Andrew is deeply concerned about the decline in respect for Parliament and the need for Parliament to reform itself. Among his proposals for reform, Andrew has called for a smaller House of Commons, with a ten per cent early reduction in the number of MPs. He has pressed for pay and most allowances to be taken out of the direct control of MPs.
He does not believe that MPs should vote on their own pay rises. Details of some of his proposals were published in his 2004 pamphlet; Pruning the Politicians: The case for a smaller House of Commons.
He also set out detailed proposals for reform in Mr Blair’s Poodle Goes to War.
He was an active member of the Conservative Party’s Democracy Task Force. More recently, he was elected to serve on a Committee created to reform the House of Commons, working to make parliamentary procedures more transparent and democratic.
For many years Andrew has campaigned to make the House of Lords democratic. He believes that only people who have been elected should have the right to make our laws. He has written several papers on the subject, including Reforming the Lords: a Conservative Approach in 1998 and, more recently, An Elected Second Chamber: A Conservative View, published jointly with Sir George Young in 2009.