Labour
On the constitution:
To begin the task of building a new politics, we will let the British people decide on whether to make Parliament more democratic and accountable in referenda on reform of the House of Commons and House of Lords, to be held on the same day, by October 2011.
To ensure that every MP is supported by the majority of their constituents voting at each election, we will hold a referendum on introducing the Alternative Vote for elections to the House of Commons.
We will ensure that the hereditary principle is removed from the House of Lords. Further democratic reform to create a fully elected Second Chamber will then be achieved in stages. At the end of the next Parliament one third of the House of Lords will be elected; a further one third of members will be elected at the general election after that.
To further strengthen our democracy and renew our constitution, we will legislate for Fixed Term Parliaments and set up an All Party Commission to chart a course to a Written Constitution.
The success of elections for local Youth Mayors and the UK Youth Parliament strengthens the case for reducing the voting age to 16, a change to which Labour is committed.
On Westminster:
MPs who are found responsible for financial misconduct will be subject to a right of recall if Parliament itself has failed to act against them. The House of Lords and the new Second Chamber will be brought under the aegis of IPSA.
We will create a Statutory Register of Lobbyists to ensure complete transparency in their activities. We will ban MPs from working for generic lobbying companies and require those who want to take up paid outside appointments to seek approval from an independent body to avoid jobs that conflict with their responsibilities to the public.
On local government:
Local government and its partners in public services are already pooling budgets across localities. Our radical Total Place agenda will take this further, giving local areas additional freedom to achieve better services and more savings, cutting bureaucracy and management costs, while placing a greater on early intervention. Ring-fenced budgets, central targets and indicators will be cut back.
We will give local government new powers to lead in the provision and financing of social and affordable housing, tackle climate change and work with the NHS in our new National Care Service.
Alongside enhanced scrutiny powers for councillors, we are introducing petitioning powers for local residents to demand action, and extending neighbourhood agreements where citizens set out the standards of services they expect locally. We will also extend the powers available to our major cityregions, building upon the pioneering arrangements in Greater Manchester, Leeds and Birmingham.
Cityregions will be able to gain additional powers to improve transport, skills and economic development and acquire greater borrowing flexibility. Where new city-region authorities are created, we will give residents the opportunity to trigger a referendum for directly electing a Mayor, with Londonstyle powers.
Conservatives
On the constitution:
In future, the British people must have their say on any transfer of powers to the European Union. We will amend the 1972 European Communities Act so that any proposed future Treaty that transferred areas of power, or competences, would be subject to a referendum — a ‘referendum lock’.
A Conservative government would never take the UK into the Euro. Our amendment to the 1972 Act will prevent any future government from doing so without a referendum.Unlike other European countries, the UK does not have a written constitution. We will introduce a United Kingdom Sovereignty Bill to make it clear that ultimate authority stays in this country, in our Parliament.
On Westminster:
We will start by cleaning up the expenses system to ensure MPs live by the same standards as the people who give them their jobs, and by curbing the way in which former Ministers have secured lobbying jobs by exploiting their contacts.
We will also cut Ministers’ pay and reduce the number of MPs in Parliament… We will clean up politics: the expenses, the lobbying and problems with party funding. We will cut the cost of Parliament, cut the number of MPs and cut Ministers’ pay.
We will give citizens direct control over what goes on in Westminster, make government more accountable and safeguard the independence of the civil service. far further, since the expenses scandal was just the trigger for a deeper sense of frustration. We promise a total overhaul of our system of government, so that power is passed from the politicians at Westminster back to the people of Britain. But this is the very least that is needed to fix our broken political system.
– ensure that ex-Ministers – are banned from lobbying government for two years after leaving office;
– ensure that ex-Ministers have to seek advice on the business posts they take up for ten years after leaving office;
– rewrite the Ministerial Code to make clear that any former Minister who breaks the rules on appointments will be forced to give up some or all of their Ministerial pension; and,
– introduce new rules to stop central government bodies using public money to hire lobbyists to lobby other government bodies.So, with a Conservative government, any petition that secures 100,000 signatures will be eligible for formal debate in Parliament. The petition with the most signatures will enable members of the public to table a Bill eligible to be voted on in Parliament. And we will introduce a new Public Reading Stage for Bills to give the public an opportunity to comment on proposed legislation online.
