Today in her brand new coach with its electric windows, the Queen will open Parliament for the last time before this coalition Government ends its five year tenure. The early indications that this was to be a quiet year are being disputed and two of the new Bills will be matters covered in this blog previously. The much discussed proposal for a law on the cost of plastic bags from supermarkets will be included as will a Bill on the recall for MPs. The Right to Recall is a badly needed element of our constitutional arrangement with our elected political leaders. If as some commentators are reporting, this will only apply once an MP has been judged to have broken the law, then it will be a complete sham and not at all what is needed. What we need is a law which allows residents to decide to recall their MP if his or her actions have fallen below the standard that they expect. If the MP has been found guilty of breaking the criminal law, then this of course should lead to a by-election, in the same way as a solicitor or police officer would lose their jobs if they are found guilty of such laws.

There are however other items that should be included in the speech, or at least in the year ahead. The need for the Government to repay the £425M borrowed from the Big Lottery good causes fund, to help pay for the 2012 Olympic Stadia is vital. We are within days of the Brazilian World Cup which marks the half way point to the 2016 Olympics. If the coalition had begun to repay this sum at the point which was agreed, they would have paid half a Million pounds every day to good causes. That was assuming that they repaid the total amount over a 2 year period. If they make a decision now to repay the sum (it would now have risen to £438M) over the next two years it will be repaid before the opening ceremony of the 2016 Olympics. Imagine the impact of 870 days of good news!

Because a year is not long enough to pass laws that would require long term scrutiny, or elements that are contentious, perhaps what we need is a basis for debating issues that could gain cross party support and be treated as ‘shovel ready’ legislation for the next Parliament, irrespective of which party is in the driving seat. All parties could then include these items in their manifestos should they support the proposals. The phrase ‘shovel ready’ came up in a meeting I was at last night. The funding that the Government plans to release through Local Economic Partnerships in the next few weeks needs to be spent or at least fully committed by the time of next Mays election. That will enable the coalition to claim credit for projects that are still plans at the moment. The challenge of developing shovel ready schemes is that they take time and cost money to develop, a high risk when there is no certainty of any funding being forthcoming. Unlike the education or business communities, which don’t have periods of hiatus that could allow them to work up such plans, the Government does have a hiatus which emerges as a result of a fixed term Parliament. Lets have some shovel ready legislation on matters such as Lords Reform, indeed on democratic reform that can be included in the Queens Speech in June 2015!