I blogged last week about the new set of responsibilities transferred to the Deputy Prime Minister from the Secretary of State for Justice.
It’s a formidable to-do list – principally concerning political and constitutional reform – and tomorrow Nick Clegg will reveal the progress made so far.
Speaking at the Hay Festival in Mid Wales, Mr Clegg said he would detail some of the early developments in his “menu” to change the political system.
He told the audience: “I will be making some announcements tomorrow in the House of Commons about some early progress on the big building blocks in the constitutional reform agenda which is extraordinarily ambitious.
“Reforming the House of Lords has been talked about for one hundred years and we are absolutely determined to do something about it this time.
“Looking at boundaries, looking at the electoral system through a referendum, regulating lobbying, looking at party funding. This is a huge, huge menu.
“Have I worked out exactly how you sequence it? No. But I will be making some announcements tomorrow.” [UKPA]
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5 Comments
“This is a huge, huge menu. Have I worked out exactly how you sequence it? No. But I will be making some announcements tomorrow.”
Hmm. I’m afraid our Nick is no Demosthenes.
Dude that’s harsh.
At first I thought political reform was a fairly straight forward process. The more I look into it and come to understand the failings of democracy, the easier it is for me to understand why they have been thinking about it for a hundred years.
It’s odd that some of the coverage is suggesting that the referendum may cover not only AV but also some of the other proposals such as reducing the number of MPs and introducing fixed-term parliaments. I don’t see how that would work at all, considering that the Tories are against AV but in favour of the other things.
@Anthony – I am not sure if they mean people would vote on both items at the same time (but separate votes) or if they’d be completely tied in with each other.
For Cameron it would make sense to tie them in though, because he probably knows full well that he can’t really speak too forcefully against AV/pro FPTP, since his main reason pre-election was that anything other than FPTP would not provide stable, strong government. Since he’s been emphasising for weeks now that this coalition government is precisely that, e.g. strong and stable, he’d have a hard time arguing convincingly.
Tying them both together would mean he’d get less of a hard time from his back benchers.