Abolish the post and concept of the party whip, and replace it with the concept that political parties may inform members of their official position, but that it should be as unthinkable to instruct an MP how to vote as it would be to instruct someone how to vote in an election.
The replacement of division with a secret ballot (eg by black and white balls) may be useful, though a public vote would serve the MP's accountability to their constituents.
A variation on this latter might be to retain division as a public declaration of intent, but for the actual vote to be by secret ballot, perhaps in the division rooms.
Why the contribution is important
Members of Parliament are supposed to represent the interests and opinions of their constituents, and should vote in accordance with these principles, and their conscience.
With the growth of the Party Whip system in the last century, this has been replaced with a system whereby on any important issue, and many unimportant, their vote is dictated by central office, on pain of censure or punishment.
The "free vote" which should be the basis of the functioning of Parliament has become so rare as to be news-worthy, particularly on any contentious issue.
This has replaced , in many cases, the will of the people with the will of the goverment, and led to abuses such as the Digital Economy Act: Instead of well thought out legislation, with convincing arguments for its necessity, the Government can simply ignore democracy, and ram through unconstitutional laws.
This needs to change. If Parliament is to regain its place as the Mother of Democracy, then it must be making law, not deciding the fine detail of how it will carry out the Government's orders.
The divine right of kings (or Prime Ministers) died with King Charles. The Government should lead by reasoned argument, not by fiat. It should administer the will of Parliament, not use Parliament to administer its will.
A simple start to this would be to declare that parties may advise, may reason, may even beg, but may not instruct. MPs must be members of Parliament first, and of parties second.
Every vote should be free.
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When the bill first appeared in the Lords I read it and was distressed by the implications of certain clauses, so I wrote to my MP who responded by saying it would be sorted out when it reached the commons.
I waited until the bill reached the commons, and noted that it passed it's first reading with the clauses I was concerned about completely intact, so I wrote to my MP again who said it would be sorted out on the second reading, my MP did not attend the first reading.
Nor did he attend the second reading and the sections of concern remained intact, in fact there were less than 20 MP's in the house for the second reading, no one was interested despite a massive campaign by the people to draw attention to the bill.
Thanks to the announcement of the election the bill was voted on in the "Wash Up" process, my MP finally turned up at the last moment to vote not as their constituents wished them to but as the party whip dictated.
When asked about this my MP said he could not go against the party whip.
So I and others like me were wasting our time by talking to our elected representative, the person who represents our views, the person who gives us a voice in the democratic process, because when it comes to the crunch they obey the party whip.
What was the point of me attempting to alert my MP to an issue of great concern to many people, if the orders from the party whip simply override the wishes and concerns of the people ?
All parliamentary votes should be free the party whip is simply a tool to allow the will of the people to be ignored.
I think the whip should be used less.
Political parties are useful because they allow politicians to pool influence in order to effect changes that may not otherwise be possible. They can also leverage economies of scale in organisation and provide a coherent entity with whom voters can engage and associate.
The problem is that the first-past-the-post voting system combines with the party system to allow parties to offer safe seats to their candidates and, crucially, to threaten to withdraw access to a safe seat if an MP doesn't vote as the whips instruct. This forces MPs to be loyal to their parties first and their constituents second so voters usually lose out in the event of a conflict between the two.
A political party, as an entity, has one aim: to gain power and then retain it. A party only cares that it is acting in the best interests of the people its members represent in so far as this helps achieve that aim.
The logical conclusion is that we should either abolish safe seats (by changing the voting system) or the party whip (by making it illegal for a party to sanction an MP for voting a particular way). Transparent voting in Parliament is an essential tool for holding MPs to account so this must be retained - we must continue to be told how our representatives vote.
My preference is for the abolition of safe seats, or the abolition of central party-control over who can stand for that party in each seat, which would remove the mechanism parties use to control how MPs vote (and would improve our democracy in other ways at the same time). If this is not possible politically, as would appear to be the case, then banning the party whip gets my support as a close second.
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