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Thank you for that introduction,
and it is a great pleasure to be here at the Open University.
And at a time when we're talking about change and modernisation
in our politics,
I think the Open University's something of an example
of the success that change and modernisation can bring.
Respected the world over,
you are a demonstration that in this country we can, yes,
have some of the best old universities in the world
but also some of the best innovation in the world
such as we have through the Open University.
These have been dramatic and turbulent weeks
for our whole political process.
We've had a torrent of revelation and accusation.
Apologies have been made.
Money has been paid back. Careers have been ended.
The Speaker has resigned.
Reform has been accelerated.
We have in the past two weeks taken rapid and far-reaching steps
to clean up the system of MPs' expenses,
to prevent abuse and to ensure transparency.
And there will be much, much more to come.
In the Conservative Party, our scrutiny panel
is methodically doing its work
and soon will have gone through the expense claims
of each and every Conservative MP.
We will know how much money needs to be paid back,
and my Members of Parliament know
that they must work with this scrutiny panel
or they will lose the whip, they will cease to be Conservative MPs.
And as I have already said,
I will consider asking the board of my Party
to initiate a re-selection process
in those constituencies where I believe it is necessary.
But the public reaction to this political crisis
is far too serious to be assuaged by any instant package of measures
or just the sight of MPs paying the price for unethical behaviour.
As I have said all along, this must be just the start.
And I have also argued
that the best way of dealing with this political crisis
would be to hold an immediate general election.
In part, that is because the public, not politicians,
should have the final verdict on what each MP has done.
But it's also because the British people's fury
at the politicians today
I believe indicates a much deeper problem in our political system.
Today I want to examine that deeper problem
and explain the changes that I believe we need.
In the past few days and weeks
there has been much excited talk about revolution.
I think that is overblown.
We must keep cool heads and a sense of proportion.
But, equally, we must not let ourselves believe
that a bit of technocratic tinkering here
or a bit of constitutional consultation there will do the trick.
No. This political crisis shows that big change is required.
We do need a new politics in this country.
We do need sweeping reform.
But we've absolutely got to get it right.
And that means fundamentally understanding
what it is that's gone wrong.
Now, of course, the immediate trigger of the anger over expenses
is the realisation of what some MPs
have actually been doing with taxpayers' money.
But the fundamental cause is, I believe, something different.
It is in fact the same thing that made people so angry
about the bankers who got rich
while bringing the economy to its knees.
It's the reason people are angry with the councils
that fine them for putting out their rubbish on the wrong day.
It's the reason people get angry with NHS managers
who shut down a much-loved maternity unit.
Or with the local officials who are super-efficient
when it comes to chasing up your council tax bill,
but sometimes super-useless when it comes to giving your child
the place in the school that you want.
It's the reason that so many innocent citizens
now mistrust or on occasion even fear the police,
the very people who should be protecting them,
and why so many people increasingly feel that the state
is their enemy and not their ally.
The anger, the suspicion and the cynicism,
yes, with politics and politicians,
but also with so much else besides,
I believe they are the result of people's slow but sure realisation
that they have very little control over the world around them
and over so much that determines
whether or not they will live happy and fulfilling lives.
In media, in shopping, in travel, in entertainment or music,
we have huge choice and huge control
from many organisations
that offer us incredible service and value.
But when it comes to the things we ask from politics,
from government, from the state,
there's a sense of power and control draining away,
having to take what you're given,
with someone else pulling the strings.
And when people see MPs caught cheating but still clinging on,
or bankers reaping their bonuses despite breaking the economy,
or bureaucrats whose incompetence is never punished,
they see a world that is built to benefit powerful elites
and they feel a huge but impotent anger.
So we rage at our political system
because we feel it's self-serving, not serving us.
We rage at the police for doing what they want
rather than doing what we want them do .
We rage at the local post office
that was shut down because some bureaucrat or management consultant
in some distant glass tower decided it didn't make enough money,
even though we know it made a profit
and everyone in the community used it and loved it.
We rage that the GP's surgery, where we know the doctors and nurses,
they know us, they know our families, is threatened with closure
because some minister miles away
decides that it's more efficient for us to be sort of "processed"
in a facility in a town far away.
Pounded by forces outside their control,
people feel increasingly powerless,
deprived of opportunities to shape the world around them
and at the mercy of powerful elites that preside over them.
