Denied! Clarke vs. Mandelson

The Business Secretary is due to give a statement in Parliament at 3.05pm today on the car industry.

Pretty important one might think.

Unfortunately, we are denied the prospect of the shadow Business Secretary holding the Business Secretary properly to account.

This is because Gordon Brown has deemed fit to appoint a peer - Lord Mandelson - to the important position, especially in a recession, of Business Secretary.

We should be able to tune in to see Ken Clarke going head to head with Peter Mandelson but that is not to be.

More...

This is part of a wider problem. The Business Select Committee has recently voiced concern that the government has more Business ministers in the Lords than in the Commons.

LORDS

• Rt. Hon. Lord Mandelson - Secretary of State for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform
• Shriti Vadera - Minister for Economic Competitiveness and Small Business (jointly with Cabinet Office)
• Stephen Carter CBE - Minister for Communications, Technology and Broadcasting (jointly with the Department for Culture, Media and Sport)
• Mervyn Davies CBE - Minister for Trade and Investment (jointly with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office)

COMMONS

• Pat McFadden MP - Minister for Employment Relations and Postal Affairs
• Gareth Thomas MP - Minister for Trade, Development and Consumer Affairs (jointly with the Department for International Development)
• Ian Pearson MP - Economic and Business Minister (jointly with HM Treasury)

It speaks volumes about how Brown perceives the ministerial qualities and business experience of his MPs that he has had to rely on the Lords to fill most of his business ministerial positions.

And as Peter Oborne has pointed out, not a single member of the Cabinet has ever occupied a wealth-creating job.

The Commons is the primary and democratically elected chamber and Gordon Brown would do well to remember this when appointing his ministers.

Cameron to cut number of MPs

The FT has reported today that David Cameron will cut the number of MPs by "at least" 10 percent - so 65 MPs face being culled - if he is elected Prime Minister.

The paper said that the Tories would commission an urgent boundary review to make the changes in time for the subsequent general election. The idea would not be to just cut the number of MPs but also to ensure that all seats had roughly the same number of voters.

The FT's source said it would be a "first time priority" for a Prime Minister Cameron.

This is an excellent idea!

• 650 Members of Parliament are far too many to represent our small island.
• As we have seen with all the expenses scandals of last year, too many MPs have their snouts in the trough. At a time of recession, Cameron is right to identify reducing the number of MPs as a legitimate cost cutting measure without compromising the effectiveness of the House of Commons.
• The electoral system is currently biased in favour of Labour and this proposal by Cameron would help remedy this fact by ensuring all seats had roughly the same number of electors.

  We know there is an electoral bias because if Labour and the Conservatives had the same vote share in the 2005 general election, Labour would still have won 111 more seats. If the Conservatives had the same lead over Labour as Labour did over the Conservatives in 2005, Labour would still have had 57 more seats. Only a Conservative lead of 6.4 percent would have resulted in equality of seats and the Conservatives would have required a lead of 11.8 percent before gaining an overall majority.

  Labour gains an advantage to begin with from its seats in the inner cities and industrial areas with declining populations and lower turnouts. Conservatives suffer from doing well in rural and suburban areas.

  Population movements between 2001-2005 meant that the electorate grew by 1000 votes in an average Conservative seat and fell by 500 in the average Labour one. Turnout was lower in Labour seats than Conservative ones (58.6 percent to 65.2 percent) equating to a difference of 6200 electors, widening to 8500 in terms of votes.

• An advantage for the Tories of eradicating the electoral bias and establishing fairness and effective representation in the electoral system will be the axing of overrepresented safe Labour seats in the inner cities and in Wales. The FT said: "Small inner city constituencies in places such as Liverpool could be scrapped to reflect the shift in population to the Tory suburbs." As for Wales, the number of seats could be "cut from 40 to nearer 30."
• It is fair that the total number of Welsh MPs are culled as they have been traditionally overrepresented and now that Wales has its own Assembly which has accrued more powers the time to do away with this anomaly is now. Scotland has had its number of MPs reduced already to 59 MPs since devolution. However, one can make the case to reduce the number of seats further in Scotland. England has on average 70,000 electors per constituency. The Welsh constituencies have on average 56000 electors per constituency so clearly are overrepresented but so is Scotland, although by a lesser extent, as they have 65,000 electors per constituency. What is more, English electors do not have representatives in an English Assembly or Parliament so their level of representation is once more comparatively worse in comparison with Welsh and Scottish electors.

All Cameron needs to do now is win the next election. By doing so, he should be able to make the election after next a little bit easier to win for the Tories.

UPDATE: Iain Dale and ConservativeHome have posted on this issue.

UPDATE 2: The new sycophantic LabourList run by NuLab insider Derek Draper calls Cameron "David Gerrymander" and describes the plan as an attempt by Cameron to "rig parliament and reduce the number of MPs from poorer areas." A predictable, though ignorant response. The plans, if enacted, will of course benefit the Tories but i struggle to see how one can credibly argue against a proposal that is based on the fairness of equal representation. Is Draper saying that so-called "poor" Labour voters deserve greater representation than other voters? All voters are created equal but some voters are more equal than others...

Government emasculates Parliament

Gordon Brown came to power as PM saying that he would seek to strengthen Parliament and its scrutiny of the executive.

Yet today when MPs are in an unusually packed Commons, the government is trying to curtail debate and restrict scrutiny.

The Speaker promised a debate on the Damian Green affair but the government has chosen to use a guillotine motion to curtail the debate to just 3 hours.

MPs are currently voting in the Division Lobbies on an amendment to the government's timetabling motion signed by Conservative MP Douglas Hogg and Lib Dem MP David Heath. If accepted the amendment would allow for 6 hours of debate on the setting up of a Speaker's Committee.

But that has little chance of happening. The Labour MP Bob Marshall-Andrews has rightly denounced a couple of minutes ago the government's attempts to use a three-line whip to ensure Labour MPs not only have turned up but also voted with the government against the amendment.

It is nothing short of outrageous but is also what one has come to expect from this government which has gone out of its way to strengthen the executive and weaken the legislature!

UPDATE: Surprise, surprise the government has got its way with a majority of 74. Amendment rejected. Pathetic!