Parliament Reform Quotes

I'm going to reduce the size of the Cabinet, cut the number of ministers, reduce the size of the House of Commons, campaign for a European Parliament with 100 fewer members, halve the number of political advisers, and abolish a huge swathe of Labour's regional bureaucracies and agencies and their offices in Brussels.

Canadians can get Parliament working again. Here's how to do that: elect more New Democrats.

And think of how we challenged the idea of a male dominated Parliament with All-Women shortlists and made the cause of gender equality central to our government. We were right to do so.

For many years I have advocated 'redesigning Parliament' in a variety of ways - elect the Senate, do away with the 'confidence convention,' permit freer voting, strengthen the role of back benchers and committees, do away with ineffectual 'take note' debates, restructure question period, and so on.

Parliament should be broken up, and the Speaker plucked out of his chair.

I wish to make it clear from the onset that at the coming election I want support on no other understanding that the new Parliament is to destroy once and for ever, the power of the hereditary chamber to reverse the decisions of the representatives of the people.

In the present great area of era of reform, where unjust governments are falling in every quarter of Europe … when all government is acknowledged to originate from the people … we think it is our duty, as Irishmen, to come forward and state what we feel to be our heavy grievance, and what we know to be its effectual remedy. WE HAVE NO NATIONAL GOVERNMENT—We are ruled by Englishmen and the Servants of Englishmen …. [We seek] AN EQUAL REPRESENTATION OF ALL THE PEOPLE IN PARLIAMENT… No reform is practicable, efficacious, or just which does not include Irishman of every religious persuasion.

There is no-one more determined against annual parliaments, universal suffrage and the ballot, than I. My object is … to put an end to such hopes and projects. The ... principle of my reform is, to prevent the necessity of revolution, ... reforming to preserve and not to overthrow.

We will have to embark on a change so radical, a revolution so quiet and yet so total, that it will go far beyond the programme for a parliament.

I am totally in favour of reform - but it must be reform that changes the nature of British politics, not simply the makeup or operation of parliament.

Imagine what we could achieve if we had more Conservative MEPs in the European Parliament in terms of getting a better deal for Britain and negotiating fundamental reform and putting that in a referendum to the British people.

Well, if you look at the programme that we're offering, I think that is a future which is fair for women as well as men. We're still heavily outnumbered - we're still four to one in parliament - but we are pioneers! We are forging a new path.

There can be no place in a 21st-century parliament for people with 15th-century titles upholding 19th-century prejudices.