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Tuesday, October 24, 2006

Parliament and Iraq

Tony Benn and I had a short debate on the radio four Today programme this morning. The issue was whether Parliament should have a debate on Iraq and I think the answer to that is yes.

Because I also made the point that the nature of the relationship between the media and politicians had changed Tony, in his well practiced way, choose to interpret my remarks as saying Parliament didn't matter.I said that was not my view but when I first went into politics I quickly discovered that the way to get an issue talked about was to involve the media.

Raising it in the House first was normally a good way of keeping it secret!.

Listen to the debate. It is the last 10 minutes (about 8.50am) of the programme on the following link.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/today/listenagain/

The media and even the internet has certainly become a more powerful forum for debate on issues such as this. This doesn't mean that Parliament is irrelevant because Parliament has the power to make decisions and legislate. I do, however, think the debating function of parliament has grown increasingly irrelevent. While politicians pour over the apparent victories and defeats of prime ministers question time it seems to make very little difference to the voting public.