Mark Stuart: How can we begin to rebuild trust in MPs?

Such complacency would, however, be very dangerous, because a yawning chasm still exists between the politicians and the people. Quite simply, politicians have lost our trust. This crisis of trust must be resolved if Parliament is to be restored to the forefront of our national life.

Here I suggest 10 sensible reforms to our broken political system which might help rebuild the bonds of trust between leaders and the led.

1. Stop the crony culture. Far too often Government ministers leave the House of Commons, only to re-emerge through a revolving door a few short months later as lobbyists or well-paid business consultants. We are creating a proverbial honeypot, around which politicians gather like a swarm of bees.

2. State funding of political parties. I have little doubt that I will be make myself deeply unpopular by proposing that the taxpayer should fund political parties (as the recent Nolan Inquiry suggested), but I believe that £23m a year is a small price to pay for guaranteeing an end to dodgy donors exercising undue influence.

3. Pay MPs more. Again, I can feel the howls of protest at the mere suggestion that MPs should receive higher pay levels, but let’s cut out nearly all the overly-complicated allowances (which are open to abuse and expensive to administer) and just give MPs a salary from which they can pay all their expenses.

4. Compulsory Voting. Completing my trio of unpopular measures, I suggest forcing people to vote. Nothing sickens me more than people who do not bother to turn out at elections. Think of the recent scenes in Tunisia and Egypt, where people queued for hours to exercise their precious right to vote. Yes, compulsory voting is difficult to enforce, as the Australians have found out, but at least it recreates the duty to vote that has been sadly lost from our politics.

5. Think local, act local. Of course, there is no point in forcing people to vote unless they have something to vote for. Under successive governments the British state has been over-centralised, typified by a “one size fits all” approach to the provision of public services. Devolving real power back down to local communities will help re-engage people with the political system.

6. Encourage more working class people to enter Parliament. One of the most depressing features of our current crop of MPs is that they are an extraordinarily middle-class bunch. Gone are the people who have ever done a hard day’s work.

7. An end to political promises. For the last three years politicians have tried to soft-soap us about the scale of the economic crisis that we face. Instead of using weasel words such as “we’re all in this together”, our leaders should stop making promises that they can’t keep. Nick Clegg should take particular note in relation to his party’s broken promises over tuition fees.

8. End the leadership cult. In the last 30 years, British politics has become overly personalised, obsessed with the cult of the leader. The premierships of Tony Blair and David Cameron are a case in point. We are forgetting the wise words of Tony Benn who has always argued that it’s the “ishoos” that should count.

9. Listen to John Bercow. While the current Speaker might not be everyone’s cup of tea, at least he hasn’t become complacent. Instead, he has been at the forefront of further reform of Parliament, making it more relevant to the public and improving how it does its business. Ministers are now compelled to make their policy announcements in Parliament, rather than on the Today programme. Plans are afoot to make better use of Private Members’ Bills so they aren’t talked out by mischievous MPs. Although these are mere micro-measures, they all contribute to the restoration of Parliament at the heart of our nation’s affairs.

10. A lot has been done already. It might seem as if I’ve succumbed to the very complacency that I’ve accused others of at the beginning of this article.

However, it should be remembered that in the last two years we have seen a massive reduction in the patronage powers of the whips now that select committee chairs are elected by MPs.

The Government has established an e-petitions system which ensures that issues which attract more than 100,000 signatures are debated in Parliament. And finally, a Backbench Business Committee ensures that ordinary MPs get to debate what they want in their own time.

One final thought. We need to be realistic: levels of trust in politicians aren’t ever going to be as high as our friendly local GP or headmaster. No, they’re forever destined to be down at the bottom of the barrel with bankers, estate agents and traffic wardens. Perhaps all we can do to ensure our political system remains clean is to kick the rascals out every five years if we disagree with them. So we do have power after all. Now that’s a cheery thought as 2012 dawns.

Mark Stuart is a political writer from York who has written biographies of John Smith and Douglas Hurd.