Finally in this trilogy of posts on the issue of poor and sometimes frightening governance by Labour, and in this case to a degree parliament as a governing body, I cover the now well trodden subject of MPs and just how much power the government should be giving them. In particular this post is spurred on by the recent news about bugging MPs, but stems from the wording of anti-terror legislation on several counts, the debacle over police pay and partly how the idea of electoral reform has been dealt with.

Let's first look at the most recent furore, that of bugging MPs. In this case an MP, of a decent position within the party, was recorded speaking to a constituent of his. The problem with this is in the debatable issue of MPs being exempt from being spied upon unlike the rest of us, and though I think there is a little paranoid pompousness in such an idea I can also see the necessity of such a rule...especially with governments holding too much judicial power, as I'm about to go in to. Who authorised this assumedly illegal taping? The police are of course blamed, though there are already conspiracy theories about very senior police officers or government ministers giving the OK themselves.

But all of this misses the point, which Unity on his blog and at Liberal Conspiracy has highlighted, and that is that at no point in this process are the judiciary of the land involved in this decision making process. I can understand the sensitivity of the nature of wire taps and bugging, and that public juries should not see or hear anything from them, but why cut judges of the country from the process? Yesterday on the More 4 news there was a woman that used to work for the MI5 that said in no uncertain terms what the state of play was in this country and that due to the political nature of terrorism it is practically impossible for an MP to ever turn down a warrant for surveillance on an individual in this country. Let's just highlight that a second...

It is practically impossible for a politician with the power to stop these warrants to actually do so.

If that is not a good enough reason for ministers of the government to not be the final say on such matters I really don't know what it, the conflict of interest is obvious to see. How can an minister, a job that can be lost for something as simple as not declaring a inconsequential donation, ever be in a position where they put their job on the line for doing the correct thing? Judges on the other hand have only a duty to the law, and while they can be criticised for not issuing a warrant that perhaps would have stopped a terrorist plot or at least caught the people earlier the only thing that can be blamed is the law and/or the trend of trying to bag terrorists before there is any proof of them being such.

And it is this trend that brings up the next set of issues, this time from the anti-terrorism legislation that the government are trying to push through. The first is the now well trodden issue of MPs giving the thumbs up or thumbs down to the extension of the time limit terrorist suspects are being held to. It's no secret that the legislation is flawed as it is with MPs working to their own timetable, not that of the incarcerated, and thus able to vote against extending the detention period to 42 days after the suspect has already been held that long. Quite aside from the bizarre intricacies of how the law is geared towards making it look like MPs have power that they don't, one has to ask why it is MPs that get to make the decision in the final instance anyway? Are MPs universally versed in criminal law and independent enough to be able to objectively making a decision on whether it is lawful for a person to be held for longer than 28 days? Surely this is the job, again, for a judge? What is this governments beef with taking powers away from people specifically qualified to do what they themselves are now bestowing upon themselves?

The Home Secretary wants an "on-off button" to intern suspects - not in times of emergency but at moments of convenience. She strains to dismiss rational alternatives. So-called parliamentary and judicial safeguards are close to laughable. - Shami Chakrabarti

Buried amongst the other civil right infringing problems of the bill however comes news of yet more authoritarian control that perhaps has been missed regarding plans to give government the power to remove juries and coroners from some inquests, replacing the coroner with their own appointee. Dare we say this was intentionally buried as much as possible by Gordon and his government? I shouldn't need to explain how dangerous such a precedent is for allowing a government to intervene in a process that has, for all intents and purposes, never been a problem. The idea that this measure will be used "sparingly" as ministers suggest can only be classed as utterly laughable given what I've already found about ministers being unwilling to turn down a warrant for political reasons, why on earth would they put their jobs on the line when they can exercise so much control over judicial process?

Neither the Director of Public Prosecutions nor the last Attorney-General have seen the evidence to go beyond 28 days. Terrorism will be defeated by good intelligence, professional policing and the rigorous application of justice, not by incursions into the freedoms and rights that British subjects have had for centuries. - David Davis

Finally, just to put the icing on the cake, Labour leaning speaker Michael Martin has convened a "root and branch" review of MP spending. The problem? Well as WestBrom blogger says, he's picked three MPs to do the task, two of which are very distinctly biased against resolving in the way of more transparancy, and absolutely no independent or expert bodies to give the committee legitimacy. It is perhaps this act that most soundly analogises the rest of the labour government, where the right thing is attempted to be done in terms of what the public sees and hears yet where in practice the potentially corrupt and interest conflicted individuals hold the power to make changes. It is ultimately this behaviour that makes the public trust elected representatives less, not just the actions of people like Derek Conway in the first place.

It was bad enough that Michael Wills and Jack Straw can state the next stage for Electoral Reform widely accepted as needed will be a referendum, yet brush off such a move for an indefinite period of time, and the police reneging on the independent rulings of an arbitration panel on police pay was an anger inducing betrayal of the trust between government and their servants. Now however I personally believe that these latest instances of potential and apparent government/parliamentary power are truly worrying, scary even, putting our lives in the hands of people with varying levels of intelligence and expertise on the issues that they are being asked to make judgements on, with thoughts about keeping their own job and party in power conflicting with the task of independent and objective decision making.

It wasn't long ago that Conor Burns at CentreRight stated a wish that quango's no longer lay as an elephant in the room, yet I think that he along with us all have missed a trick with the shift of power distinctly moving towards central government. I personally couldn't disagree with the perspective of Conor Burns more of course, quango's are necessary to keep decisions as objective as possible and based on expertise rather than political agendas. I've already looked in to research myself that says people stop voting because of time constraints, lack of marginality and thus their vote barely counting in their constituency, and disenfranchisement with parties looking too much alike...but even if this weren't the case I'd believe that the only reason the public would be stopping voting because of a lack of power in the MPs hands is because as a result we don't feel like we have to rush to the polling station to remove that power from them ourselves.