Now, this wouldn't be so bad
if the powerful simply left the powerless
to get on with the rest of their lives.
But in Britain today there's a growing culture of rule-ticking,
box-ticking, rule-following and central prescription
that robs people of the chance to use their judgement
or to take responsibility for making the right decisions.
And there's an increasingly Orwellian surveillance state,
symbolised by the simultaneously
ineffective and intrusive ID cards scheme
that reminds people that the powers-that-be
don't really trust them.
So this compounds the anger that we feel.
We rage that as we go about our business,
we are picked and poked and bossed around,
annoyed and irritated and endlessly harassed
by public and private sector officialdom.
This officialdom treats us like children
with rules and regulations and directives and laws
that no one seems to have voted for, no one supports,
but no one ever seems to be able to do the slightest thing about.
No trust. No discretion. No judgment.
Just the grey, monotonous, maddening refrains
of life in Britain too much of the time:
"I'm sorry, I don't make the rules."
"It's for your own safety."
"It's child protection, I'm afraid."
Or the one that gets me the most:
"I do agree, but unfortunately that's the system."
This rise in top-down cultural authoritarianism,
combined with the steady growth in the size and scope of the state,
has created an entitlement culture
where self-reliance and social responsibility are gradually eroded,
to the point where good people routinely do bad things.
In this world MPs can claim they were following the rules
without asking whether they were doing the right thing.
Benefit claimants can cheat the system and not feel guilty
because that's what the system's there for.
Bankers acting recklessly can say they've been cleared by the regulator
and then demand a bailout from taxpayer.
This is how social workers in Haringey
thought they had an excellent service that ticked all the boxes.
And this is how a policeman ended up arresting
and banging up in a police cell
a bishop who had allowed his son
to climb onto the roof of his own house,
with a safety harness on,
and the police then used the Home Office guidance
to excuse what anyone would realise is inexcusable.
When people feel powerless, they also feel anxious and insecure.
So we work the longest hours.
We are the least trusting and loneliest people in the rich world.
We lose our temper more than any other people in Europe.
And we have record family breakdown,
record teenage pregnancy, record childhood obesity,
record drug abuse, and record violent crime.
The list goes on and on
and I believe it's the direct result
of the collapse in personal responsibility
that inevitably follows the leeching of power and control
away from the individual and the community
and placing it in the hands of the elite.
Our philosophy of progressive Conservatism,
that's the pursuit of progressive goals through Conservative means,
aims to reverse this.
We want to reverse our social atomisation
by giving people the power to work collectively with their peers
to solve common problems.
We want to reverse our society's infantilisation
by inviting people to look to themselves, to their communities
and the wider society for answers,
instead of just looking to the state.
And above all we want to encourage people to behave responsibly
because they should know that doing the right thing
and taking responsibility
will be recognised and will make a difference.
So I believe there is only one way out
of the national crisis that we face.
We need a massive, sweeping, radical redistribution of power.
From the state to citizens, from the government to Parliament,
from Whitehall to communities.
From Brussels to Britain, from judges to the people,
from bureaucracy to democracy.
Through decentralisation, transparency and accountability,
we must take power away from the political elite
and give it to the man and woman on the street.
It's that redistribution of power that I want to focus on today.
Yes, that means reforming Parliament.
But it also means much, much more besides.
The reform that is now required, this redistribution of power and control,
must go through nearly every public institution, not just Parliament.
Now, we should start by pushing political power down
as far as possible, wherever possible.
To do this, politicians will have to change their attitude big time.
Politicians and the senior civil servants
and the advisors who work for them instinctively hoard power
because they think that's the way to get things done.
Well, we're going to have to kill that instinct,
and, believe me, I know how hard it will be to do.
It will require a serious culture change amongst ministers,
amongst Whitehall officials and beyond.
Every decision government makes,
it should ask itself a series of simple questions:
Does this give power to people or take it away?
Could we let individuals, neighbourhoods and communities
take control?
How far can we push power down?
Now, it's by asking those questions
that we arrived at our plans for school reform.
Right now, parents just have to hope for the best
and take what school place they're given.
You sit there waiting for the letter from the council,
hoping to get your first choice of school
or at least hoping you avoid the schools at the bottom of your list.
One of the most important things in your life,
the education of your children, is largely out of your hands.
