Undermining Parliament
In a Parliamentary vote held late last night, MPs decided to grant the use of the House of Commons chamber and its green benches to the UK Youth Parliament during the summer recess.
The motion was passed, in the final division, by 205 votes to 17, with the majority of those opposing the measure being from the Conservative backbenches, although there were a few opponents from the other parties.
Unfortunately, leading only rather minor opposition to the motion, Christopher Chope MP reminded those assembled Members of Parliament that, before they voted, they should remember:
The fact is that we have never used this Chamber for anything other than parliamentary debate. We do not even use it for parliamentary meetings or party meetings.
We should not abandon or abandon lightly the traditions of this House, which have meant that this Chamber is the one for those who have the privilege of being elected as Members of the real Parliament, not members of a mock parliament, whether it be a youth parliament, a Muslim parliament or any other parliament.
As Christopher Chope rightly says, traditions should not be lightly abandoned, whether in Parliament or anywhere else. However, this is exactly what we as a nation have been doing, right across the board, for the past sixty years – and to our great cost.
It goes without saying that allowing the Youth Parliament to use the Commons chamber would set a precedent, and demeans the role of Parliament. Having said that, over numerous decades our MPs have been doing a good job of undermining Parliament anyway, so, I suppose, why would they suddenly stop now?
Perhaps, in a few years time, when the Commons have finished the process of passing over our powers of governance to the EU, we could turn the Houses of Parliament into a Museum for Democracy? For a small fee, visitors would be able visit what was once the Mother of all Parliaments, wander its luxuriously panelled corridors and wonder how exactly it came to pass that hundreds of years of freedom and democracy were frittered away so easily and in such a comparatively short period of time.
