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July 03, 2008
Another "Gentlemens' Agreement": The constituency link
Health reforms to the structures of GPs practices are meant to produce greater choice for consumers, increasing competition and encouraging each surgery to offer a higher quality of service. But angry ministers yesterday alleged that GPs have been circumventing moves towards greater competition by reaching informal "gentlemens' agreements" not to take on new patients, effectively blocking our ability to shop around. This, it is argued, is a self-interested bid to protect their out-dated status as monopoly service providers, frustrate modernisation and enjoy comfortable salaries and privileges free having to offer improvements in service.
Sound familiar? Aren't MPs upto the same kind of trick with their consensus that we musn't break up the "constituency link"? Why should we allow them to hold onto their own 'like-it-or-lump-it' monopolies of parliamentary representation which give voters no choice over who gets to represent them between elections? Why is it that the monopoly service providers in all other areas of the public sector are derided as "dinosaurs" resistant to modernisation, when the MPs themselves insist on having a monopoly of representation in their constituency? If allowing consumers to shop around increases competition and incentives service provides to continually improve their service, why should the same not also apply to MPs themselves?
This is far from unthinkable - multi-member constituencies work well in local government, and in Scotland under the proportional STV system, voters are finding not only they get a better representation in terms of the party composition of councils, but also over the individual councillors from within that party. Councillors are now kept on their toes, because they know that if they are unwilling or ineffective in dealing with a voters' concerns, then one of their rivals might prove a good deal better. Maybe it's inevitable that vested interest groups will try to resist change and protect their monopoly privileges. So in Westminster too we find that a "gentlemens' agreement" limits choice. And I do mean an agreement that suits men over women, since as ERS research demonstrates, single-member electoral systems tend to mitigatae against womens' representation, which is one reason why only 4 out of 5 MPs are male.
But it's high time that we turned the MP's logic about choice and competition leading to a better quality of service back against the "dinosaur" tendency in Westminster, too.
Posted by michaelcalderbank on July 03, 2008
