A final Westminster salute to the voters?

So now we have it. The Digital Economy Bill has completed all its stages and is about to become law, the last addition to the Statute Book at the end of this Parliament.

There has been wide discussion of the various clauses and a large number of amendment brought forward and, in most cases, subsequently withdrawn. The real problem has been the lack of effective scrutiny in the elected House and the resulting passage of a piece of flawed legislation. The final stages of the passage of this Bill may be something of a parting Westminster salute to the electorate - we really do not care for what you are telling us, we will go and vote on party lines, don’t trample me in the rush back to the constituencies.

The final debate took place in the chamber of the House of Common on Wednesday night. Interesting to follow the discussion and progress via the live webcast. Interesting and informed intervention and discussion from a small number of elected Members including Tom Watson, Austin Mitchell etc. But what was really noticeable was the small number of members who were actually in the House to take part in the debate. At times it seemed that there were no more than a dozen or so - out of some 646.

But wait - after a mere 2 hours and 11 minutes (including time out for the two Divisions) 236 elected representatives filed through the lobbies to vote. Hang on, at best there were only 40 in the chamber for the debate. Where were all the others. Following the debate via the Internet - I doubt it. From the quality of comment made by some I suspect they would not know how. Waiting outside the chamber of the House in order to troop through to the braying of the party whips - of course!

Forget the 5,000 people participating in live online discussion with nary a few in favour, forget the 20,000 who wrote to MPs and who contributed to campaigns against the Bill, forget …..

In fact, forget the views of the electorate, those who will actually cast a vote on Thursday 6th May. Demonstrate that you are all above this, able to force through a badly drafted and fundamentally flawed piece of legislation using ‘wash up’ procedures that involve horse-trading between party managers in order to reach a wholly undemocratic consensus.

OK, the final result of the horse-trading was that some parts of the original Bill was discarded or further amended. Clause 18 is now referred back, Clause 43 relating to orphan rights has been removed, much to the pleasure of photographers. Did it ever really impact on them - perhaps the original intention was that it should not but drafting may have made it possible. Whatever, that is now kicked out.

Out too went the tax (sorry, levy) on fixed line telephone circuits to fund next generation fibre. Oh - but that was dropped from the Finance Bill not from the Digital Britain.

Trying to track down exactly what the new law contains is not easy - until the final version of the Act is published one must cross-reference the original Bill laid before Parliament with Amendments and with the official record of the debate.

If you want to put it together the locations are:
Digital Economy Bill
Commons Amendments
Hansard debate (official record including list of Ayes and Noes)

Go to the Official Record and check to see if your MP voted. Did your MP vote ‘AYE’ (for the Bill) or ‘NO’ (against).

If they voted ‘AYE’ ask them why they were prepared to vote through a Bill that makes fundamental changes to the law, changes the presumption of guilt, introduces substantial new powers for the Secretary of State through ‘Henry VIII’ clauses, provides for Rights Owners to seek details of individual users of an ISPs services etc. etc.

Why were they prepared to force through such a fundamental piece of legislation in the face of very considerable informed dissent and using short-circuit procedures to prevent effective democratic scrutiny of the proposed legislation.

The Bill was introduced by an unelected and unaccountable member of the upper House. Sadly, he cannot be removed on May 6th. Likely he will no longer be in office but he will still have a seat.

As for the others ……

There will be a lot of new faces on May 7th. Some of them may bring experience and a new sense of right and wrong. What they should all realise is that there will be a new order and that the electorate will be looking for change, for some accountability and for some honest representation.