Our reforms will take the power over children's education
out of the council's hands and put it directly in parents' hands,
so they have control.
We will end the state monopoly in state education,
so that any suitably qualified organisation can set up a new school
and any parent who isn't happy
with the education their child is actually receiving
can send their child to a new school, backed by state money,
including a new extra payment for children from the poorest families.
This is the kind of redistribution of power
that will be the starting point for a Conservative government:
transferring power and control directly to individuals.
But it's not always possible to give power back to individuals,
and in those cases, we need to do the next best thing,
which is to redistribute power
to neighbourhoods to and local government.
Our plans for housing, for example, will give real control
over the size, shape, look and feel of their community
back to local people.
So instead of raging impotently
at some distant regional government's decision
to dump thousands of new houses in their town,
without any thought about the impact on traffic or public services
or the character of the community,
through new Local Housing Trusts,
neighbourhoods will themselves have the power
to build the houses they want.
If a town or a village can agree amongst itself
an increase in the size of the town
and where the houses ought to go and the sort of tenure they ought to be,
they won't need to go through all the hoops.
They will basically be given planning permission to do that.
It's a radical proposal
and I believe will make a big difference
to house building in our country.
And we're going to empower local councils
by cutting right back on all the interference
and the instructions they get from central government,
the rules, the restrictions, the targets and the inspections.
We're going to get rid of the pointless and unaccountable
regional government and bureaucracy,
and we will end the central ring-fencing of local budgets.
We're going to replace bureaucratic accountability
with democratic accountability.
Instead of all the central government targets and controls
to make sure councils spend money wisely,
we will simply require councils to publish online
details of all their spending over £25,000,
and to get approval for any excessive tax increases,
they will have to hold a local referendum.
So newly empowered councils
will be able to keep the proceeds of any activities
that boost local economic growth
They will have a new general power of competence,
so they will be able to do whatever they like as long as it's legal,
creating solutions to local problems
without first having to get permission from the centre.
This sweeping new power for local government
will make it much more responsive to local concerns
Think of the train station threatened with closure.
Why can't the council step in and help?
Think of the problems with the Post Office.
One council, Essex, has actually helped set up a new bank,
and is working with the Post Office to keep branches open.
These are the sorts of things that more councils would do
if we had a general power of competence.
I believe this will be particularly powerful
once we've legislated to create a new power of citizen's initiative,
with local referenda on issues
where over five per cent of the electorate have signed up.
Now, these changes add up to a massive redistribution of power
from central government to local government,
just like our plan to give those in our cities real civic leadership
through directly-elected mayors,
and to put policing under local democratic control.
Forget the Home Office and all those useless Home Secretaries
whose failure to deliver on their crime-fighting rhetoric
has done so much to undermine faith in politics.
With real local accountability,
people will be able to use the power of the ballot box
to get the effective beat-based policing and crime prevention
that they want so badly
and which the centralisation of political power
has denied them for years.
Now, when you talk to a lot of politicians in Westminster
about decentralisation, they say, "We're all for it."
But mention local government
and you're often met with a bit of a roll of the eyes.
There is a sort of patronising assumption
that those in local government simply aren't up to the job.
Well, first of all, I don't believe that's true.
For the last few weeks I've been up and down the country
campaigning in these elections, meeting councillors,
and I've been struck, as I always am,
by their knowledge of the local area,
the connection they have with their constituents
and their dedication to making people's lives better.
Now, of course, we can trust them with more power and control.
But even if the snobbishness was true,
the argument, I believe, for decentralisation still holds,
because if we give more power to local government,
if you make it more meaningful,
then more good people will want to get involved.
Now, there will be a useful by-product
from this redistribution of power
to individuals, neighbourhoods, local councils and cities.
When you shift power to the bottom,
you actually start reducing the bills at the top.
Today, we have got
far too many Members of Parliament in Westminster.
More people sit in the House of Commons
than in any other comparable elected chamber in the world.
This is neither cost effective nor politically effective.
It's just more people finding more interfering ways
of spending your money.
I think we can do a better job with fewer MPs.
We can, to coin a phrase, deliver more for less.
So at the election we will include proposals in our manifesto
to ask the Boundary Commission to reduce the House of Commons,
initially by ten per cent.
