Make Lying in Parliament History - A Petition

Change.org has a new petition by Jolyon Rubinstein: Make Lying in Parliament History. You can sign it here.

Lying in a democracy reminds me of the old computer programmers saying: GIGO: Garbage In, Garbage Out. But I would go further than just banning lying in Parliament and want sanctions against all political lies aimed at deceiving the public. One way of doing this would be to use the Advertising Standards model (which doesn't yet cover political advertising). I think the harshest sanctions should be for prepared statements with demands for corrections for wrong statements made in interview or conversation. The same should apply to journalists. Corrections should be made with the same "volume" as the original mistake.
Please click here for a more detailed view of how this would work.

Majority of Politicians in Westminster Unellected

According to this article by Nick Clegg there are approaching 1000 Lords meaning "the majority of politicians in our own parliament are not elected"! Perhaps we should call ourselves a partial democracy.
It isn't necessary to change or abolish the House of Lords or Interactive Democracy to be implemented, but it would save many millions per year, reduce political patronage and bias. The Lords could effect policy through ID along with everyone else but would probably garner more followers due to their experience and position.

Cultural Diversity

Cultural diversity may be an important aspect in improving the decision making of direct models of democracy. The corollary is that conformist societies may not benefit from direct democracy to the same degree.
According to Surowiecki the four key criteria for wise crowds are:

1. Diversity of opinion based on private information
2. Independence from the opinions of others
3. Decentralised knowledge
4. Aggregation - a mechanism for turning individual judgements into collective decisions

Interactive Democracy does some of this, but the degree of private information, independence and decentralised knowledge is effected by the extent of the public debate. If the debate is broken into separate discussions, perhaps fostered within diverse communities, informed from separate sources, whether by personal experience or diverse media, ID is more likely to be a success. Nevertheless, it will always be more diverse than a Parliamentary, representative system.

Dan Ariely - Dodgy Decisions

Behavioural economics shows that man isn't quite as rational as perhaps Adam Smith thought. In the following video Dan Ariely shows that how our options are laid out effects our decisions. It hints at the corruptibility of referendum.

In Interactive Democracy I would expect Parliament to argue over the options and layout of referendum, ensuring a debate on what goes before the public.

Proportionality of Power

One of the arguments against PR is that it gives more power to the MPs from fringe parties: for example, the independents and those from single issue parties. This is because the government may need to win over their support to carry a motion or form a government. The fringe thus has a disproportionate amount of power.

But lets be clear, each seat in the House of Commons has the power of one vote, no more, no less. Rather, the influence of the marginals comes about because main party MPs can't act independently, purely in the interests of their Constituencies, because they are governed by the power of the party whips. So, from this perspective, it's not that the fringe parties have more power than they deserve, it is that average MPs have less.

Furthermore, with fair electoral boundaries and PR that allows more than one MP per Constituency, each MP is likely to have the support of similar numbers of voters, underlining the fairness of each MPs appointment.

Whether you agree with this analysis or not may depend on your perspective: if you cast your vote for a party to form a government or you cast it to get a local MP representing local interests. It may be impossible to have both!

The Quality of the Debate

Perhaps the quality of political decisions is directly proportional to the quality of the preceding debate. If so, how would we ensure the best quality debates? What would be the anatomy of a great debate?

1. Every opinion should be expressed.


2. Ineloquent opinions should be clarified.


3. The premise of every opinion should be sought.


4. Assumptions should be explored.


5. The evidence should be gathered, analysed and ranked for its quality.


6. Statistical analysis should be well founded (e.g. correlations don't always mean cause and effect).


7. New evidence should be gathered and fed into the debate.


8. There must be sufficient time.


9. Verbal opinions should be collated and written down to allow people to review them.


10. The impact and consequence of every suggestion should be analysed.


11. The administration of every suggestion should be considered.


12. The cost of every suggestion, estimated.

The question then becomes how do we conduct such an enormous undertaking on a regular basis? No one could possibly involve themselves in every aspect of every debate! No one could possibly calculate every consequence of every idea.

Interactive Democracy relies on formal debate in Parliament, contributions on the ID web site and many separate debates, each one imperfect, conducted among friends, colleagues, acquaintances and, very importantly, through the media. All opinions are then combined through a ballot.

Approved Contributions

The Interactive Democracy web site should be designed to enhance debates. Any voter can contribute an opinion or question (without being abusive), structured as threads and categorised as Plus, Minus and Interesting Points. These posts may at times link to external sites (which may be removed by the webmaster if they are found to be abusive).

MPs contributions to the debate should be highlighted and the site should have the facility to filter out all other contributions, leaving the Parliamentary debate clear and easy to follow. This would not only allow us to focus on the core issues without wading through vast numbers of posts, but would allow us to judge the qualities of the MP, and the pressure exerted on them by this public spotlight will encourage them to contribute effectively.

