Archive for the ‘Parliament’ Category
What isn’t a moral issue?
Brown caved on a free vote, which raises the question: are there many matters Parliament discusses that aren’t moral or ethical issues?
Given a sudden bout of laziness, I won’t paraphrase and try and it write off as my own thoughts but will instead just copy outright from this Polly Toynbee article.
What is a moral issue in politics? Recent House of Commons practice has freed MPs to follow their consciences on questions of pressing moral profundity such as hunting with hounds, Lords reform and fluoridation of the water supply. How do parties decide what belongs in some unique realm of “morality”? Perhaps by the volume of green-ink emails from obsessives that follows any mention of such matters, among them abortion and embryology.
Now look at what political parties have decreed not to be matters to trouble MPs’ consciences: going to war in Iraq is a prime case. That may be small potatoes compared with climate change, where MPs have nodded through a puny record of action, as if the survival of their grandchildren ranked morally below fluoridation of teeth. Replacing Trident while pretending to work for non-proliferation and world peace might strike many as a matter of conscience, but apparently not. Coming soon will be the vote on detaining suspects without charge for 42 days, which won’t be moral enough for a free vote either.
Some would put ID cards into this “moral” category deserving a free vote too, though (here come the emails) I tend put that on the green-ink side of the equation. But I would put the duty of the wealthy to pay fair inheritance tax into the moral basket, alongside the bully power of City money to ensure that the little people pay proportionately more in tax than the rich. I think it a moral matter when the Commons votes through a minimum wage below the inflation rate, further impoverishing the already underpaid.
If I were an MP, I might demand a conscience vote on these. I would certainly see no reason why the religious conscience is treated as more precious than other MPs’ moral views. On the great questions of war, climate and social justice, the cardinals and bishops never muster their heaviest artillery. They keep their powder dry for their own bizarre morality, focused as ever on sex and fertility - but why should those issues be sacrosanct for MPs’ free votes?
Blogging etiquette requires I have a line of text underneath a large quote.