And while they're at it, we will ask them to get rid of unfair distortions
in the system,
so that every constituency is the same size
in each of the nations of the United Kingdom.
But as well as cutting the size of Parliament,
we have got to reform it as well.
Again, the driving principle of reform
should be the redistribution of power,
from the powerful to the powerless.
That means boosting Parliament's power
to hold the government of the day to account.
Now, as any historian will tell you,
the House of Commons' historic functions
were to vote money for the government
and to scrutinise laws.
It now barely bothers with the first
and it does the second, passing laws, extremely badly.
There was a time when legislation that had been formulated
after months of civil service and ministerial deliberation
was sent to the House of Commons,
which would then pore over it, shape it,
send it back, get it back, look at it again, improve it some more.
Bill by Bill. Clause by clause. Line by line.
Every piece of legislation would be put under intense scrutiny.
Is it legally sound? Will it be effective? Is it worth the cost?
Now, compare that to today.
Let me take you on the journey of a piece of legislation
as it passes through the modern House of Commons.
It's likely to have been dreamt up
on the sofa of Number Ten, Downing Street.
A bill is then hastily drafted.
It's sent to the House of Commons
for a few hours of routine debate amongst a few MPs.
Then the bell rings, the whip gets cracked
and suddenly, out of nowhere, all these MPs turn up to vote.
More often than not, they don't even know what they're voting for.
The bill limps through. Then it goes to a Standing Committee.
Now, their duty is to look at the details clause by clause.
But the committee is packed full of people that the whips have put there.
So, surprise, surprise, the government rarely loses the vote
on any individual points of detailed scrutiny.
And then it's back to the House of Commons to do it all over again,
debate, bell, vote to wave it through.
Every bill now has a programme motion that goes with it
setting out how much time can be spent
scrutinising and debating each part of the bill, in advance.
These are automatic guillotines,
and the time allowed for scrutiny is set in advance,
before anyone can really see
whether or not a particular issue is contentious or complex.
I remember sitting on the committee for a criminal justice bill,
and one part of that bill was a big change
to transfer from the police to the Crown Prosecution Service
the job of charging suspects,
quite an important change.
We didn't debate it at all because the guillotine had fallen
before we got to that bit of the bill.
So this big change in how we charge suspects
was never really scrutinised or examined
by the House of Commons and the people you pay to send there.
And watching a minister in the Commons
drawing out one point for an hour to fill the time,
to an audience of dozing backbenchers,
this is not accountability.
How has the mother of all Parliaments
turned itself into such a pliant child?
If we're serious about redistributing power
from the powerful to the powerless,
it's time to strengthen Parliament
so it can properly hold the government to account
on behalf of voters.
Ken Clarke's Democracy Task Force
made a number of valuable recommendations
for strengthening Parliament
which we have already accepted as policy.
The House of Commons should have more control over its timetable,
so there's time for proper scrutiny and debate.
MPs should be more independent,
so Select Committee Chairmen and members
should be elected by backbenchers, not appointed by the whips.
There should be much less whipping during the committee stages of a bill
because that's when you need
really proper, impartial, effective scrutiny,
not partisan point-scoring and posturing.
The report stage of a bill should be just that:
a genuine report from the committee to the full House of Commons
about what they actually thought about this piece of legislation.
And we should also limit the use of the Royal Prerogative,
so Parliament is properly involved in all the big national decisions,
and we should also expand the use of confirmation hearings
for major public appointments.
Strengthening our Parliament will also require a strong Speaker.
Now, yes, that means someone with real authority,
who commands respect across party lines and with the public.
But more than that, they need to understand
that their first duty is not actually to Parliament
but it's to the people Parliament serves.
So top of any new Speaker's in-tray
must surely be the need to make Parliament more transparent.
Parliament should be the most open, the most accessible
and the most welcoming institution in our country.
Why? Because it belongs to you, the people,
not us, the politicians.
But it's not just by decentralising power and reforming Parliament
that we can redistribute power away from an over-mighty executive.
We need to end the culture of sofa government
where unaccountable spin doctors in Number Ten, Downing Street,
whether it's Alistair Campbell or Damian McBride,
sort of toss around ideas, make up policies,
not to meet the national interest
but to hit some dividing line with your opponent
and to meet the time of the news cycle.
