Topic: Our parliamentary system (forked from Re: Chicken tikka dhansak courtesy of CBM)

[Peripatetic Phil]

(Continued in its own thread so as not to disrupt the on-topic discussion in the original thread).

What this country needs is a parliamentary system akin to the Scottish judicial system -- a inquisitorial system, not an adversarial one. 

I wasn't aware of that, so thank you for pointing it out. Are Scottish sessions broadcast on the radio?

I think you may have accidentally misinterpreted what I wrote, George -- I was comparing the British /parliamentary/ system with the Scottish /judicial/ system, not with the Scottish parliamentary system, about which I know very little.  Stephen Lindsay may well be able to shed more light on both, but to my mind, any system where all parties work together to achieve the most desirable outcome must surely be better than a system in which each party is virtually /required/ to see no merit in anything the other parties have to offer and which thus results in nothing better than the parliamentary equivalent of bear-baiting.

And thinking further about this (while showering) it seems to me that at the very heart of the matter is the fact that (a) our MPs are elected, and (b) are paid a salary.  As a result of this, a large part of their thinking centres around "what policies can we put in place that are most likely to result in our being re-elected".  Whilst not being re-elected as a party has no direct effect on the individual salary of an MP (i.e., he/she receives the same amount whether he/she is in power or in opposition, with the possible exception of the Prime Minister), statistically speaking an MP is less likely to receive any salary at all if his/her party is not re-elected.  Compare this to our traditional House of Lords, where membership and stipend were a hereditary right, and thus the interests of the country could be (and were) put first, rather than the interests of the party or the interests of the individual.

We need a system in which service as an MP is a short-term (e.g., two years) duty on all adults between a lower and an upper bound of age, and who would derive no pecuniary benefit therefrom (i.e., they would be remunerated as if they had continued in their former employment, and would be guaranteed by law a return to that employment after service as an MP was over).

** Phil.

[Stephen Lindsay]

So, the political aspects first. The Scottish Parliament is broadcast live on TV here and politicians in Scotland are no different from those in England. So labour slags off SNP, SNP slags off the Tories and as there are hardly any elected Tories in Scotland, they slag off everybody else. The Liberal Democrats run with the wind. I think you get my drift.

I agree with Phil's comments about politics and politicians and I would re-quote whoever said it but the worst thing about politics is politicians, or that old joke, "how do you know when politician is lying?", "when they open their mouth".

As someone who works within the Criminal Justice System I would love to be in the position to post here that the Scottish Judicial System differs greatly from that in England, and is inherently superior. Alas the end result, I fear is very similar to England.

Certainly as a starting point our legal systems differ greatly, with the English legal system forming legislation that is more prescriptive than Scotland where we also have "common law" that you don't have in England so much. Common law is not set in legislation but includes precedent and case law that has grown over the years and is in part derived from Roman law. In that sense, common law is dynamic or organic, developing as it does in response to legal, political and societal changes.

However when it comes to criminal trials and civil disputes the legal process is very adversarial, with the emphasis on both sides scoring points against each other rather than an attempt to seek "justice" which as Phil says could be an attempt to discover the truth by an inquisitorial process.

It is also the case that some legislation is UK wide and does not have a separate "tartan" version. The examples that come to mind right away would be something like the Data Protection Act 1998. It is also true to say that European Law is having a homogenising effect on law across the UK, The Human Rights Act being an example.

[Peripatetic Phil]

Ah, thank you for the clarification, Stephen.  For some reason I have always believed the Scottish legal system to be inquisitorial; thank you for setting me right.

** Phil.