MPs Rule OK?
Glorified social workers ... underpaid lobby fodder ... chained-up watchdogs. Back-bench mps in their more frustrated moments are inclined to use these dismal phrases about themselves. Has the Cabinet - in effect, the government - become too powerful? Has the Civil Service become too secretive? Is there any way forward for the back-bencher who wants to ask awkward questions? Or is it simply that mps under 20th-century pressures are forced to use a 19th-century machine?
Millions of pounds of tax-payers' money are spent by the government on the nod without time for debate. Many mps complain that their £6,270 basic salary is too low, and that backup facilities are inadequate. Legislative pressure, guillotine motions, organisation of committees - all have evolved from old procedures. Are they the best that our ' mother' of parliaments can devise?
On film, five of the youngest mps in the House give their views. So too do six ordinary voters who, at the request of The Man Alive Report, have been spending time in the Visitors' Gallery and doing some ' parliamentary homework '. Both groups will be joined in the studio by various experienced Parliamentarians, including the most experienced of all : Lord Shinwell Producer
ALAN PATIENT Editor TIM SLESSOR