So we will put limits on the number of political advisers,
strengthen the Ministerial Code,
protect the independence of the Civil Service,
including through a Civil Service act,
and ensure that more decisions are made by the Cabinet as a whole.
We also need to look seriously
at the immense power that prime ministers wield
through their ability to call an election whenever they want.
Now, there are strong political and moral arguments
against fixed-term parliaments.
Political arguments,
because there is nothing worse than a lame-duck government
with a tiny majority limping on for years,
when the country needs strong government.
And there are moral arguments,
because when a prime minister has gone into an election
and won it promising to serve a full term
but hands over to an unelected leader half-way through,
the people do deserve an election as soon as possible.
These arguments are, of course, particularly relevant today.
But I believe the arguments for fixed-term parliaments
are strengthening too.
Because if we want Parliament to be a real engine of accountability,
we need to show that it is not just the creature of the executive
to be dissolved on the whim of the prime minister.
That's why a Conservative Government will seriously consider
the option of fixed term parliaments when there is a majority government.
But it's also why a Conservative Government
will not consider introducing proportional representation.
And let me explain why.
The principle underlying all the political reforms
a new Conservative Government would make
is the progressive principle of redistributing power and control
from the powerful to the powerless.
Proportional representation, I believe, would move us
in the opposite direction,
which is why I'm so surprised it's still on the wish-list
of the progressive reformers.
PR takes power away from the man and woman in the street
and hands it to the political elites.
Instead of voters choosing their government
on the basis of the manifesto
and the leadership put before them at an election,
party managers would choose a government
on the basis of secret backroom deals.
How is that going to deliver
the transparency and the trust that we need?
And hybrid systems, like AV Plus, Alternative Vote Plus,
I believe are even worse.
They're not proportional,
and they represent something of a political fix.
They're put forward by parties thinking,
"Well, this might help me in my difficult current circumstances."
So something like AV Plus
has neither the advantage of fairness,
because it's not proportional,
nor is it particularly effective
because it actually becomes harder to remove a government
and have the change a country might desire.
But the tragic truth today
is that no matter how much we strengthen Parliament
or hold government to account,
there will still be forces at work in our country
that are completely unaccountable to the people of Britain.
People and organisations that have huge power over our daily lives
and yet which no citizen can really get at.
Almost half of the regulations affecting our businesses
now come from the European Union.
And since the advent of the Human Rights Act,
judges are increasingly making our laws.
The EU and judges,
neither of them really accountable to British citizens,
and they have both taken too much power
over issues that are contested aspects of public policy
and which should therefore be settled
in the realm of democratic national politics.
It's no wonder people feel so disillusioned
with politics and Parliament
when they see so many big decisions that affect their lives
being made somewhere else by someone else.
So a progressive reform agenda demands that we redistribute power
from the European Union to Britain and from judges to the people.
So we will therefore hold a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty,
pass a law requiring a referendum
to approve any further transfers of power
from Westminster to Brussels,
we would negotiate the return of powers
and require far more detailed scrutiny in Parliament
of European legislation, regulation and spending.
And in terms of the judges,
we will introduce a British Bill of Rights to strengthen our liberties,
spell out the extent and limit of rights more clearly,
and ensure proper democratic accountability
over the creation of new rights.
Now, everything I've spoken about, redistributing power to people,
reinstating accountability in our politics,
all of it will, I hope, help get people
more involved in politics and public policy
and help end that despairing sense of powerlessness
that I think pervades our society.
But there is one more item on the agenda,
and that is transparency.
Ask most people, you know, where politics happens
and they would paint a picture of sort of tight-knit tribes
making important decisions in wood-panelled rooms,
all of them speaking a pretty strange language.
Now, if we want people to have faith and get involved,
we need to defeat this impression by opening politics up,
making everything transparent, accessible and human.
And the starting point for reform
should be a near-total transparency of the political and governing elite,
so people can see what is done in their name.
Why? Well, first, because transparency tears down
the hiding places for ***, for over-spending and corruption.
Soon enough all MPs' expenses
are going to be published online for everyone to see.
I and the rest of the Shadow Cabinet are already doing it.
You can see our expense claims going up on the internet.
And I can tell you, this will change behaviour
and cut costs at the same time.
That's the power of transparency.
And if we win the next election, we're going to do the same thing
for all other public servants earning over £150,000 a year.
