In the sea of faces on the green benches, how many of those 647 MPs can you recognise? Most will never be ministers. We have so many, they say, because of the sacred link between an MP and their constituency, one to roughly every 60,000 voters. But that mystical bond is mostly the wishful thinking of self-deluding MPs. Both the good and the useless are swept in and out of office on their party's coat-tails. We need fewer of them, representing larger areas, to make them more powerful national figures.

If there were, say 400, most would have a valuable role to play within their party and parliament. A strengthened committee system with a large research staff needs to act as a mighty scrutineer of government policy. To be a leading member of a key committee should be more important than being a mere junior minister. More MPs need to be household names in their own right as parliamentarians, not simply anonymous canon fodder praying for patronage from their leader. There should be fewer ministerial posts and more emphasis on parliament.

The role of MPs would change significantly. Their business should be governing the country: too much time is spent now as advocates for individual local cases on housing, benefits and vast numbers of immigration pleas, often queue-jumping existing appeals and complaints procedures to the aggravation of officials required to drop everything else to answer MPs' letters.

Some casework should go to councillors, if more power is to be devolved. Good MPs say they need some casework, to see at first hand where government departments are failing, but the balance now is out of kilter.

A proportional representation system, such as the Jenkins plan, means grouping MPs together in clumps of six, in larger constituencies, so that voters are represented by someone they voted for: what estate-dweller wants help from a grandee with vast estates? What Tory businessman trusts tax help from some leftwinger?

No system is perfect, but fewer MPs grouped in larger constituencies would better represent more people.