The three main parties have used the first full day of campaigning to lay out plans for the reform of Parliament.
The expenses and lobbying scandals of the past year have led many people to dub the current crop of MPs and peers the "rotten Parliament", and the parties will be keen to seen to be addressing voters anger.
Labour's manifesto will include a commitment to hold a referendum on changing the voting system so that no member of Parliament is elected without majority support of the voters in their constituency.
Other constitutional reform measures set to form part of Labour's manifesto unveiled by Gordon Brown this afternoon included a commitment to introduce fixed term parliaments and give MPs a free vote on lowering the voting age to sixteen.
He said the public would also be given a new right to petition the House of Commons in order to trigger debates on issues "of public concern".
Brown said the House of Lords also required "root and branch" reform and that he wanted to create an elected second chamber "in stages" with the unelected peers gradually being replaced by elected members under a open list proportional representation system.
He told an audience of Labour activists and journalists that this represented the "most comprehensive programme of constitutional reform in this country for a century" and would "strengthen power of Parliament".
Brown said a fourth-term Labour government would ban MPs from working for lobbying companies and that all second jobs would be subject to scrutiny by an independent panel to avoid conflicts of interest.
And he said Labour would make MPs "permanently accountable" by giving voters the right to stage recall elections if their MP is found guiltily of financial misconduct.
In an apparent appeal to Liberal Democrat voters, Brown said "progressives will have to walk together alone" on matters of constitutional reform.
It was reported earlier today that the Conservatives also plan to give voters the chance to kick out law-breaking MPs between elections.
The measure forms part of what the Tories are dubbing a "people's power manifesto" which is expected to be launched on Tuesday.
But Liberal Democrat Leader Nick Clegg dismissed Labour's promises to overhaul the voting system, likening them to a "consumer guarantee from Del Boy".
"They have systematically at every turn blocked every single reform - they have blocked party funding reform, they have blocked reform on lobbying," he told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme.
"Believing any promises from them on political reform is a bit like accepting a consumer service guarantee from Del Boy - don't believe it, they are trying to treat you like fools."
And Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman Chris Huhne said the Tory proposals were "utterly dishonest".
"How can you trust a party that promises something during an election that it blocked when it had the chance to make it happen?" he said.
Article Comments
Making all the right noises with a general election on the horizon is all very well but will any of the parties address the issues if they are elected? Maybe I'm just cynical but as they answer to nobody but themselves when it comes to such matters I doubt it. They still took a rather generous wage rise as a pat on the back, despite being partly responsible for the worst recession since the second world war. The stiff upper lip of the populus and the idea that if you complain makes you a whinger has allowed these self opinionated, self indulging, hooray henry's to tax us to the hilt, prevent our children from getting on the property ladder, make pensioners some of the worst off in europe despite paying their taxes and putting thousands out of work then refusing them benefits. All this despite lining their own pockets at every turn by fiddling the system which they have created to their own benefit. Will anything change after the general election? History has shown us that it is highly unlikely, will MP's do the decent thing and do what they are elected for and serve the people who put them there? Pigs might fly!!
7th Apr 2010 at 5:44 pm by Alan Holt
