The House of Commons Modernisation Committee is considering potential reforms to Commons procedures, standards and working practices, and recently ran a consultation exercise to establish its priorities. In this post, Dr Daniel Gover analyses flaws with the procedures for private members’ bills and opposition days, and makes the case for reform.

The House of Commons Modernisation Committee was set up following the 2024 general election, with a brief to consider potential reforms to the Commons’ procedures, standards and working practices. In late 2024, the committee ran a ‘call for views’ on its future priorities. Evidence from organisations was subsequently published on the committee’s website – the Constitution Unit’s submission can be found here – but individual responses were not published. This blog reproduces one such submission, which was made in December 2024 (with minor edits for style).

Summary

There is a very strong case for revisiting arrangements around private members’ bill, as indicated in the Leader of the House of Commons’ memorandum to the committee. However, the assisted dying bill has highlighted new evidence about how the process does and could operate. It would be beneficial to wait until the start of the next parliamentary session before beginning this work so that these lessons can be learned.

Either the Modernisation Committee or the Procedure Committee should examine procedures for opposition days. Specific questions include: whether existing arrangements are adequate for smaller opposition parties (including the allocation of time, and rules around amendments); and whether the scheduling of opposition days should remain within the gift of the government.

Private members’ bills (PMBs)

1. The Leader’s memorandum proposes that a priority area of focus will be how time is spent on private members’ bills (as well as other forms of backbench business).
   
   
2. There is a very strong case for revisiting the PMB procedures. The case for reform has been well made over recent years, most notably by the Procedure Committee. Its reports identified two key problems with the current system. The first is that it is often difficult for PMBs that genuinely originate with Members to be brought to a decision (without at least acquiescence from ministers). The second is a lack of transparency around the process, with the procedures often regarded as incomprehensible to the public and creating unrealistic expectations. Successive governments declined to put the Procedure Committee’s recommendations to the House for decision. Despite some more subtle changes in practice, the two criticisms thus remain largely valid.
   
   
3. It would, however, be beneficial to wait until the start of the next parliamentary session before beginning this work, so that the lessons from the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill (‘assisted dying bill’) can first be learned. This bill is in many respects an atypical PMB, in part due to its high degree of public and parliamentary interest (which helped ensure its second reading was brought to a decision). This high profile has nonetheless placed some of the shortcomings of the existing system on display. The bill’s passage (to date) has seen some innovations that might provide the basis for further procedural reform. It also appears to have reinforced some previous reform proposals and has shed new light on how others might have operated in practice. It is possible that the time devoted to this bill may also have consequential effects on other PMBs this session, something else that needs to be taken into account. What follows are some provisional observations, based on the bill’s early passage to date.
   
   
4. On the assisted dying bill there have been some ad hoc innovations that might provide the basis for more permanent reform of the PMB system. Most notably, the House empowered the public bill committee to receive evidence – something that is common on government bills but appears to have not previously occurred on a PMB. It has also been reported that the committee is expected to sit multiple times each week – again, in line with what happens on government bills, but breaking with the usual practice of Wednesday sittings on PMBs. It may well be that further innovations and developments occur during the rest of the bill’s passage. It would be sensible to observe how these operate in practice before investigating how to reform PMB processes as a whole.
   
   
5. Some prior reform proposals appear to have been reinforced by the experience on the assisted dying bill. One such example is the Procedure Committee’s recommendation around programme motions for PMBs. On the assisted dying bill there have been repeated demands from MPs for additional time for scrutiny, in particular at Report (by Sir Alec Shelbrooke at prime minister’s questions, by the Shadow Leader of the Commons Jesse Norman, and by David Davis at second reading). But a weakness of the existing system is a lack of flexibility, within the PMB procedures, to secure additional time for particular stages. The key stages in the Chamber are in practice usually limited to a single day. Had the Procedure Committee’s 2013 recommendations on programming been implemented, it might have been possible for the House to agree additional time. Another example is the Procedure Committee’s 2016 recommendation that the House endorse formal speech limits on PMBs, although informal limits did nonetheless operate effectively at second reading.
   
