The Guardian view on creating a more representative House of Commons

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jun/17/more-representative-house-of-commons

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There is much more to a healthy democracy than a vote. But it starts with a vote, and a vote that produces a genuinely representative House of Commons, befitting a representative democracy. That means people from the real world, people who have survived great disadvantage like Alan Johnson and David Blunkett, those who come from a background outside politics like the Totnes GP Sarah Wollaston, and even the eccentric grandee Sir Peter Tapsell. And it needs many more of them than are represented in the current parliament. In the poll commissioned to accompany our Insecure Britain series, 44% said the biggest problem with Westminster was that all MPs look and sound the same.

Peter Hain, the former cabinet minister who reviewed the state of Labour after the 2010 election, thinks the relationship with voters is in "terminal decline", and his concern is echoed across the main parties. Our study today of the backgrounds of candidates in winnable seats indicates one reason why: all the parties are selecting future MPs – as many as half, in Labour's case – who already have Westminster links. The trend that has been evident since the 1990s of a political class that appears to be a self-selecting homogeneous group of youngish men and women with little experience of the world beyond the security cordon is now an established fact.

It is Labour that has changed the most. Until the 1960s, at least a third of Labour MPs described themselves as miners or manual workers. Another third came from the professions and the rest had backgrounds in white-collar work or business. Fifty years later, the largest single group – 27% of Labour MPs – come from a political background. Just 10% claimed a background in manual work. While the kind of work available has been transformed – manufacturing and mining jobs are now just 8% of the total, and four-fifths of all employees work in the service sector – this reflects a much more profound change. It suggests a damaging concentration of power in the hands of an unrepresentative elite of professional politicians.

Labour, with its long tradition of ideological disagreement that repeatedly spilled over into battles for candidate selections, pioneered ways of controlling the choice of the representative. The upside was all-women shortlists, which disrupted and infuriated many local parties and contributed to transforming the makeup of the parliamentary party. The downside is the tendency to produce safe, reliable people who conform to a model.

Many – like those selected to stand in 2015 – have been special advisers to MPs and cabinet ministers in former Labour governments. They are clever, hard-working and highly committed – but also almost uniformly graduates, from similar backgrounds, with little experience outside politics. Efforts like the party's Future Candidates programme and its Diversity Fund attempt to overcome the obvious barriers, such as lack of skills and experience and lack of cash to travel to selection meetings, but they do not go nearly far enough. Centralisation of the political system and overenergetic whips who relish stamping out dissent are among the problems. Another is the withering of traditional entry points into Westminster, like local government and the trade union movement.

The upshot is the sense that MPs represent the state to the country, not the country to the state. One answer is to get voters – all voters – engaged in the process of selection, and the best way of doing that is through primaries. The Tories have now used the system in 21 selections: any voter of any party can take part in a final vote on a candidate from a party-approved shortlist. The experience reportedly produces more women, greater engagement and name recognition, and even some new recruits to the party. It is no panacea. The initial selection of candidates stays at the centre. But it devolves power and accountability. And it could even produce a parliament that looks more like the people it represents.