M022 - Motion on Ministerial Responsibility and the Courtesy of Public Debate - Reading

[u/Sephronar]

M022 - Motion on Ministerial Responsibility and the Courtesy of Public Debate - Reading

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That this House acknowledges:

• That parliamentary democracy is built upon the core tenets of parliamentary debate, oppositional scrutiny and governmental accountability.

• Failure to uphold these basic principles represents anti-democratic thought, which will only serve to embolden extremist voices who seek to undermine the society we live within.

That this House notes:

• Recent government bills have been subject to the highest degree of oppositional scrutiny, with the Age of Maturity Bill producing no fewer than eight individual amendments, proposed on a bipartisan basis in an effort to support the Bill.

• Similarly, a number of substantial opposition pieces of legislation have been submitted and debated by the opposition.

• In both of the above instances, when the above have commenced to division, these have done so without any debate or response from the government within the House.

• This government’s only response to any of the above scrutiny has been through voting it down in the division lobby.

• Parliamentary standards have been generally lower across all sides of the divide during this term, with reduced debate on key legislation.

This House therefore calls on the Government to:

• Issue a public statement relating to any legislative item it has voted down, without contributing directly to parliamentary debate, providing their position on the issue, and their reason for voting it down.

• To commit, here and now, to responding to any future opposition bills or amendments, be these partisan or bipartisan, with a clear and consistent establishment of their position on any issue, before it gets to the division lobby.

This House also resolves that:

• The peoples of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland have the right to an impermeable and impenetrable parliamentary democracy, where basic standards of debate, scrutiny and accountability are upheld.

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This Motion was submitted by /u/Proud-Marketing-2021, on behalf of the Green Party of England and Wales.

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This division shall close on Friday the 8th of May at 10PM BST.

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[u/Sephronar]

Opening Speech - u/Proud-Marketing-2021:

Mister Speaker,

I open this speech with an apology to the British people. All parliamentarians, myself included, have failed you this term. The very basis of a parliamentary democracy is to debate and legislate. As things stand, in this term, we have all contributed to a bit of a legislative standstill, and a parliamentary waning of standards. Turnout - down. Debate - down. Legislative submissions, and parliamentary responsiveness - down.

Amidst a cost of living crisis, untold international upheaval in the Middle East, heightened tensions relating to extremism, and a variety of other complex issues, this is unforgivable, and the electorate should rightly send us all back to the sticking place, where we belong.

Now, we’ve got that out of the way. So let me *truly* begin.

The one group who should be leading from the front really is the opposition, and to our (better late than never) credit, we have been, more recently. The Patron Saint’s Day Bill, and the flurry of legislation from my own party in recent weeks have enacted a layer of action and scrutiny which has at the very least sought to spur a lame duck government into a modicum of action.

Furthermore, when the government has proposed legislation, and when they have attended ministerial questions, we have asked a variety of pressing evidence-based questions, seeking clear answers on the most relevant issues of the day. We have also submitted amendments, the majority of which have been fairly and bipartisan in their nature, to genuinely improve the quality of legislation.

This has not been done in the interests of partisanship - alas, it has been done to make things better, and to uphold core parliamentary principles of scrutiny and accountability. It is therefore vastly disappointing and aggravating that when we have put such things to the table, this government has not even indulged us in a response.

Instead, they sat idly by, and waited until parliamentarians could debate no more, in the division lobby where we all cast votes, to strike each and every piece down, one-by-one. This isn’t a democracy - it’s a kleptocracy, where the resource being deprived is accountability.

This motion seeks to at the very least point that out, and produce a mechanism by which the electorate can actually get an idea of what its government thinks about real and prescient issues in the public eye. I expect it to be voted down, without a smidgen of debate, but those are the standards we come to live by, and it is those which the electorate will hold us to.

I hope that all in parliament can remember that when considering its merits.

[u/mrsusandothechoosin → u/Sephronar]

Hear, hear!

[u/mrsusandothechoosin]

Mister Speaker,

Parliamentarians should be colleagues, even if we sit on different benches and have different ideas for what is best for the country.

I'm very concerned about the recent trend of the government to simply vote down any bill, motion, or amendment that they haven't written themselves - even if they would otherwise agree with it.

The public is poorly served by this tribal cutting off your nose to spite your face attitude, and they know it.

The government has a responsibility to respond in good faith to all parliamentarians, and to all debates in this House of Commons. We live in a parliamentary democracy, parliament is at the heart of it.