Create a citizen’s veto on legislation.

An idea by - Tagged: - Discussion: Comment

The idea

One of the reasons we have too many petty laws, rules and regulations, is that the vast sway of lawyers & who fill the political ranks are more than happy to “throw law” at a problem (and is it a coincidence that they as lawyers have a nice cushy job lined up working on the law they themselves have created in office if they get kicked out of office?)

Whilst we can't exactly ban lawyers from parliament, we must do more to bring ordinary common sense into parliament and ensure:

  1. law is written in easy to understand English
  2. that law is not written for and by the parliamentary & legal elite
  3. that law is understandable by ordinary people and it really is possible to say: “ignorance of the law is no excuse”. Something which isn't realistic at the moment.

My proposal is to create a citizen's assembly. This assembly will take ordinary chosen by lot from volunteers, and it will have a single power: to veto bad legislation before royal assent.

Whilst it would be very unusual in the UK political culture for a group of citizens to reject law that has been legitimately passed by both the houses of parliament, the very thought that it could happen will undoubtedly focus parliamentarians on the public's need and help stop the "legal mafia" in parliament who so effectively work to "proliferate the verbiage" coming out the back end of the parliamentary system.

Why is it important?

As a reasonably well educated person I have had the misfortune to read several acts of parliament and at times have not had a clue what they were trying to say (and I suspect neither did most MPs!)

What is the point of such rubbish?

We all know that after every public out cry about a child murder or a fatal accident, the immediate response of politicians is to want to be seen to be acting and passing another useless law is a very cheap way to appear to be doing something. Almost invariably these knee jerk laws fail to achieve their proclaimed aims and almost invariably they are quietly dropped in a few years.

We've got to stop politicians using the excuse that “the public want us to act”, when we all know that we want them to ACT, not pass another blasted act. The best way to pull this excuse from under the political system, is to set up this review of legislation by a group of very ordinary people who literally represent the “public” who are supposedly demanding all these new laws.

The worst that can be said for such an assembly will have negligible affect on well drafted legislation unless it is so absolutely dreadful that it is going to get repealed anyway. However there are great potential benefits:

  1. Laws that everyone can understand (not just lawyers)
  2. And endorsement of every law by ordinary people so that they really are "our" laws and not just the political elite
  3. The assembly will introduce ordinary people to the working of parliament. This will not only help to educate ordinary people on the workings of parliament making our demands on them more realistic, but it will hep to focus parliament on the real ordinary people they are supposed to serve … thus
  4. Dramatically improving the relationship between parliament and the people that was so tarnished by the scandal of MPs expenses.
  5. Whilst not part of this proposal, such an assembly could also review MPs salaries and expenses. In my view, there is a real likelihood that a group of ordinary people if presented the facts about MPs pay and conditions, may well have the courage to ignore the media outcry that surrounds pay increases for MPs and give them the pay and conditions that they merit!

Share this idea

Related ideas

Comment on this idea

Good idea? Bad idea? Totally insane? Let us know your thoughts on this idea.