Jason Kitcat

I've always been in favour of reforming our political system to make it muchre more fair and more representative of our society. The key steps to acheive that have in my view always been the introduction of proportional representation, removing the monarch's constitutional role and an elected upper house to replace the anachronistic House of Lords.

Tied up with these would be additional reforms to enable much greater transparency and openness – strengthening the Freedom of Information Act, individual voter registration to improve the resilience of elections to fraud and a complete overhaul of how elected representatives are paid. This final point, clearly the centre of attention at the moment, is only one part of the wider reforms needed.

What I often hesitated over, uncertain as to the implications, is eliminating ministers and the Prime Minister from the Parliamentary system. In other words, electing the Prime Minister separately so that he is not brought into power on the back of an overwhelming majority (made worse by the current unfair electoral system) of MPs from his party.

It is hard to imagine divorcing the Executive, Her Majesty's Government, from the Houses of Parliament. But I have come to the conclusion that this is a step we must take. Why? Let us look at what we gain from having the Executive inside Parliament:

• They are part of the legislature so can quickly and decisively enact laws;
• They are within the chambers and so can easily be questioned and challenged;
• They are relatively accessible to their colleagues in Parliament.

But what are the disadvantages:

• Laws get passed without decent scrutiny due to the pressure the Government has through the whips on their own colleagues;
• We get the ugly spectacle of governing ministers briefing against each other and the Prime Minister because they could all technically get the top job or boost their position within their Parliamentary party;
• On becoming Ministers the MPs inherently become distracted from their real jobs of representing their constituents which is taken on by other MPs and staff;
• A critically-minded legislator is lost as the member must vote with the government at all times or forfeit their job for 'disloyalty';
• Politicians aren't usually the best qualified people to manage large, often technocratic, government departments.

There is growing consensus that there are too many people in both Houses of Parliament. This is undoubtedly true and cutting the numbers down will help in all sorts of ways from the practical (more room in the chambers) to the financial (lowered costs to us taxpayers). But Government now also requires a huge number of Ministers which absorbs much of the majority party in business which isn't directly scrutiny or legislating. There is room for paring down some parts of government (for example Greens would eliminate the majority of various tax credits and benefits into one simple citizens' income and similarly would hugely simplify the number of taxes such as merging income tax with national insurance). But modern day government is complex and cannot be oversimplified so the need for a good number of ministers will remain.

I am now of the view that the Executive should be separate with the Prime Minister directly elected. He would then appoint his Ministers (who would not be able to sit in Parliament) and they would face confirmation hearings (in the US style). Parliament would also hold the right to require Ministers to attend Committee meetings to explain themselves.

This would enable legislators to get on with the job of scrutinising, creating law, holding government to account and representing their constituents. Meanwhile the Executive could focus on governing but with decent checks and balances in place. This is the kind of radical change our country needs.

I recently received a very well put together pack from Vote Cruelty Free which asked me to pledge in support of a number of extremely sensible and desirable policies if I am elected to the European Parliament. You can read them in detail on their website.

So I signed their pledge and lo-and-behold I'm the first to have done so! So they very kindly press released it, I copy the text below. I'm currently being flooded with pledges and many are very good indeed. I particularly like to see ones where groups are working together to find a consensus position which politicians can then quickly move forward with once the elections are over.

Thank you and Vote Cruelty Free!

European election candidate to Vote Cruelty Free

Green Party South East region candidate, Cllr Jason Kitcat, has become the first person to pledge his support for Vote Cruelty Free, a new non-partisan coalition of animal protection organisations working to put animals on the political agenda.

The alliance has sent its manifesto to all candidates in the forthcoming European elections and asked them to show their support for the issues raised.

Cllr Kitcat said, “I am delighted to support the Vote Cruelty Free pledge. How we treat animals is a reflection of the state of our society. I believe that in this day and age we have a clear ethical duty to eliminate animal suffering wherever possible. This has always been a key Green policy and a strongly held personal view.”

Vote Cruelty Free comprises the BUAV, Compassion in World Farming, International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW), League Against Cruel Sports and Respect for Animals. It covers a broad range of animal welfare issues including wild and marine animals, animal experimentation, cruel sports, the fur trade and farming.

Vote Cruelty Free is urging all candidates to pledge their support for the initiative. Voters can track candidates who have signed up by visiting the website at http://www.votecrueltyfree.org.

As the MP expenses row continues to engulf the media bubble, life for those outside the Westminster village goes on. And for many that remains really rather grim.

Climate change still needs to be urgently dealt with, as shown so vividly by the disappearance of a glacier in Bolivia. The main political parties continue to talk about the issue, offer vague policies but fail to push for the immediate action that is needed – in fact we’re going backwards in some cases, as with the tragic closure of the only wind turbine factory in the UK.

Equally appalling is the news that the country is more unequal that any time since modern records began in the early 60s. Sadly this does not surprise me at all based on my experiences in Brighton & Hove, but it is tragic that after so many people put their hopes in New Labour that they have been let down. I hope they recognise the failure was New Labour’s — not politicians or politics as a whole (though I could support arguments that opposition parties failed us in sufficiently scrutinising some Labour policies over the years).

Rather than dissect all the policies, I would just like to highlight that all these issues: expenses (snout in trough disease), climate change, social justice… they all highlight the urgent, desperate, vital need for there to be vibrant and active politics in this country. I dearly hope people are not turning off politics as we need them to vote for change more than ever before. Stephen Fry’s take on this in a BBC interview I think is rather helpful and incisive.

Great broadcast for this year's Euro elections

Also available on lovely new micro-site http://www.thinkagainvotegreen.org.uk