Mark Stuart: No-one can repair our broken politics except ourselves

Everyone has been left deeply traumatised by the experience, including MPs themselves, and don't forget their spouses who have had to bear the brunt of a year of turmoil. One MP's wife was seen running in tears from the butcher's, having been cruelly reminded by the shopkeeper not to forget her receipt. Last year, MPs' families gnawed their fingers to the bone, waiting for that fateful call from the Daily Telegraph.

Several MPs were put on suicide watch by the Government whips lest the whole ghastly experience proved too much to take.

Most MPs work tirelessly, sometimes for as much as 80 hours a week, acting as champions in their local communities. And yet in the space of one month, all those thousands of individual good deeds were erased.

Meanwhile, Parliament – that great institution which I have studied and admired all my working life – found itself horribly dragged through the mire.

For once, this was a political scandal that the public could understand: "One law for that lot over there, another one for us," they cried. It fits into the prevailing narrative that "the country has gone to the dogs". Others add: "I'd emigrate if I could." My response is: "If you feel like that, then go!"

For those of us who want to remain in this Blessed Isle, might I

suggest a few measures to restore trust between the politicians and the people?

We can, of course, start with a good clearout on May 6. Not only are more than 150 MPs likely to retire (a post-war record), but as many again will probably be defeated. Of itself, that scale of change should have a cleansing effect on the body politic.

One thing we should not do is to cut the number of MPs, as David Cameron proposes. The Tory leader paints his reform plan as an attempt to clear out some of the scoundrels, but in fact he only wishes to ensure that there are two boundary commission reviews in the next 10 years, rather than one, so that his party can benefit from it.

Once we have elected our MPs, they should agree to switch to fixed-term Parliaments. As we have seen from Gordon Brown's "election-that-never-was" in October 2007, the Prime Minister's power to call an election whenever he or she wants is a double-edged sword.

Given the likelihood of a hung Parliament after the election, our MPs should be forced to come to a long-term arrangement with one another in the interests of economic stability, rather than playing politics by one party going back to the country in 18 months' time.

We must also be prepared to accept that the new system of overseeing MPs' allowances will be far more bureaucratic and expensive to

administer than the old one. But there is one other more serous flaw in the current legislation. The new Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (IPSA) has the power to investigate breaches in the rules on expenses, but the final punishment is still meted out by a group of MPs – the Committee on Standards and Privileges. That cannot be right. The power must rest with the new IPSA.

During the next Parliament, we should also remove entirely the power of the Prime Minister to appoint members of the House of Lords, instead leaving that job to the Independent Appointments Commission, which needs to be put on a statutory basis. Breaking the power of patronage is essential to upholding public trust in Parliament.

Thankfully, some important parliamentary reforms have already taken

place which have at last broken the power of the whips at Westminster. The political parties will now elect the members of select committees, while committee chairs will be elected by the whole House. Further

moves should be made in the future to enhance the power of select committees so that they can properly hold the Government of the day to account.

The MPs' expenses scandal diverted the public's attention from the real outrage in our system of politics: the "revolving door" of ex-ministers ending up with lucrative jobs in companies linked to their former departments. It's not just Stephen Byers who is "like a cab for hire"; this sort of thing has been going on since the 1980s, and it has to

be stopped.

Finally, we need to see a fundamental shift of power away from the centre back to local government. Such a shift would, I believe, create a new army of active citizens, ready to re-engage in local politics. The great Tory historian, Edmund Burke once called these active citizens the "little platoons". My message to you is stop complaining, and sign up to a new platoon tomorrow.

The truth is that no-one else is capable of repairing our broken

political system but ourselves.

Mark Stuart is a political analyst and biographer from York.