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British foreign policy lacks democracy - ways to address deficit |
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Simon Burall and Stuart Weir write that Britain's centralised way of doing foreign policy lacks proper oversight and accountability and they propose 6 ways to start to redress "democratic deficit".
One striking example they consider is the Bank for International Settlements: a hugely powerful global organisation holding 7% of the world's foreign exchange reserves and drafting financial standards and codes which Gordon Brown, has said "are the financial architecture for the new global economy". Yet there has only been one question asked about it in parliament and this was about its governance structure rather than its substantive work.
Six areas for reform:
- The royal prerogative must be reformed.
- Parliament must also be given the power to recall itself in case of emergency, subject to a number of safeguards to prevent its misuse for individual party gain.
- Select committees must no longer work in compartmentalised "silos"
- The presumption must be that select committees will meet with ministers before important negotiations or intergovernmental meetings in order to provide a "soft mandate" for those negotiations.
- The House of Commons spends £10 million annually overseeing a government behemoth of £430 billion. Britain gets democracy on the cheap and it shows. We need a huge boost to MPs research capacity and Parliament as a whole needs an independent legal counsel if it is to properly understand the implications of European legislation and international decisions domestically.
- The FOI must be reformed including.
They conclude that the democratic deficit within national politics is heightened and exacerbated where foreign policy is concerned. Decisions taken at the World Trade Organisation have profound implications for British jobs, the British economy and the global environment. Decisions taken at Nato affect the country's national security and the way the World Health Organisation deals with emerging global pandemics may mean life or death for thousands of British citizens. Yet parliament doesn't have the resources, the structure, capacity or culture effectively to hold the government to account.
The world will continue to become more interdependent. This means that the impact of foreign-policy decisions on the lives of the British people will increase. This means in turn that parliament must be able to guide and oversee the government both at home and overseas more effectively. Anything less risks increasing the democratic deficit still further. Read full article at Open Democracy.
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