   
6. In other cases, the assisted dying bill has shed new light on how best to achieve certain recommendations. Under existing procedures, for instance, only one public bill committee can be active on a PMB at the same time, unless the government tables a motion to allow more. The Procedure Committee recommended that this rule be abolished in order to prevent logjams forming. The assisted dying bill’s passage highlights a complication that might have arisen had multiple committees automatically been able to sit concurrently. Immediately after the assisted dying bill received its second reading, two other (non-contentious) bills also passed this stage. Had they been able to begin committee straight away, there is a good chance they would have completed this stage more quickly and thus ‘leapfrogged’ the assisted dying bill to receive priority for the first ‘remaining stages’ PMB Fridays. Such a situation might create incentives for supporters of more complex or contentious PMBs to try to rush committee stage scrutiny – or, perhaps more likely, block ‘rival’ bills from passing second reading. While the intention to encourage multiple concurrent committees remains desirable in principle, the experience on this bill might inform how best to achieve this in practice.
   
   
7. The assisted dying bill has also highlighted the potential for some further reforms. Some have expressed concern that, as a PMB, this bill did not follow a formal government consultation. There may thus be a case for learning from other legislatures, such as the Scottish Parliament, where there is an expectation that Members’ Bills should have been consulted on.

Opposition days (including the rights of smaller parties)

1. The Leader’s memorandum does not mention opposition days, although this is clearly connected to the two other exceptions to government precedence in Standing Order No. 14 – PMBs and backbench business time – both of which are referred to.
   
   
2. There is a good case for either the Modernisation Committee (as part of the ‘reforming procedures’ strategic aim) or the Procedure Committee examining procedures around opposition days, particularly with respect to smaller parties. An important consideration is whether existing arrangements for opposition days adequately reflect the current number and size of opposition parties.
   
   
3. A first issue concerns the number of days available for each opposition party, and particularly smaller parties. Under Standing Order No. 14 there are 20 days per session for opposition business, of which 17 are decided by the Official Opposition and the remaining three by the second largest opposition party. In previous parliaments, some days were in practice shared with smaller opposition parties, and at times governments have also made available additional ‘unallotted’ days for this purpose. But these arrangements appear to have broken down: during the 2019-24 parliament there were no opposition days for additional opposition parties. As part of this, it might be considered whether the number of opposition days ought to better reflect the relative strength within the House of the different opposition parties – following the 2024 general election, the Liberal Democrats as the second largest opposition party receive 15% of opposition days under the standing orders, but this is significantly less than the party’s share of opposition party MPs. This would, however, need to be balanced against the particular responsibilities of the Official Opposition
   
   
4. A second issue concerns amendments to opposition day motions. Under Standing Order No. 31(2), where a government amendment is moved to an opposition day motion, the original motion is decided upon first and the government amendment afterwards (in contrast to what usually happens on amendments to motions). In practical terms, this has the effect of enabling opposition parties to force a vote or decision on their original opposition day motion before the wording has (likely) been amended by the government. Yet the same does not apply in cases where an amendment by another opposition party has been selected; in these cases, the amendment is voted on first, and if passed there would then be no opportunity to vote on the original motion. This complication is most likely to affect smaller opposition parties. The operation of these procedures caused controversy in February 2024, when a Labour amendment (which was agreed to) prevented the SNP from voting on its original motion about Gaza. It is relatively rare for non-government amendments to be selected to opposition day motions, though there have been some other cases. In the previous parliament, the Speaker requested that the Procedure Committee investigate this matter, though its then members declined to do so. It would be worth revisiting this issue to consider whether there is sufficient rationale for only government amendments being taken after the main motion, or whether other amendments to opposition day motions should be treated in the same way.
   
   
5. A final consideration relates to the allocation and timing of opposition days. These remain within the control of the government, which can weaken the effectiveness of this mechanism. For example, between mid-November 2018 and late April 2019 – a key period during the Brexit process – ministers did not allocate any opposition days, presumably because doing so would have been politically inconvenient to them. This issue is more fully explored in my Constitution Unit report (with Meg Russell) Taking Back Control: Why the House of Commons Should Govern Its Own Time. One proposal within that report was for opposition day allocations to be expressed as regular (e.g. fortnightly or monthly) entitlements rather than per session.

About the author

Dr Daniel Gover is Senior Lecturer in British Politics at Queen Mary University of London. He is a specialist on the UK parliament, currently working on research into non-governmental mechanisms in the Commons. He is an Honorary Research Fellow at the Constitution Unit.

Featured image: Presentation of Bill: Presentation of Ballot Bills 2024 (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0) by House of Commons.