Having said this, there are other types of representation to be considered, which, in a way, the House of Lords fulfils better than the House of Commons because of their lack of representation. There is altruistic representation, ‘delegate representative’ and judgement representation. Altruistic representation is where an MP seeks to protect and advance the interests of the populous he represents. It is for the electorate to decide whether the MP in question is sincere in trying to seek a resolution to the issues raised. This is a significant concept of representation, because a MP is elected in order to symbolize the views and beliefs of the people who elected him. However, this in itself has issues. Firstly, it is difficult to determine whether an MP is genuine or is simply pursuing these issues as a means of furthering his own career. Moreover, if an MP acts according to what the people wants, this may clash with his own conscience, thus violating the ‘Burkean Notion’. If an MP only implements policies to curry public favour, then it becomes policies that are ‘popular’, rather than ‘useful’, especially the use of such policies helps to further political ambition. In this way, parliament is representative, but is not truly so, because the reasons may not be altruistic in nature (party whips, national interest, self-interest may affect policy decisions). Through this type of representation, it conflicts with other types.
This is the same problem with a ‘delegate representative’, who is somewhat obligated to represent the views of the voter in a defined way. In some ways, MPs are a kind of messenger who represents the views and opinions of the society who have elected them. But, again, if following this view means going against their conscience, then this is another issue of representation; though the MP is representing the wishes of the people, at the same time, he is not adhering to the Burkean Notion, which states that an MP must not act as delegates between Parliament and people. If Britain conforms to this sort of representation, it is clear that Westminster isn’t very representative, because most MPs only keep to the wishes of the electorate to a certain extent, which goes as far as listening to their question and problems. Therefore, Westminster can be said to neither be representative of the people or of their views.
The Burkean Notion is a concept (derived from the Whig MP Edmund Burke) that states that MPs should act only in accordance with their own conscience in matters of policy. If they don’t, they should resign, since it would be going against their conscience to accept Collective Ministerial Responsibility if they are taking responsibility for a decision that they do not feel comfortable with. There were several examples of this during the Iraq War in 2003, where a few MPs like Robin Cook resigned as a protest against Blair’s stance on the war. This notion is most closely linked to ‘judgment representation’, another theory of Burke’s, which is antithetical to the other two theories. As he said in 1724, ‘your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment and he betrays, instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your opinion’. This essentially states that a MP should implement policy through their own conscience and judgement. This has actually happened a few times in Britain. For example, the MPs in Parliament at the moment have voted for lifting the cap on student fees though most of the electorate are against the policy. Furthermore Blair declared war on Iraq because he judged it best for the national interest, though there was nationwide protest. This is the major issue with this type of representation – Burke first makes the assumption that the representative’s judgment is more valid than the electorate; secondly, he essentially claims that the opinion of the public is immaterial if it isn’t good in the MP’s opinion, and so it can be disregarded. As can be seen with Thatcher’s fall in 1990, Blair’s in 2007 and Brown’s in 2010, if a government goes against the wishes of the people, it often results in a collapse in power through protest, since they are no longer representing the people. Furthermore, if a politician only acts in accordance
Lastly, representation can be gained through general elections, since our multi-party system means that a range of opinion and belief, no matter how extreme, is on offer for the electorate to choose. This is rarely the case though; in reality, only two parties (Labour and Tory) have a distinctly large possibility of forming a government, and in some areas, such as parts of Surrey and Oxfordshire, Labour voters are underrepresented because they are residing in Conservative strongholds. This leads to wasted votes and an increase in voter apathy, since the voters would feel ignored and disregarded. Even though the Conservatives only gained 38.7% of the vote in the 2010 election, they won over 50% of seats, which shows the disjointed proportions between seats and votes. This again shows the lack of proper representation in government.
Having said this, another issue is also called to question; whether it is really necessary to have accurate representation within Parliament. Some argue that it isn’t necessary to have an MP of a particular gender before they can successfully sympathize with a certain viewpoint. Also, if Parliament strives to achieve absolute representation, this can result in a situation a ‘reverse snobbery’, where an MP is elected or rejected based on their background and not on their merit. Such tokenism is also dangerous to a democracy, since MPs should be elected on capability alone. It has also been suggested that MPs who have more life epxerience are better as elected politicians, since their experience could be applied to help solve a raised issue, perhaps leading to a majority of older peers/MPs. However,this only addresses the issue of whether representation is necessary, not whether it is actually applied in Westminster, and so does not fully justify the deficient representation in Parliament.
In conclusion, though government tries to implement measures of representation, these are only fulfilled to a very small extent, since the views and beliefs of the public are very rarely brought out in Parliament. Representation is only achieved to a small extent for 2 reasons; firstly, it is impossible, especially with the peers, to have a Parliament that fully represents the people demographically. Secondly, the different concepts of representation mentioned above, conflict with eachother; an MP/peer can follow the people’s beliefs to the utmost, or follow their own judgment/conscience (Burkean Notion). As long as there are these conflicting ideas of representation within the concept itself,it is impossible to fulfil completely. Our current Coalition government can be said to either be the ‘best of both worlds’ or ‘a compromise’; it can be considered the former because the merging of the Tory and LibDems parties shows that the majority of electorate opinion is being represented in Parliament. Even so, the situation can be analysed as the latter because a Coalition is a not a desired result – a Tory voter wouldn’t want LibDem influence in government, and vice versa. Therefore, Parliament is only representative to a very small extent.
