How can House of Commons reform be delivered in the next parliament? A new Constitution Unit report explores past approaches to developing and delivering changes to the Commons’ procedures, and the implications for current advocates of reform. Tom Fleming and Hannah Kelly summarise the report’s findings and conclusions. 

Background 

House of Commons reform is likely to be on the political agenda in the next parliament. Recent years have seen a growing number of books and reports highlighting problems with how the Commons works, and arguing that at least part of the solution lies in reforming its internal procedures. These reform proposals come against a backdrop of deep public dissatisfaction with parliament that suggests a need for MPs to explore ways of enhancing their collective reputation. The election of a new parliament on 4 July may therefore open a window of opportunity for Commons reform. 

Given this context, there has been surprisingly little recent discussion of how such reforms might actually be delivered. This matters, because a number of different institutional vehicles can be used for developing and drafting proposals for procedural change. Moreover, past experience suggests that how the reform process is organised matters for the outcomes of that process. Politicians with an agenda for Commons reform should therefore be giving serious thought to the mechanisms for delivering that agenda. 

Goals of the report 

Our new report therefore provides an evidence-based assessment of four different previous approaches to developing and delivering proposals for Commons reform: 

• Government initiative. Reform can come directly from government proposals, drawn up under the authority of ministers. Those ministers might respond to suggestions from elsewhere, and informally consult relevant MPs or select committees. But under this approach, the initiative for developing and bringing forward reform proposals lies wholly with the government. 
• Permanent backbench select committee. Proposals can instead be developed by a permanent select committee of backbench MPs with an ongoing remit to investigate procedural questions. The primary past and current case of this approach, and the one we study in our report, is the House of Commons Procedure Committee, which has existed in more or less its current form since 1997. 
• Temporary backbench select committee. The Commons can also appoint a backbench select committee with a temporary remit to report on a particular area or areas of procedure. We study the most recent such committee: the 2009–10 Select Committee on Reform of the House of Commons, better known as the ‘Wright Committee’ after its chair, the Labour MP Tony Wright. 
• Government-chaired select committee. The final approach is something of a hybrid: appointing a select committee to review Commons procedures, but having it be chaired by a government minister. The key template for this is the Modernisation Committee which existed from 1997 to 2010 under the last Labour government. This committee combined backbench MPs with frontbench spokespeople from the three largest parties, and was chaired by the Leader of the House. Having a cabinet minister chair the committee was unusual, and sometimes controversial, given that Commons select committees usually only include backbench MPs. 

The report summarises these four approaches in more detail, and studies key past uses of each to understand whether and how they differed in (a) the substance of their proposals, (b) how far those proposals were implemented, and (c) how far they attracted wide support among MPs. We do this by combining insights from a new dataset of past reform proposals from ministers and committees, a handful of interviews with current and former MPs, and secondary literature. 

By comparing how these four approaches have worked in the past, we hope to help current politicians better understand the potential mechanisms through which they could pursue an agenda for Commons reform. We focus particularly on how a government party that wishes to deliver Commons reform might go about doing so. But the report is not aimed at any particular political party, and does not endorse any particular reforms: we focus on understanding the means of reform rather than its ends.  

Key findings 

Our analysis leads us to five main findings and conclusions, as follows: 

1. In recent decades, it has been rare for major procedural reform proposals to be developed by government initiative. This route has mostly been used for smaller tweaks to procedure, while larger reforms have typically been the preserve of the House’s select committees. Attempts to depart from that norm have seen ministers criticised by MPs, including their own backbenchers. We therefore suggest that governments and political parties should work with and through a select committee when turning their aspirations for anything more than minor, uncontroversial reforms into concrete proposals. 

2. Among the three committees we studied, the clearest contrast is in the implementation rate of their proposals: the Modernisation Committee saw much more success than the Wright Committee or Procedure Committee at getting its recommendations implemented. The latter two committees did have some influence in the period we studied, but often struggled to get their proposals even tabled for debate in the House (as most procedural changes require), thanks to the government’s control of the agenda. By contrast, having the Leader of the House chair the Modernisation Committee made it more able to get support from government, and therefore to secure the necessary parliamentary time and votes for implementing its proposals. 