Just imagine the effect that an army of armchair auditors
is going to have on all those expense claims.
Indeed, the promise of public scrutiny
is going to have a powerful effect on overspending of any variety.
A Conservative Government will put all national spending over £25,000
online for everyone to see,
so citizens can hold the Government to account
for how their tax money is being spent.
And we will extend this principle of transparency
to every nook and cranny of politics and public life,
because it's one of the quickest and easiest ways
to transfer power to the powerless
and prevent waste, exploitation and abuse.
That's why, for example,
all our Conservative candidates in the European Parliament
have signed a pledge setting out new standards
of transparency and ethical behaviour.
Every Conservative MEP elected next week
will publish online a breakdown of all their office costs,
all travel, names of any members of staff they employ,
details if they're family members,
details of all meetings with businesses, lobbyists
and other interest groups.
But transparency isn't just about cleaning up politics,
it's also about opening up politics.
Right now a tiny percentage of the population craft legislation
that will apply to everyone, to a hundred percent of the population.
This locks out countless people across the country
whose expertise could really help.
So why not invite them into the process?
We will create a right of initiative nationally,
where if you collect enough signatures,
you can get your proposals debated in the House of Commons
and they could subsequently become law.
And we'll open up the legislative process in other ways too.
The way that bills are published online today
is stifling innovation and blocking democratic engagement.
So a Conservative government will publish all parliamentary information
online in an open-source format.
This will help people easily access bills and other legislation
in order to create useful applications,
like text alerts when something you're interested in is debated.
And it will mean many more expert eyes
helping to explain laws as they're formed,
flagging up flaws and making suggestions for improvements.
It's all about harnessing the wisdom of crowds.
Anything that acts as a barrier between politics and the public
has got to be torn down, including the ridiculous ban
on parliamentary proceedings being uploaded to YouTube.
We need a change of government
to drive through this transparency agenda
because, let's face it, we are not going to get it from Gordon Brown
and the Labour government
who tried to block the publication of MPs' expenses
by exempting Parliament from the Freedom of Information Act.
But this spirit of glasnost, it needs to extend beyond Parliament
and throughout our political parties too.
One of the reforms I'm most proud of
is the widespread introduction of open primaries
for the selection of Conservative parliamentary candidates
in recent years.
What this means is instead of the party members
choosing the candidate,
they open up the meeting to anyone in the constituency
who can prove that they live there,
it doesn't matter whether they are Labour or Liberal or Conservative,
or can't bear any of you,
and they can all come in and help choose
the Conservative Party candidate.
It's been very successful,
and I urge other parties to use it as well.
I want to see it being the standard way
for most of the selections to take place.
In time, this will have a transformative effect
on our politics,
taking power from the party elites and the old-boy network,
giving it to the people.
Now, the lack of power and control
people experience in their daily lives
was barely tolerable when things were good.
But now that times are hard
and people are on the receiving end of wage cuts, job losses,
negative equity, home repossessions
and revelations about their rulers' behaviour,
which has frankly disgusted them,
they are furious and finally demanding big change.
Today I'm making clear that big change and a new politics
is exactly what people can expect from a Conservative government.
We will begin a massive redistribution
of power in our country from the powerful to the powerless,
from the political elite to the man and the woman in the street.
Local control over schools, housing and policing.
The right to initiate local and national referenda.
More mayors, fewer quangos.
Open primaries for parliamentary candidates.
Curbing the power of the whips in Parliament
and the spin doctors in government.
Fewer Members of Parliament.
Everything about our political process published online,
all the time: the expenses, the spending,
the lobbying, parliamentary proceedings, the lot.
That adds up, I believe, to a serious agenda for new politics,
and it's one of the reasons why I think the best way
of resolving the present crisis is for a general election to be held.
Now, I know you've heard politicians promise this kind of thing before.
But the times are right to do it properly now.
We're living in an age where technology can put information
that was previously held by a few into the hands of almost everyone.
So the argument that has applied for well over a century,
that in every area of life we need people at the centre
to make sense of the world for us
and to make decisions on our behalf, that simply falls away.
And in its place rises up a vision of real people power.
This is what we mean by the Post-Bureaucratic Age.
It is, if you like, the information revolution
meets progressive Conservative political philosophy.
We're sceptical about big state power,
committed to social responsibility and non-state collective action.
