Comment Central: A recall mechanism to fire bad MPs?

Power corrupts, we like to say - wringing our hands over MPs' expenses. It certainly does. Look at Gordon Brown, using the new row over capital gains tax to destabilise his critic Hazel Blears, while saying that the same mud should not stick to James Purnell and Geoff Hoon. It's a nasty game, politics.

But it is the absence of power, it seems to me, that is an important part of public outrage. Westminster has given up so much power - to Europe, to quangos, to judges - that people wonder what they are paying for. Half the time, a big issue comes up and politicians say it's not their responsibility.

Take this week's ruling by the Court of Appeal that soldiers serving abroad must be covered by human rights law. Clearly the MoD should have a duty of care. But what will happen if soldiers in battle claim a “right to life”? The ruling - and the resulting confusion - is a direct consequence of the Blair Government's rush to incorporate the European Convention on Human Rights into British law.

You don't see other ECHR signatory countries in such a pickle. France regularly deports people it considers to be a threat to national security, for example. But British home secretaries are often forced to keep them here on benefits. Our legislators have created a bonanza for lawyers while tying their own hands - and now perhaps even those of the Army, one of our last great institutions.

The readiness of politicians to relinquish power amazes me. Take the European constitution, now rebranded as the Lisbon treaty. I read all the drafts of that document, spoke to lawyers and became convinced that its calculated opacity was a charter for the creeping takeover of national policy by bureaucrats and judges. There were brilliant MPs who could debate every inch of the detail - David Miliband, Gisela Stuart, David Heathcoat-Amory, Chris Huhne. But I met others who hadn't even read the document and looked incredulous that I had.

I once ran a construction company. I didn't sign contracts that I didn't understand, especially when they involved other people's money. So I could not believe that on an issue of such consequence - for their own role as well as for the nation - MPs had not done their homework. When the annual EU membership fee is £6.5 billion, when EU directives have driven almost half of the regulations passed here since 1998, and when implementing those regulations has cost £106 billion (according to a recent study by Open Europe), it is not surprising that people ask what MPs are doing.

It is not that politicians are incapable. Far from it. Most of those I meet are intelligent, thoughtful and accomplished. People who say that MPs are “out of touch” have never seen Kate Hoey recognising constituents by name in a packed hall. They have not talked to David Cameron about the NHS or Frank Field about the benefits system or Jack Straw about social services. That does not mean there is no room for independent MPs. But independent MPs coming in with big ideas will find themselves up against not just party machines but unreachable bureaucracies.

Who, for instance, do you think should control £12 billion of taxpayers' money: elected politicians or a quango? Last month there was an outcry when 144 further education colleges discovered there was no money to finish off their buildings. The relevant minister went on the radio and blamed the Learning and Skills Council. This quango has an annual budget of £11.6 billion and a vast, sprawling bureaucracy but has not noticeably improved the nation's skills. The minister effectively said he was not responsible for the budget. In which case he should not have been on the radio. Nor employed by voters.

Some of what appears to be bureaucratic capture is, of course, buck-passing. When the marking of 1.2 million SATs exam papers collapsed last year, ministers blamed the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority and its head, Ken Boston, who resigned. They were so keen to avoid responsibility that they even criticised his performance at a crucial meeting he had not attended. Frankly, you can't help feeling it would be better to reduce the tests, the quangos and the need for such wrangling.

There sometimes seems to be an inverse correlation between the complexity of government and its importance. Last year a junior minister told me she was not really on top of something I had gone to see her about, because her portfolio was “too big”. She was probably working 12-hour days but seemed to be swamped by trivia. It struck me that she felt as powerless as I did.

As fast as it has handed power to other bodies, this Government has filled up its time with the inconsequential. It has increasingly made politics a matter of placating interest groups. I didn't elect my MP to make it easier for ambulance chasers to advertise, or to change the planning rules in favour of lap-dancing clubs, or to create the database of 11 million children, launched this week to “help the vulnerable”, on which a determined paedophile can now find my sons' names, ages and school address. But having done so, Parliament will no doubt eventually spend time curbing the perverse consequences.

Many decent MPs are dismayed at being lumped together with the crooks. But one of the reasons public anger goes a lot deeper than Sir Peter Viggers's duck pond is because we feel we can no longer change our laws by voting out politicians. The EU machine marches on, constraining everything from the future of the Post Office to what vitamins we can take. The promised referendum on the Lisbon treaty has been ditched. The quango nanny state has acquired a momentum of its own. Politicians have given away powers that they held in trust for the people. They cannot be altogether surprised if people now lump them all together in impotent fury.

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