November 16, 2009

On EDMs

Posted in Conservatives, Politics at 10:06 pm by Paul Sagar

A lot of really silly things go on in the British Parliament. There are corridors you can’t walk down unless you’re an MP. Many (male) members of staff have to wear stockings and bow-ties as though they’ve just stepped out of a BBC period drama. There are systems of etiquette by which it is acceptable for grown adults to bay, scream and jab their fingers at other grown adults whilst they are attempting not simply to speak, but to debate our national legislation.

One of the silliest, however, is the continued existence of the Early Day Motion (EDM). What’s an EDM? This is a fair summary: a pointless and ineffectual statement by a group of MPs, pronouncing judgement upon some event, or calling for some course of action, which other MPs are invited to add their signatures to.

EDMs achieve absolutely nothing. They are vitually never debated on the House floor or in committee, and they do not lead to legislation being drafted, or even influenced.

So why do they continue to exist?

Well, if you’re an MP in a marginal constituency, and you get a lot of people writing in to demand that “something must be done about [insert personal hobby horse / mass-orchestrated campaign by pressure group]!” you can swiftly reply: “I completely agree! That’s why I have signed EDM Number 1245!” (or whichever), safe in the knowledge that this commits you to absolutely nothing of substance, whilst making it appear that you have done something worthwhile.

Trebles all round, eh?

It’s for this reason that MPs in safe seats generally tend not to bother signing EDMs at all. They know it achieves nothing, and they know they don’t need to massage the constituency vote. So EDMs are pointless to them, and viewed as a waste of time.

But what’s the harm, I hear you ask? Well, because Parliament is an anachronistic madhouse, all EDMs in every Parliamentary session are printed out, with vast numbers of copies scattered around the Parliamentary estate so that MPs, Lords and their staff can peruse them at leisure. Except, every time somebody adds their signature to an EDM, the entire EDM list has to be printed out again, and all the old copies thrown away. And that means a lot of copies being printed out and thrown away.

According to the Parliament website, the estimated average cost of each EDM in the 2005-6 session was £290. Sounds a tad expensive? It gets a lot worse when it’s recalled that in the 2007-8 session, there were a whopping 2727 EDMs.

Now I know these figures are for different years, but neither year was exceptional. So for a ballpark estimate: £290 x 2727 = £790,830.

I make that over three-quarter of a million quid spent on something which is completely pointless. (I don’t count helping marginal seat MPs pretend they are doing something when they aren’t as constituting a worthwhile use of tax money). And that’s not even factoring-in all the trees that have to be turned into EDM paper, the ink that’s wasted, and the electricity used in the whole process of reprinting the damn things every day. (And I don’t even want to think about the total of wasted paper, ink and electricity in a Parliament where every piece of official documentation, from what I could tell when working there, is printed out every single day, and updated EDM-style for every tiny alteration and change).

This is absurd. In the 21st Century, everything can and should be available electronically, with only exceptional cases needing to be printed off as a mater of course. With current technology there is simply no reason why EDMs need to be printed off at all. Everything can be put online, accessed by computer, iPhone and Blackberry. (Or for the older, less-techy and more exploitative Members, unpaid intern).

Even dark-age Tories are starting to wake up to the fact that as a society we need to change the way we live; sustainability, cost-cutting and waste reduction are the future. The least that Parliament could do is to set a good example.

Who knows, maybe the Tories could champion the “Paperless Parliament” to distract attention from the troglodyte misogynists littering their back benches?

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