Interview with Greg Dyke on constitutional change

At the Lib Dem federal conference last September I attended the "Moats, Mortgages and Mayhem" fringe event run by Liberal Vision.

One of the panelists was former Director General of the BBC Greg Dyke who is now an enthusiast for the Lib Dems and he had some very interesting things to say about reform of parliament. He suggested that there should be some sort of citizen's convention or jury which could take the reform decisions out of the hands of the political classes. However he did describe some of the reforms he would like to see. Amongst them he suggested that:

• Parliament could be physically moved to Birmingham, Manchester or another city well away from London.
• Halve the number of MPs.
• Electoral reform to a proportional system for the House of Commons.
• An elected second chamber.
• Abolition of the whips.

At the end of the meeting I managed to grab a couple of minutes with him and asked him a couple of further questions about his time at the BBC and the likelihood of his reforms being implemented: