Parliament unfit for purpose? Maybe Mr Clegg has a point

I continue to find, in talking to people, that it is the disrepute into which parliament has been dragged by the peers and MPs’ expenses scandal that dominates politics over and above party rivalry.

Hence Nick Clegg’s call today to cancel the Queen’s speech this week may have a stronger resonance than at first might appear. Clegg wants to use the last few weeks of this parliament to reform the political system rather than waste time debating a legislative programme that will never be enacted.

History may view with some disdain the failure of the political classes to recognise that the expenses scandal is less about usury than about the implosion of an overall parliamentary system seen by many as “unfit for purpose”.

The continued election of parties who manage to garner perhaps a third of the entire potential national vote and then govern with “absolute power” will surely be regarded as past its sell-by date.

Adversarial politics fought out in a chamber that dictates a sword and a half’s length between speakers from government and opposition may be seen too by historians as beyond the ridiculous.

There are huge constitutional challenges facing Britain, let alone the economic issues that accompany them. The idea that MPs took three months of holiday, then luxuriated in the state opening of parliament with less than six months to go to a general election, beggars belief.

I am depressed by those comments in my Lords Snowblog of last week, that we are in danger of letting in “terrorists” and the rest if we go too far with reform. I believe quite the reverse.

To add to matters, I have learned that the Labour party is now going through its ranks of peers to determine where their “principal residence” is. This after years of wholesale abuse of the system in which lords and ladies of all persuasions have claimed distant holiday homes to enable them to get the accompanying unreceipted travel expenses.

I have also learned that “arrangements” have been made to allow serving ministers in the Lords to claim a residence out of town “for necessary respite”, retrospectively protecting ministers and law officers who may have claimed for such provision.

Maybe Mr Clegg has a point.