How to Help the Telegraph.

In a Leader today the Telegraph asks for help. Which 100 MPs should be cut from Parliament?

Politicians are good at exempting themselves from their own strictures.
When, for example, MPs found that sex equality laws prevented them from offering all-women shortlists, they amended the legislation so that it no longer applied to political parties. At a time when, largely through government actions, pensions have collapsed in value, MPs have inflated their own retirement funds. While every government looks for savings in Whitehall, Parliament’s own budget always grows.
How nice, then, to see the Tories trying to live by their own principles. They have long argued that large bureaucracies are deleterious to good governance. This is observably true. When our nation was at its zenith, Salisbury’s Foreign Office was staffed by 81 officials.
Our subsequent decline has been in inverse correlation to the growth of the state, culminating in the huge expansion of the public sector under Gordon Brown. The more people who work for the state, the more time they spend consulting, assessing, liaising and, occasionally, suing, and the less they spend working. This applies in spades to our legislators, who plainly feel that they must justify their salaries by passing more and more laws. Cutting 100 MPs is a fine indication of intent. But which 100 MPs does Michael Howard have in mind? We would welcome readers’ suggestions.

Here is the address for your response.
There are a number of potential responses. “All Labour Ministers” sounds like a good one, as does a list of your 100 least favourite MPs. My take would be rather simpler, and also go to correct the gross constitutional anomaly under which the country is governed. Simply eject the Scottish and Welsh MPs from discussions on matters to do with England. A half-way step to the ideas of these guys, The Campaign for an English Parliament.
Another little known fact is that Scots and Welsh constituencies are notably smaller than English ones. If we simply state that all constituencies should be the same size as the current English average this will reduce the number of MPs by some 50, half way to our target, and the gross over-representation of the Scots at Westminster will be removed. It doesn’t solve the constitutional question at all, but will make a future Labour government a great deal harder, which is good news in and of itself of course.
Anyway, why not pop your views down on an email and send them in?

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