"We must save our broken democracy" says Lib Dem Leader (Wantage and Didcot Liberal Democrats)

Wantage and Didcot Liberal Democrats <info@wantagelibdems.org.uk>

"We must save our broken democracy" says Lib Dem Leader

November 29, 2008 6:35 PM

Liberal Democrat Leader Nick Clegg

The arrest and interrogation of the Conservative's Shadow Immigration spokesman, Damian Green MP, is a grave reminder of how the powers the Labour Government has given itself could be used to destroy democracy. We already operate in a system where Parliament is effectively neutered, little more than a rubber stamp for legislation that ministers have already decided.

Lib Dem Leader Nick Clegg, writing in today's Daily Telegraph, says: "This Labour Government was elected with the support of just 22 per cent of British voters, yet it presides over a culture of Whitehall secrecy and minimal parliamentary scrutiny. One of the weapons MPs do still have in their armoury is to play the Government at its own game: by releasing information of our own we can highlight matters of public interest that ministers would rather people didn't know about.

"Surrounding all this is a whiff of hypocrisy about New Labour departments in Whitehall clamping down on leaks to opposition politicians when ministers have elevated judicious leaking to the press to an art form. MPs have long got used to the depressing predictability of Sunday newspapers carrying intricate details of the latest government master plan before ministers have bothered to tell Parliament. And who can forget the way Labour politicians ruthlessly used leaks from Whitehall to damage the hapless Major administration before the 1997 general election? And guess who was the master at using those leaks most aggressively? Gordon Brown.

"Our political system is already in deep trouble: sinking public confidence in MPs, feeble parliamentary scrutiny, a rigid culture of Whitehall secrecy, and an electoral system that hands unprecedented powers to governments freed from any meaningful scrutiny from other parties.

"This unprecedented arrest is a wake-up call. We must save our broken democracy."