Cameron urges overhaul of government

LONDON (Reuters) - Conservative leader David Cameron called for an overhaul of how the country is run in comments published on Tuesday, saying parliament needed to be made both more transparent and more powerful.

Seeking to seize the initiative from Prime Minister Gordon Brown in the wake of an expenses scandal that has tarnished both leaders' parties, Cameron said parliament needed to act as a check on government and also be more representative to voters.

He said the government should consider introducing fixed-term parliaments -- currently the government in office decides when to call an election within a five-year time-limit -- curb the power of the prime minister and post parliamentary proceedings on YouTube to make them more accessible to the public.

"We need to look seriously at the immense power prime ministers wield through their ability to call an election whenever they want... If we want parliament to be a real engine of accountability, we need to show it's not just the creature of the executive," he wrote in the Guardian newspaper.

"The central objective of the new politics we need should be a massive, sweeping, radical redistribution of power: from the state to citizens; from the government to parliament... from judges to the people; from bureaucracy to democracy."

Among his proposals is to open up the legislative process to outsiders by sending text messages on the progress of parliamentary bills and by posting proceedings on YouTube.

He argues that local authorities should be given control over schools, housing and policing, and that there should be a right to initiate local and national referendums.

More radically, he says that there should be open primaries for parliamentary candidates, a system that would echo the selection process in the United States. Currently candidates are chosen from within the party structure.

Cameron, whose Conservative party is 20 points ahead of Labour in opinion polls and who would probably win an election resoundingly if one were held now, is at pains to be seen to be taking action to set parliament straight since the scandal over MPs' expenses erupted three weeks ago.