LONDON (Reuters) – Britain’s opposition leader, David Cameron, called for an overhaul of how the country is run in comments published today, saying parliament needed to be made both more transparent and more powerful.
Seeking to seize the initiative from Prime Minister Gordon Brown in the wake of an expenses scandal that has tarnished both leaders’ parties, Cameron said parliament needed to act as a check on government and also be more representative to voters. He said Britain should consider introducing fixed-term parliaments — currently the government in office decides when to call an election within a five-year time-limit — curb the power of the prime minister and post parliamentary proceedings on YouTube to make them more accessible to the public.
“We need to look seriously at the immense power prime ministers wield through their ability to call an election whenever they want… If we want parliament to be a real engine of accountability, we need to show it’s not just the creature of the executive,” he wrote in the Guardian newspaper.
“The central objective of the new politics we need should be a massive, sweeping, radical redistribution of power: from the state to citizens; from the government to parliament… from judges to the people; from bureaucracy to democracy.”
Among his proposals is to open up the legislative process to outsiders by sending text messages on the progress of parliamentary bills and by posting proceedings on YouTube.
He argues that local authorities should be given control over schools, housing and policing, and that there should be a right to initiate local and national referendums.