On local government:
(We will) – abolish the power of planning – inspectors to rewrite local plans;
– amend the ‘Use Classes Order’ so that people can use buildings for any purpose allowed in the local plan;
– limit appeals against local planning decisions to cases that involve abuse of process or failure to apply the local plan;
– encourage county councils and unitary authorities to compile infrastructure plans;
– give local planning authorities and other public authorities a duty to co-operate with one another; and,
– allow neighbourhoods to stop the practice of ‘garden grabbing’.In addition, we will:
– give people a ‘right to bid’ to run any community service instead of the state; and,
– reform the governance arrangements in football to enable co-operative ownership models to be established by supporters. We will give democratically accountable local government much greater power to improve their citizens’ lives by:– giving local councils a ‘general power of competence’, so that they have explicit authority to do what is necessary to improve their communities;
– ending ring-fencing so that funding can be spent on local priorities;
– scrapping the hundreds of process targets Labour have imposed on councils;
– ending the bureaucratic inspection regime that stops councils focusing on residents’
main concerns;
– scrapping Labour’s uncompleted plans to impose unwieldy and expensive unitary councils and to force the regionalisation of the fire service;
– ending the ‘predetermination rules’ that prevent councillors speaking up about
issues that they have campaigned on; and,
– encouraging the greater use of ward budgets for councillors.
Liberal Democrats
On the constitution:
Change politics and abolish safe seats by introducing a fair, more proportional voting system for MPs. Our preferred Single Transferable Vote system gives people the choice between candidates as well as parties. Under the new system, we will be able to reduce the number of MPs by 150.
– Give the right to vote from age 16.
– Introduce fixed-term parliaments to ensure that the Prime Minister of the day cannot change the date of an election to suit themselves.
– Strengthen the House of Commons to increase accountability. We will increase Parliamentary scrutiny of the budget and of government appointments and give Parliament control over its own agenda so that all bills leaving the Commons have been fully debated.
– Replace the House of Lords with a fully-elected second chamber with considerably fewer members than the current House.
– Get better politics for less. Liberal Democrats would save this country nearly £2 billion by reforms that cut back waste in central government and the Houses of Parliament.
– Introduce a written constitution. We would give people the power to determine this constitution in a citizens’ convention, subject to final approval in a referendum.
– Strengthen the Data Protection Act and the Office of the Information Commissioner, extending Freedom of Information legislation to private companies delivering monopoly public services such as Network Rail.
On Westminster:
Give you the right to sack MPs who have broken the rules. We would introduce a recall system so that constituents could force a byelection for any MP found responsible for serious wrongdoing. We are campaigning for this right of recall to be introduced to the European Parliament too.
– Get big money out of politics by capping donations at £10,000 and limiting spending throughout the electoral cycle.
– Require all MPs, Lords and parliamentary candidates to be resident, ordinarily resident and domiciled in Britain for tax.
– Curb the improper influence of lobbyists by introducing a statutory register of lobbyists, changing the Ministerial Code so that ministers and offi cials are forbidden from meeting MPs on issues where the MP is paid to lobby, requiring companies to declare how much they spend on lobbying in their annual reports, and introducing a statutory register of interests for parliamentary candidates based on the current Register of Members’ Interests.
On local government:
Make local government more accountable and responsive to local people by introducing fair votes for local elections in England.
– Reform local taxation. The Council Tax is an unfair tax. Liberal Democrats believe that it should be scrapped and replaced with a fair local tax, based on people’s ability to pay. It is necessary to pilot Local Income Tax to resolve any practical issues of implementation before it can be rolled out nationally, so we would invite councils to put themselves forward to be involved in the piloting phase in the second year of a Parliament.
– Return business rates to councils and base them on site values, as a first step towards the radical decentralisation of taxation and spending powers to local people.
– Review local government finance completely as part of these tax changes, including reviewing the unfair Housing Revenue Account
system and the mainstreaming of central grants.
– Give people a say in policing and the NHS with elected police authorities and health boards.
– Scrap nearly £1 billion of central government inspection regimes on local councils. Scrap the Government Offi ces for the Regions and regional ministers.
– Implement the Sustainable Communities Act Amendment Bill, which gives local communities the right to propose actions in their area to improve sustainability.
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