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House of Commons (Effectiveness)

I did not originally intend to make a speech. I was just going to intervene on my hon. Friend the Member for Reading, West (Martin Salter), but I so much wanted to listen to what he had to say that I never got round to intervening. I shall just say a few words. My hon. Friend made very important points about what serving in this place means. It is both a privilege and a responsibility, especially for those of us whose commitment to social justice took us into the Labour party and made us stand for election in the first place. It is a privilege to be able to give voice on the national stage to the issues that arise in our constituencies and the issues that our constituents bring to us, whether that be my constituency in Birmingham or my hon. Friend's in Reading. As he said, it has been a privilege to be able to use our votes in this place to bring about some of the improvements in public services that he mentioned. However, being in this place is also a responsibility. That sometimes means even telling the Government whom we support that we think they are getting things wrong. As my hon. Friend said, we worked together on education matters to do that in 2006, and we had to tell the Government that we thought they were getting it wrong in 2003 on Iraq. One thing that underlay everything in my hon. Friend's speech—this is the main issue that I want to raise and conclude on—was the way he is and has always been committed to shaking up the way this place works. We need to shake it up in a way that opens up politics rather than closes politics down and that allows Members of this place a little more freedom to strike those balances between the privilege of speaking up and the responsibility of sometimes saying things that are a bit discordant, and a little more freedom to say those things in a way that opens up politics and boosts democracy. My hon. Friend and I believe that part of the process of opening up politics should be a change to the voting system. We perhaps disagree on the level of proportionality that that should involve. I shall pass over that, but certainly as we approach the election, when all parties are talking about opening up politics, for anyone to say that the voting system itself should be a no-go area for debate is entirely wrong. I pay tribute to the work that my hon. Friend has done in his time in this place. If hon. Members are in the same party, they refer to one another as hon. Friends and we normally are, but I have to say that he is an honourable friend of mine and I am proud to say that. Those of us who are standing again in the election, if we are successful and are re-elected, have an obligation to continue the work that he outlined so successfully in his speech today.