The effects of this redistribution of power
can be felt throughout our politics,
with people in control of the things that matter to them
and a country where the political system is open and trustworthy
and where power is redistributed from the political elite
to the man and the woman in the street.
Thank you very much for listening.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Very happy to take some questions.
There's a man with a microphone here.
Gentleman at the back with the rugby shirt.
Thank you. My name's Paul Sergeant.
I was actually a city councillor in Oxford for some time
and we have met before.
I have got two questions, basically,
about reorganising and making things more transparent.
The first is where you have two-tier local government,
quite often people are frustrated
by the fact that a service for, say, street lighting,
is with one authority,
and the actual highway and the pavement is with another,
- and confusion arises there. - Yeah.
And the second is the so-called modernisation of local government,
a number of years ago,
formed Cabinet government locally,
and that has completely
sort of taken away power from the average councillor
and put it in the hands of perhaps four, five or six elite councillors.
Yeah. On the second point, it's a classical example
of top-down government instruction and interference.
Government basically said,
central government said to local government,
"You have to arrange your affairs in the..."
...engaged councillors from right across the district.
And I think we should allow local councils to decide
how they want to run their affairs.
So we would actually change that and say to local councils,
"If you want to have a committee system, you go ahead and have that."
"You don't have to have the Cabinet system as set out."
You're right that people can get very confused
that the county council's in charge of the roads,
but the town council's running the street lights
and the district council's clearing up the rubbish.
There is confusion.
However, I don't believe that the answer is having unitary councils
stripping away lots and lots of councils.
I think, again, particularly in large rural areas,
people do feel a connection with their district council
because it's very local and they understand it
and it's familiar to them,
and I don't believe the answer to disengagement with politics
is actually just to say big is beautiful,
to have bigger and bigger councils
that are more and more distant from people.
What you want is this power of competence,
so local councils can work out between themselves
how to share costs, how to eliminate overheads.
My district council, for instance, has decided to team up
with a neighbouring one and have one chief executive,
and to share a lot of their overheads and services between them.
They didn't do that 'cause they were told to by Whitehall.
They did it because they had the enterprise from below,
and I think we should have far more respect for that.
Gentleman with the glasses.
Could you tell us what you're proposing to do
about the House of Lords?
Yep. I think...
I believe that in a democracy, you should have elected chambers,
rather than chambers of appointed parliamentarians.
But I have to say when I look at both ends of the corridor
and I think to myself, "Well, where is the urgency for reform?"
I believe the urgency for reform is in the Commons rather than the Lords.
And I do that as someone who's thinking,
"Right, well, who does the job best?"
And I think you can argue today
that the scrutiny the House of Lords puts in to legislation
and the improvements they make to it
is much greater than what happens in the Commons.
So, yes, we should have a plan to have a...
I would argue for a predominantly elected House of Lords,
and that is something I'm committed to.
But the urgency for reform, I believe,
is to make the Commons a more effective chamber.
Right now, the Commons passes loads of legislation,
it doesn't scrutinise it properly, the whips are too powerful,
Select Committee chairmanships are handed out by the prime minister,
effectively, to people he's got rid of as ministers.
That's just wrong.
So I think the real need for reform today is the Commons
and we should focus on that.
In the House of Lords, I do believe that they have their own problems
over expenses and allowances,
and that has to be gripped really quite quickly.
I suspect that could well be the next big scandal coming down the track.
So in terms of Lords reform, we need to sort out the issue
of expelling lords who misbehave.
We recently found out the power doesn't exist for that.
And we also need to sort out their expenses and allowances system.
Reform of the Lords will have to take longer.
Gentleman right at the back.
Come to you in a minute.
Mr Cameron, as a party leader,
are you willing to start devolving power now to your own MPs?
Rather than using the Whips Office to tell the MPs how to vote,
instead present the arguments, make the case,
and allow your MPs to be our representatives
and vote according to their own judgement.
I would argue I have already started to do that.
I mean, on, for instance, the embryology bill,
where the government started off by having a party whip on it,
I insisted all the way through it was free votes for all of my MPs,
and I pushed the prime minister at question time after question time
to make sure that he made it a free vote too.
Eventually he did actually give in.
What I'd like to see is more free votes,
particularly on non-manifesto issues.