3. We find no clear evidence that the Modernisation Committee’s higher implementation rate came at the cost of its proposals being tailored to suit the interests of ministers over the rights of backbenchers or opposition parties. Despite being chaired by a minister, the committee was willing to consider reforms aimed at making the Commons more ‘effective’, like the creation of Westminster Hall debates and the introduction of public bill committees. At times, it was more focused on such reforms than the Procedure Committee was. 

4. We find more evidence of a different potential downside to the Modernisation Committee: it was often internally divided and externally divisive. The committee held more formal votes (‘divisions’) than the Procedure Committee when debating and agreeing its reports, and its reports also triggered more votes in the wider House when they were considered. The Procedure Committee’s proposals do sometimes provoke disagreement, as shown by the government’s reluctance to put them to the House for debate (as has happened, for example, with the committee’s repeated proposals for reforming the private members’ bills process). But the Modernisation Committee saw more overt disagreement, sometimes reflecting a perception among opposition MPs that the committee was simply a vehicle for endorsing proposals which came from (and benefitted) ministers. 

5. Finally, we also find evidence that the remit given to a procedural select committee can affect how far its work is narrowly focused and strategic or more wide-ranging and piecemeal. In particular, the Procedure Committee’s broad focus may make it an asset for troubleshooting procedural issues across a variety of areas. But it may also make it a less effective vehicle for delivering a very targeted and/or strategic agenda, compared to the approach reflected in the Wright Committee or – to a lesser extent – the Modernisation Committee. 

Implications for the next parliament 

If politicians genuinely view Commons reform as important, they are likely to prioritise successful implementation. Reviewing past experience, this might lead them to establishing something like the Modernisation Committee: a select committee combining frontbench and backbench MPs, chaired by the Leader of the House. Our evidence shows that this proved very successful at getting its procedural changes adopted, compared to the other, wholly backbench, committees which we studied. Moreover, some of these procedural changes aimed to enhance the effectiveness of scrutiny and the position of non-government MPs. However, the same factors that contributed to the committee’s success – the involvement of frontbench politicians, and particularly the Leader of the House – also contributed to its greater tendency to division and partisanship. 

Appointing a committee organised on a similar model to the Modernisation Committee thus holds out the prospect of successfully delivering Commons reforms, but also risks those reforms running into cross-party controversy. The key challenge for any such committee would therefore be to demonstrate that it was a venue for genuine discussion, rather than for simply rubber-stamping a set of pre-determined government plans. This would mean the Leader of the House contributing to setting the agenda for reform while also facilitating meaningful deliberation within the committee and building broad support beyond it. 

That broad support could be easier to achieve if the committee incorporated a wide range of interests by including opposition frontbenchers from multiple parties, and backbenchers from across the House. The backbench members would likely need to be elected by their fellow MPs, given that this is now the norm for select committees. Those elections could either be held within parties, or across the whole House. Either way, the committee would therefore have a hybrid composition of appointed frontbenchers and elected backbenchers, with places allocated proportionately across the parties. In the report, we also highlight the potential for more creative thinking about the committee’s composition. For example, including the chair of the Procedure Committee as a member might help to foster a more productive division of labour between the two committees. 

We end the report with a note of warning. The institutional vehicles for developing and delivering procedural reforms are important, and should be designed carefully. But they are only part of the story. Delivering successful House of Commons reform in the next parliament will also require ideas, leadership, and political skill. 

The full report can be downloaded from the Constitution Unit website. This is the latest in a series of posts offering commentary on the issues raised during the 2024 general election. Sign up via the box in the left-hand sidebar to receive email notifications when a new post goes live.

About the authors 

Tom Fleming is a Lecturer in British and Comparative Politics at UCL. He is currently leading the Unit’s ESRC-funded project ‘The Politics of Parliamentary Procedure’, of which this report is the first major output. 

Hannah Kelly is a Research Assistant at the Constitution Unit, working on the ‘The Politics of Parliamentary Procedure’ project.