Claire Perry

MP for Devizes and a former adviser to George Osborne. A new-intake member, she was formerly a banker but quit the City to bring up her three children

● Hold a national referendum on EU membership. The current economic and political turmoil in the eurozone has sharpened the debate over the benefits of Britain’s EU membership, but the arguments seem to take place in a fact-free vacuum where estimates of membership cost and legislative burden are over-egged and economic benefits are never accurately quantified. The AV referendum last year showed that the country is quite capable of having a sophisticated discussion of the costs and benefits of changing the electoral system and I’d like to see a similar level of national discourse on Britain’s relationship with Europe. The prime minister would have to decide what to do with the result but holding the referendum might provoke similar measures in other European countries and accelerate the badly needed restructuring of the supra-national economic and political landscape across the EU.

● Close women’s prisons. Well, not all of them. There will always be female criminals whose crimes are so heinous that custody is the only option, but the majority of women are locked up for low-level repeat offences reflecting a mish-mash of drug, alcohol and emotional dependencies. Prison does almost nothing to solve these problems with the result that at least half of female prisoners re-offend within a year of release. With a prison place costing more than £56,000 a year, and more than 17,000 children separated from their imprisoned mothers annually, this revolving door is a waste of taxpayers’ money and creates enormous family disruption. There are good alternatives to custody that deliver better results such as tough, local community sentences or wrap-around women’s treatment centres, and if we are serious about a rehabilitation revolution, we should contract for results with the best of these providers, with payment coming from the staged closure of womens’ prisons.

● Link taxes and government spending on tax bills. The government has made great strides in increasing the transparency of national and local government spending, but I think there is a missing link in that government spending is not linked back to individual tax bills. I’d like to see a simple pie chart or statement on every tax return or online tax filing showing how much of each tax pound collected was spent on the NHS, defence, schools and so on. The words “Thank you for your taxes; we will do our best to spend them wisely” wouldn’t go amiss either.

● Oversee an online “Big Society” map. This government wants to unleash a new wave of civic responsibility and one way to help the process would be to oversee the publication of a Big Society map that shows people how they can get involved locally. This would be built on the concept of the new online crime maps allowing people to see local civic organisations and charities operating in their area. I choose the word “oversee” advisedly as this should ideally be a dynamic open source “Wiki-map”, hosted on the directgov website and moderated by the Big Society team but belonging to the organisations posting information rather than being squeezed by the cold hand of giant government IT contracts.

● Start compulsory community service in schools. I am a strong supporter of the National Citizen Service but worry that its voluntary nature will restrict participation, and that getting children involved at the age of 16 might be too late to change behaviour. As well as engaging older children in this way, we should also introduce a compulsory community service requirement – say 10 hours a term – for all students over the age of 11. I saw this idea in action in the US this summer where students in some high schools undertake mandatory community service to graduate. Activities include coaching younger children in sport, volunteering in local care homes and working on environmental projects – all areas where we have a need and where the mutual benefits could be substantial.