Public Trust – Constitutional Reform (Alex Allan, Scott McPherson, Vijay Rangarajan).

The current system for voter registration is that the head of the household fills in the form and sends it back. If the head of the household does not want you to vote what can you do? Vijay discusses the idea of individual registration, we can all go and register ourselves – and only have one vote (at the moment there is no solid system that rules out being able to vote more than once). He talks about finding a way of making it a more automatic part of life (e.g. catching school leavers just before they leave) to combat the lack of people voting in the UK (any other ideas?).

Vijay talked about The Bill of Rights (part of the consultation): how many of our ‘rights’ should judges be able to rule on? At the moment the source of our rights is placed on parliament. Should it be about politics or is it law? Do we want an American style constitution? What is the process of doing this? Would Parliament vote the constitution or would citizens be able to have a say? Lots of questions… not many answers!

As for the House of Lords Reform - the final stage would be for 80% elected Lords, and ruling out the inherited peerships. What should the electoral system for the HoL be? how can we ensure the Commons stays as the governing body? What would happen to the GOATS (Government of All the Talent) already in place? Would they stay? What about the Bishops who are part of the HoL? Would they go?

The main aim behind the reforms of the role of The Supreme Court of the UK is to increase transparency. Handover is due in 3 weeks and will start 1 October. So what will change? We will now be able to visit it. It used to be difficult to find the law lords, to even know where they are and what they do. I find out that it has the only free toilets on parliament square (worth knowing!).

Talking about being ‘Disenfranchised about politics’ an audience member says ‘beyond the consultation process what plans do you have to really engage the public in making these changes? It seems that they would have a lot to offer in terms of suggestions’.

We need to look at new techniques – not the tired old consultation process - now! Reissuing documents is such a lengthy process. New technology can do so much to help that, to make it easier to respond to the consultation process. How can we do this? By making best use of online forums – i.e. making sure the government gets in to existing online forums run by others rather than setting up its own that people just ignore.

How about engaging directly and using whatever channels seem more effective? The COI could help with this says Alex, but no we haven’t yet really got to grips with it .Vijay said that they have done this to some extent, for example the work on the Bill of rights with DirectGov has shown some really interesting responses. Lots of NGOs and sector people have come back with useful and resourceful comments. He says that the more legal and technical the issues, the more the need to be dealt with by the usual suspects. Can we try harder to find a way of doing things – and a cheaper way at that?

One of the greatest sources of anger is the nepotism that seems to go on (e.g. employing family members). Vijay responded that Chris Kelly’s ‘standards of public life committee’ – should there be a rule that they can’t employ a member of the family. But they have to register interests – that is one of the reforms. A transfer of responsibilities.

Q: The new DBIS has appointed 11 new Ministers, 7 of whom are Lords. Should there be limit to how many Lords are appointed? Do they have the knowledge required to actually question Ministers? Currently Departmental roles follow the rule of the Minister. You should not be able to amend this.

A Journalist in the audience (who says he was one of the 1 to use a Micro Computer), says that as journalists they were expected to know personally all the actors of the patches they were covering. Perhaps the public want to know in complete detail – so why can’t the government work more like a journalist does - and ‘tell all’? The most important thing to restore trust is to make politicians tell the whole truth in matters concerning the public (and not playing the political game).