Nick Clegg would like to reduce the number of MPs by 150. According to Clegg such a reduction would help restore confidence in the political process whilst also saving millions of pounds for the taxpayer. Right.
What Clegg fails to point out though is that such a reduction would mean 150 fewer MPs doing casework. Now that might not seem like a big deal, especially to those who like to think MPs simply sit around all day doing very little at the taxpayers’ expense, but a great deal of the vast majority of MPs’ time is taken up by casework. By reducing the number of MPs Clegg would reduce people’s access to what is often the remedy of last resort. It’s also worth bearing in mind that such a reduction would also mean fewer surgeries being carried out due to A) there being 150 fewer MPs available to carry out surgeries, and B) the remaining MPs having greater demands on their time.
Let’s put it another way. Imagine the commons is a large office with a set amount of work that has to get done. Clegg essentially wants to fire a massive chunk of the workforce whilst hoping those that remain will get the same amount done.
March 13th, 2008 at 11:06 pm
As I understand things most of an MP’s casework involves matters that have been devolved in the little nations of the ‘U’K. If that is so, since devolution, some MPs have considerably less to do than others and must therefore spend a great deal of time simply sitting around doing very little at the tax payers’ expense.
March 14th, 2008 at 10:58 am
Yet another ‘beermat policy’ from the Lib Dems. Do they ever think before opening their mouths?
March 14th, 2008 at 1:51 pm
I have been led to believe that most casework is done by the MPs’ employed staff, and that much of what they deal with is mass-produced stock responses to lobbying (i,e. hundreds of mail-merged responses to the =same question/issue/whatever from one reply).
This doesn’t have to be done via exactly the same structure for all time.
My opinion (abo0ut which I have ‘blogged) is that we shan’t need a UK Parliament at all once the Lisbon Treaty has been ratified. Almost everything else has already gone to Holyrood, Stormont and Cardiff (and a similar Assembly would, as many have already proposed, be appropriate for England) so there will no longer be any need for anything else, apart from a plenary of the four Assemblies.
This would save an absolute fortune, eliminate a by then redundant tier of government, and take with it most of the public discontent with politics and politicians. I’d vote for that!