Democratic government?

The spectacle of Messrs. Brown and Darling this week uttering vague threats to the banks that if lending rates were not dropped immediately..... All this despite the assurance that even those banks nationalised or partly nationalised would not suffer governmental interference.

We are accustomed, and generally acquiescent, to government diktat and decree on all manner of things as they gradually extend their control over our lives. After all, we live in a democracy and we elected this particular bunch and the opposition and press, etc, will keep an eye on them and call them to account. We do not even complain or react when our prime minister says "I will not have this" or "I will personally solve your problems".

This is true, but there have worrying developments.

Firstly, most legislation pouring out of Westminster in fact originates in Brussels, and we have a tradition of "gold plating" the legislation to make it as harsh as possible, it seems.

Secondly, with our signing up to the Human Rights Act, the old simplicity of "government makes laws and judges interpret them" has gone. We now have the situation that unaccountable judges have to overrule parliamentary decisions through the Act. Thus we are obliged to keep undesirable foreign citizens here even though we do not collectively want them.

Thirdly, the notion of a government in parliament is becoming less and less true. Government is increasingly by a small group called the cabinet, and even within that by a very small group which includes the prime minister. The cabinet are informed of what the executive has decided, and vote for it because their continued seat on the gravy train dictates it. Parliament is informed, sometimes after a press release, and the whips ensure that the government side pushes it through. Only the House of Lords, briefly, can hold up the implementation

The evidence for all this is the frequency with which bills are guillotined, by the refusal to indicate which bills come from Brussels and must be accepted and by the curtailing of parliamentary sessions.

We had the recent announcement that next year parliament will sit for only 128 days, or just over a third of the year, - the shortest sitting in a full non-election year since 1945. Our Sub-Prime Minister apparently commented that "if the House of Commons can do its business efficiently in 128 days, then that is the right course of action." It is a big "IF", with so many ill-thought-out bills, heaped upon others, which means that scrutiny is perfunctory. The result is that, especially in the area of criminal law, there can develop a morass of legislation where interpretation is difficult because of the inconsistencies and contradictions.

We have had a perfect example recently. Parliament was not recalled when the recession (sorry BBC, the downtown) became obvious. There has been no debate and Brown/Darling have simply announced decisions to the media. This clearly suits Brown, as it has restored his reputation to some extent.

Do you recall the words of Brown on replacing Blair? He promised to restore the power to parliament and to decentralise government. The opposite has happened, with the result that MPs spend much of their time dealing with matters which local councillors ought to be doing, rather than in debating the great issues of our day, and MPs are seen as less and less relevant.