The People's Parliament is a Channel 4 programme in which 90-100 randomly selected citizens, sitting in a mockup of the House of Commons of the United Kingdom, debated and voted on controversial issues.
[4] The participants hearing debate and voted on motions were called "Members of the People's Parliament" (MPPs) and selected to be representative of society.
"[5] The programme has been described as "an attempt to 're-empower' the disenfranchised electorate and explore the way in which a representative sample of people would respond to extended deliberation of difficult issues.
Direct democracy was found in Classical Greece and in some Swiss Cantons but is unsuitable for modern states due to population numbers.
FOR: Ch Supt John Potts, Police Superintendents' Association, AGAINST Prof Norman Tutt, executive director of Social Information Systems, Cheshire.
[8] 13 August 'Non-essential vehicles should be banned from city centres' FOR: Rolf Monheim, Professor in Applied Urban Geography, Bayreuth University, AGAINST: Rosemary Graham, public policy and communications manager of the Royal Automobile Club.
For: Margaret Mervis, Wandsworth Council's housing chairwoman; AGAINST Fred Broughton, chairman-elect of the Police Federation of England and Wales.
Kenneth Wright, in the Glasgow Herald wrote of the first programme that it: struck hell into my heart from its earliest tidings; set as it was in a slavish mock-up of the House of Commons ... To be sure, there were many present who were deeply in love with the sound of their own voices, a fair scattering of career dingbats, and two or three who looked suspiciously capable of becoming real, hectoring, righteous, boring MPs themselves one day; yet on the whole they were disappointingly non-fanatical and well-meaning.
... Lesley Riddoch, as Madam Speaker, handled the mob with wit and charm ("One singer, one song") only rarely giving the tiniest hint of the impatience that people who are paid to have opinions naturally feel for the amateur competition.
[20]The Economist of 17 September 1994 noted that "many viewers of the "People's Parliament" have judged its debates to be of higher quality than those in the House of Commons.
Lesley Riddoch, noted that: The Mother of Parliaments is also overwhelmingly male, white, able-bodied, middle-class, and university educated.
That awareness of the unrepresentative nature of Parliament, together with recent allegations of sleaze, has switched a lot of the public off parliamentary politics.
[21]Simon Hoggart in a Parliamentary sketch in the Guardian upon a debate in the House of Commons observed that: For a moment the session began to sound like one of the appalling 'People's Parliaments' on Channel Four in which members of the public contemplate the issue of juvenile custodial sentences in terms of how their car radio got nicked, and how we should take a tip from Singapore where you get flogged for leaving chewing gum under a bus seat.