I think that, you know, a government does have a responsibility
to put in front of the electorate its programme,
its plans, what it wants to do,
and those things that are in a manifesto,
I think you have every right to say to your Members of Parliament,
"Right, we were all elected on this ticket,
and, as a team, we need to take this ticket through Parliament."
And we need to make sure the House of Lords understand that too.
But when issues arise that are outside of the manifesto,
I think there should be much more room for free votes.
Now, I'm particularly attracted to more free votes, as I said,
on standing committees.
Because when you take a bill
which is part of the ticket you get elected on,
let's say, my plans for school reform,
you know, you're elected on a very clear proposal
to change schools in the way that we've set out,
as that bill goes into a standing committee,
I think there is an argument for saying,
right, you've got a bunch of MPs looking at it
clause by clause, line by line.
Don't whip so much there.
Allow them to look at the detail of that bill and to make recommendations
that then come back to the House of Commons.
So they report back about what they've found.
Being on a standing committee at the moment, for a backbench MP,
is a really fairly meaningless aspect.
Because even if you and your colleagues
in the Labour Party or the Liberal Party
find something that's profoundly wrong with the drafting of the bill,
more often than not, the minister will just put the...
the whips will go on for the vote
and it'll be carried through exactly as the minister wants it.
So that's where I think the need for free votes, or more free votes,
is actually the greatest.
The lady in the front.
Cheers. Thank you.
Mr Cameron, of all the places in the country you could have chosen
to make this speech today,
you've chosen to come to Milton Keynes.
Why?
Well, I thought, actually, as I said at the beginning,
the Open University is a very good example
of successful modernisation.
We could have said as a country,
"Well, we've got great universities, we've got Imperial College
and we've got the great universities of Durham and Bristol and Exeter
and Oxford and Cambridge."
"Why do we need to innovate?"
But, actually, the Open University has been a fantastic innovation
that is being copied in other parts of the world,
that's a great success story for how people now want to learn,
which is not just doing a degree
between the age of 18 and 21
but learning throughout your life.
So it seems to me a bit of the fresh air
of reform and modernisation is needed in our politics,
so it's quite a good metaphor to be here today in the Open University.
Why Milton Keynes?
I'm always very straightforward and honest about these things.
You might have noticed that Milton Keynes includes two constituencies,
one which is highly marginal,
which I will be hoping to win people over at the next election.
And that's another reason for being back in Milton Keynes,
'cause I've been here quite a lot recently.
One more question. Let's have the gentleman at the back.
There's a microphone just coming round. They've got get round the...
Thanks. Mr Cameron, assuming you win the next general election,
will your greatest priority be this reform agenda
or sorting out the current mess that the economy's in
and particularly the mountain of public debt?
The most important thing for our country is the economy.
There's no doubt that coming out of this recession,
which I believe we should do this year,
making sure that recovery is strong and robust,
rebalancing our economy,
and, as you say, dealing with the appalling fiscal situation,
with the debt crisis that if we win we will inherit,
that clearly is going to be the most important task for a new government.
And by far the most difficult task
'cause it will involve painful, long-term, difficult decisions.
But in politics you can't just do one thing
and push everything else out the way.
I think we have to recognise that we have, if you like,
a broken politics, a broken economy,
and, I would also argue, in many places quite a badly broken society.
Now, you can't just do one and ignore the others.
I feel with the political crisis we face
that the outlines of the simple steps
to deal with the issue of MPs' expenses,
I think it's very clear now how to do that,
that you have the total transparency,
which means MPs will behave in a totally different way
and it will reduce the cost of our system.
And the things that I've set out, which are relatively straightforward
and many of them easy to put in place.
That needs to be done not least because
if we want to discuss with people
the importance of economic responsibility,
of not living beyond our means,
and if we want to discuss with people
the importance of social responsibility,
the importance of all of us fulfilling our obligations,
whether as parents or people in the community
or teachers or university lecturers or whatever,
we can't even have that conversation about responsibility
until the politicians sort their own house out
and show that they are responsible people
acting in a responsible manner.
So I'm afraid you can't say you do one rather than the other.
We have to do both.
And I hope what this speech sets out today
is that in terms of political reform,
there is a very clear but practical modernising and radical agenda
that can be put in place that will start to bring back, I hope,
people's faith in our political system
and its ability to bring the change that we all need.
Thank you very much indeed. Thank you.