The national press whipped up an enormous amount of froth predicting a rebellion by backbench MPs on the question of their pay and that they would reject the Government’s insistence on a below inflation 1.9%, and instead vote for 2.5% recommended by the Senior Salaries Review body. I must confess that I always thought this was utterly fanciful and I could not believe that any MP would be so crassly insensitive and seek public disapproval by voting for more. So it has proved. For my own part, I put down an amendment requiring that MPs pay should be reduced in line with our diminishing power and responsibility relative to the EU. Unfortunately the speaker did not select it for debate.
I was in the Commons dining room at a Burns supper and I couldn’t help noticing that the lights were so much brighter than before. On enquiry I was informed that the old conventional bulbs had been replaced by energy saving ones and that where the old bulbs could be dimmed to create the right ambience the new ones could not. I don’t want to enter into debate about the merits of the new light bulbs (but advice, that if you break one, you should only approach it with rubber gloves and a gas mask is hardly reassuring) but readers should be aware that in a few months conventional light bulbs will be unobtainable and they will only be able to purchase the new ones. This decision will affect every room in every house, school, or work place in the kingdom but the decision has never been the subject of a vote in Parliament. The point of my amendment is simple; if we are to be governed by people whom we do not elect, then we can dispense with MPs and we needn’t pay them at all.
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The only backbench rebellion I am expecting is the one on the referendum for the EU constitution. Every one of the main political parties went into the last election pledging to offer the people a referendum on the issue. Since then both the Labour party and the Liberal Democrats have reneged on this promise on the rather flimsy ground that what has now been signed up to is a different thing, and is no longer worthy of a referendum. I find this a quite breath-taking position. When Jack Straw sought to explain the Government’s previous u-turn (when having been against a referendum they then decided in favour of one) he told us that the constitutional significance of having an EU President and Foreign Minister was such that it required a referendum. I think he was right, and still is right because the revised constitution gives it exactly that: so why has the government changed its mind yet again?
Of course, absolutely everything has been done to disguise the reality so that people will be fooled. The father of the original constitution, the former French President Giscard d’Estaing let the cat out of the bag when he said in June last year
“Public opinion will be led to adopt, without knowing it, the proposals that we dare not present to them directly….All the earlier proposals will be in the new text but hidden and disguised in some way”
The Belgian Foreign Minister was even more helpful in exposing this conspiracy against the voter when he said in the same month
“The aim of the constitutional treaty was to be more readable; the aim of this treaty is to be unreadable…The constitution aimed to be clear, whereas this treaty had to be unclear. It is a success.”
Anyone who falls for the fiction that the revived constitution is somehow different from the one about which we were promised a referendum is, therefore, the victim of a deliberate deception. If MPs are stupid enough to fall for it then they don’t deserve to be paid at all because protecting our rights and liberties is what we elect them for.
Whether we get the promised referendum will depend on how many Labour MPs rebel and vote with the Conservatives in order to secure one. The Liberal Democrats say they will abstain but Nick Clegg, under pressure on the radio, has revealed that if the parliamentary arithmetic turns out that the Government might actually be defeated then he will order his MPs to vote to support the Government and prevent a referendum. So, we are dependent for our referendum not just on a Labour rebellion but also a Liberal Democrat one.
How can voters have an impact on all of this?
They need to make clear that the real remuneration of MPs is measured not by their pay but by their votes. And only if they make it very clear that they are prepared to withdraw their votes will MPs take notice.
Desmond Swayne TD MP
HOUSE OF COMMONS
LONDON SW1A 0AA |