The site should also encourage MPs to present their evidence, which may be in the form of academic or government reports. They will therefore act as editors, ensuring that credible reports are presented on the secure site, both as highlights and the full document. The flip side of this is that academics, who may want to present their work, would be well advised to present it to MPs and persuade them of its merit. Unlike links to external sites, these documents wouldn't be corruptible after the link was posted.

Finally, each contribution, from MPs or voters, may be judged by the public on its relevance to the debate, allowing users to filter the debates to find what others perceive as the most crucial points.

Interactive Democracy Award

One of the common human motivations is to be recognised for your achievements and contributions. To encourage involvement in Interactive Democracy perhaps there should be an Interactive Democracy Award. This could be awarded for contributions of ideas to the ID system if those ideas added to a Parliamentary debate. Any MP could highlight those contributors, which may be many. Winners of the award would be able to use the letters "IDeA" after their name.

Short Cut to War

Clare Short told the Iraq Inquiry about how cabinet was "misled", Attorney General, Lord Goldsmith, had been "leaned on" and Parliament was just a "rubber stamp" (you can read the BBC report here). It's a frightening indictment of our government and democracy.

Some may say that Interactive Democracy would be manipulated in similar ways, but perhaps they have forgotten the mass protests against war. I suspect that the issue by issue democracy that ID could deliver would enhance the debate, put pressure on politicians not to be seen to be manipulative and slow the headlong rush to decisions. It may have prevented us going to war in Iraq, it may have delayed it until the end of the summer, giving the UN more time to avert catastrophe, or it may have re-focused our attention on Afghanistan. Who knows?

Many would be right to assume that truth in Government, in Parliament and in the Media is an important ingredient for a functioning democracy. I'd like to see laws in place that punish those that lie. More here.

Quick Wiki

Wiki is Hawaiian for quick and is an acronym for "what I know is". The prime example of a wiki is wikipedia, the on-line encyclopedia that anyone can contribute to or edit.

Joe Kraus, co-founder of JotSpot, the wiki software company, says most wikis are best suited for small, well defined groups of people collaborating on projects of limited duration. They may be excellent tools for pressure groups or even for Parliament.

Science v Politics: The Moral Maze

Radio 4's Moral Maze debated the relationship between science and politics. It's worth a listen. Some of the points were:

• funding of what scientific evidence is to be gathered, adds a political bias
• scientists are human and therefore corruptible
• science its self is a process for gathering hard evidence which has no morality
• the media can sensationalise scientific reports
• lay people aren't often equipped to understand science
• there's more to politics than science (e.g. morality)
• scientists may consider their evidence as more important than debate
• debaters may reinforce their arguments with narrow scientific studies to try to quash debate

I think democracy should be informed by science. I would like to see a publicly funded scientific institution, honour bound to report hard, morally incorruptible, evidence. The meta studies they carry out should be instigated by Parliament (within the ID process) and not funded by pressure groups. This can then form one aspect of the debate about future policy.

Common Ground

Interactive Democracy has much common ground with Parliamentary Democracy, it builds on what we've got:

• The right to vote
• Freedom of speech
• Freedom of the press
• The need for debate
• The importance of facts
• Inclusiveness
• Fairness
• A balance of power
• The need for Government
• The need for a Prime Minister and a Cabinet
• The need for a democratically elected Parliament
• The Judiciary
• Law and Order
• Security
• Human Rights

Improving the Quality of Parliamentary Debate

Could it be that Interactive Democracy could apply pressure to improve the quality of Parliamentary debate?

Within Interactive Democracy, Parliament should present all the arguments, effects and interesting observations about any issue that is about to go to a national ballot. This should represent all the points of view of every Member of Parliament and may be written as a secure wiki type document. It may be constructed on-line before and after the debate in the Commons. The format may be De Bono's PMI (plus, minus and interesting points), perhaps as a SWOT analysis (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats) or any other "thinking tool". Because this analysis would be presented to every voter when they come to cast their vote, it would put pressure on Parliament to do a good job; the electorate would be in a position to appoint or dismiss MPs as they do today.

Supervision of Parliament

Nearly 50% of people believe that half or more of MPs are corrupt according to a BBC/MORI poll (June 2009, in light of The Telegraph's expose of MPs expense claims). You can see the BBC report here. "It also points to strong support among the British public for taking away Parliament's power to police its self."

The appointment of Parliamentary Supervisors seems to me to be a step away from democracy, unless, of course, they are elected, but there is nothing to suggest that that is what is on the public's mind. And even if the supervisors were elected, who would supervise their pay and expenses? Would they cook up a cosy deal with the MPs for mutual benefit? And, by the way, what about the expenses of the Lords in the higher house?

My preference is for public information on expenses and Interactive Democracy, so that we can keep politicians in check.

In the ID system the public could call for a General Election if Parliament behaved scandalously or we could just dismiss corrupt MPs one at a time. Or perhaps make other suggestions to bring them to justice: a police investigation for example.