Catholic MPs Face Dilema

[Colr]

Catholic MPs to rebel over embryo bill

The Bill going through Parliament will reform the fertility laws and allow lesbian couples to be registered as legal parents - a move that has been attacked by the Roman Catholic Church.

Des Browne, Paul Murphy and Ruth Kelly: Catholic MPs to rebel over embryo bill
Ministers Des Browne, Paul Murphy, and Ruth Kelly threaten to resist the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill because of their religious beliefs

Labour MPs will be under a three-line whip to back the legislation. Cabinet ministers are normally bound by collective responsibility to vote for any Government Bill.

But three senior Cabinet ministers - Des Browne, the Defence Secretary, Ruth Kelly, the Transport Secretary, and Paul Murphy, the Welsh Secretary - threaten to resist the order because of their religious beliefs.

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This throws up some interesting questions such as: are MPs elected to reflect the will of their electorate or are they elected by the people to exercise their own judgment on the peoples behalf? Also, to what extent do the leaders of an MPs faith have undue influence on the systems of power and law?

Personally, I'm relaxed about this - more so than the concept of a 3-line whip on issues such as these. Parliament is their to reflect and debate a range of views and so long as MPs are intelligent people with a free will and ability to consider all sides it should not be a problem.

[StevieC]

Originally Posted by Colr
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Ministers Des Browne, Paul Murphy, and Ruth Kelly threaten to resist the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill because of their religious beliefs

I also thought MP's were meant to represent their constituents, not their religions?


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[Smurf]

Such matters should be a free vote.

Indeed there's an arguement to be made that all votes in Parliament should be free votes.

That would be a bit more democratic no?

[madkink]

I have no thoughts really on the bill,

BUT i do think that there should be a 'second rep' to work on behalf of constituants in times where the elected MP can not/will not vote on matters or vote against matters based on there own feelings/religon But then on saying that the '2ic' would also have to be voted in, and well that means more politicians and we certainly don't need that

[egb_hibs]

i think that either;

mps vote based on their constituents views - which would change our system completely (for good or ill)

or it should be a free vote. within the present system brown's stalinist approach to a question of conscience is actually an embodiment of the same thing that people fear when they worry about religion intruding into politics; ie the imposition of a moral position. as col implies a free vote actually enables the population to be represented, assuming mps have roughly the same spread of views as the populace (actually they don't, ie lack of muslim mps, but it's better than a 3 line whip)