This is part 2 of a series, part 1 can be found here.

Branching on from my last post in this series, I want to start discussing areas of governance and parliament that I feel that needs pressure applying to it to reform or change. In the future I will be bringing some more thoughts about things including electoral reform and consultation in a technological age. Right now, however, I want to talk about debate, legislation and the irrelevancy surrounding it.

Let's make one thing clear to start off with, a debate that leads to no conclusion is worthless. In the blogosphere it is easily argued that debates go to informing others and forming your own opinions, and doing so costs us very little outside of a hosting fee. In parliament it's a different situation though, with too many debates leading to nothing due to insane rules on scheduling and thus costing the taxpayer money in a fake exercise in "democracy".

This year we've had two excellent bills go before parliament, one regarding changing daylight savings to save lives and energy, and another to give votes to 16 year olds. Both were talked out of the commons. With no vote taken at all to even decide whether the measures were worth pursuing further, archaic rules meant that someone standing up and taking their time in opposition to the bill can effectively become a one person veto on a bill they don't like.

There are other bills coming up soon that also look like positive, and I fear that they too will be a waste of time in parliament leading to no action, including the removal of DNA samples from databases for the unconvicted, citizen involvement in policy prioritisation, etc. What can be done?

Well the news of parliamentary e-petitions is encouraging as long as they are given more importance than the largely irrelevant PM e-petitions. Petitions currently provide instant access to telling politicians what we think and as advertising them takes much less effort than traditional petitions they have the potential to get a broader span of opinion straight to the letter boxes of MPs, so to speak. But what use is it if government still holds so much control over schedules of legislation and debate?

Some say that it is the advantage of being in power, and I agree. If you have won the race then it is your policies you primarily want to implement. However Brown has announced already that he has 18 full bills ready to roll for the next year. While priority should go to those in power, to government more specifically, what is the problem with an independent body being created to help with this prioritisation? We talk about need for transparency in expenses yet we don't ask for any transparency in our legislative programme. Granted, the schedule seems to be a very simple one that isn't exactly full of subterfuge but why do we operate a system where bills that, if we were to assess them properly, would be seen to be impractical, unnecessary or too close to previous debates?

At the very least changes need to be made to enable politicians and the house of commons to understand which bills they need to give more time, if through these changes it was so that bills such as votes at 16 were very unlikely to see the light of day I could live with that as long as we had a transparent way of seeing the necessity and impact that the bills chosen to be debated and voted on have. Ideally I'd like to see the commons e-petition system linking to this body of greater scrutiny over the "need" for each bill individually, and an assurance of every bill debated being guaranteed to be voted on one way or another.

This is not a partisan request, and is one all people outside Westminster should be able to get on board with. Giving the public a sense of ownership over the direction of our country is something Labour purported to believe in but have yet to have followed through with in any way, and this is a way it can be done. It also is something everyone should be able to get on board with to remove the pointlessness of debating things without conclusion. If this means we need to cut down the amount of bills discussed in parliament then fine, and we can start with the obscene amount and content of the government's current crop.

The public, all of us, don't want everything under the sun discussed and debated, especially without resolution. We want positive changes and progressive legislation. Imagine how invigorated the politics in this country could have been with an immediate change in electoral rules to allow 16 year olds to vote, to make a statement about energy saving by changing the hours of our day. Instead we languish in a quagmire of government only laws that end up making us more depressed than hopeful about the future.