chamber should be circular, to encourage MPs to collaborate rather than oppose.
“And the Labour Party whips […] have decreed that no Labour member is now allowed to sit on the Opposition benches.”
If BBC Parliament showed the total imbalance, the cry for PR would be seen to be necessary. All optics.
“How can we have a democracy that doesn’t take itself seriously” – because it is not a serious democracy (e.g. FPTP)?
As somebody noted, when the Luftwaffe tried to redevelop the HoC – the rebuild was designed (by Churchill I understand) to make it disfunktional (funky by design?).
If the place functioned better – that might be good for democracy – but that has never been the aim has it? Is a well functioning democracy desirable in the UK – by those in power?
Or would that affect their capacity to wield power?
One of the other posts today addressed the BoE’s chief economist and his shortcomings. In a democracy he would be “put to the question”. This never happens (well sometimes in a performative Punch n Judy way). In a serious democracy you would have MPs that are experts in the feild covered by a particualr select committee. Lucas (Greens) noted that party enforcers (whips) make sure this does not happen. etc etc.
“UK democracy” a fiction, by design & reflected in stone to make real the fiction.
The old adage the price of democracy is eternal vigilance desperately needs rewriting for England as predictably we observe the Labour Party making a dog’s breakfast of things within days of getting elected to office!
I attended the annual conference of the Society of Industrial Artists and Designers, of which I was a Member, in the mid-seventies. There was a motion to support the expenditure of millions in the refurbishment of some treasured Victorian public building or other (I forget which). Professor Misha Black stood up and very eloquently opposed the motion on the basis that we should be creating new treasures, not tarting up old ones.
If Parliament was relocated our very best architects could be engaged in the design of a building that would be the envy of the world and would provide hundreds of jobs. I’m not particularly bothered where that location might be. Moreover it could be fit for a proper democracy worthy of the 21st Century, and when it was finished our MPs could move in immediately after decamping from the Palace of Westminster.
But then, of course, there’s no money is there?
The danger of getting architects too involved in the design and construction of a new parliamentary estate is tgat they would over complicate it . Look at example of Scottish Parliament many years late and over budget.
Trying to get a balance between a triumphalist statement building and an efficient office complex might be better done by engineers with AI assistance.
I understand Richard’s point about allocating offices so members of same party are near: There is also an argument that if they were allocated geographically it would encourage more collaboration between neighbouring constituencies.
There could also be areas provided for party organisations and if publicly funded this would negate some of the potentially corrupting effects of donors to parties.
Acknowledging that MPs from “ the provinces” need accommodation in London I suggest an equivalent to a military officers’ mess be provided. Less scope for fiddling expenses .
But what about families?
Do they live in officer’s messes as well
Second h9mes are essential to MPs. Can we not lose site of reality here, unless we want no one to do this job, or only the very wealthy to do so.
Somewhere within the M1/M18/M62 triangle would be a central location for a new parliament – sans Lords. There must be a suitable brown field or redundant military site available. A symbol of national renewal. A beautiful, zero carbon, sustainably constructed visual symbol of democracy set in psychologically and physically healing natural environment.
Scunthorpe. With the web address http://www.scunth-parl.co.uk. This would have the benefit that US search engines would never find it – or class it as obscene – which given the way the current place functions now and its contempt for UK serfs – would be no more than it deserves. Or Clitheroe – I will forebear on rendering this as a fictional url – I am sure readers will get the gist.
I remember a time when most bulletin boards (remember them?) would reject any post mentioning Scunthorpe. Homogenous was another word that caused problems.
In the Indy Comments on an item on King Canute I gave him his proper spelling “Cnut” – well, the Indy algorithm wasn’t a happy Jeremy Hunt.
It was Churchill who, after Parliament was bombed during WWII who didn’t have the Commons chamber enlarged to suit the number of MPs.
He felt that the crowding of the chamber added to the mood of great and weighty occasions.
It is another example of Churchill’s own idiosyncratic way; in matters of wartime, a great leader and in other circumstances a complete idiot – he was not a great peacetime politician, and this fact is amply borne by his record as such.
When Johnson first took over as PM, I whimsically wrote to him suggesting that he could most easily effect his ‘levelling up’ strategy by moving Parliament to the most impoverished part of Britain, & legislate to make such a move every 10-20 years. I’m sure he never even read it, though not long after he did announce a plan to move the HoL to York – probably to inconvenience their Lordships, who kept upsetting his plans to overturn our democracy, more than anything else. Of course his proposal – a completely facetious one as how would it be feasible to separate the Lords & Commons? – went the way of his Garden Bridge in London & tunnel (or was that a bridge too?) from Scotland to N.Ireland….ie. Nowhere…