Two letter writers have responded to suggestions that Andy Burnham could reduce the use of whipping in parliament, proposing significant reforms to the current system.
Limiting Whipping to Manifesto Issues
Martin Luck from Loughborough, Leicestershire, argues that whipping should apply only to matters clearly spelled out in a party’s manifesto, as that is what non-independent candidates stood on when elected. Votes on other matters should be free, with the party free to persuade its MPs by appealing to strategy and force of argument.
Luck states that this would have the democratic advantage of encouraging MPs to take the views of their constituents fully into account and contributing those views to the party debate. Under current practice, MPs can too easily become vote fodder and may not even fully understand what they are being asked to vote on.
Voting by conscience on a non-manifesto issue should be seen as a matter of pride and should attract respect, not approbation or feelings of disloyalty, according to Luck. He adds that defining whippable matters in this way would have a further logical consequence: MPs who defect from one party to another would have to submit themselves for re-election, otherwise they would be blatantly betraying their constituents.
Secret Votes to Empower MPs
Vaughan Thomas from Norwich was encouraged to read that Andy Burnham has “talked about scrapping the ‘whipping’ system in Westminster”. He wrote to Robin Cook many years ago when Cook was the leader of the House of Commons, proposing that MPs’ votes in parliament should be secret votes.
Thomas explains that this was to ensure that MPs would be less prone to bribery or blackmail with promises of high office, or worse, if whips had negative information on an MP that the public or their spouse were unaware of. This change would return power to the floor of the Commons, where it belongs – to MPs and not to the executive. So decisions could be made on the debate in the chamber rather than in a backroom, cloaked in secrecy.
The letters were published in response to an article suggesting Andy Burnham might reduce the extent of whipping of parliamentary votes if he becomes prime minister.
