Following the Unit’s January seminar, Can the House of Commons handle multi-party politics?, panellist Louise Thompson explains the procedural and logistical obstacles facing small parties in the House of Commons. She calls for parliamentary institutions to adapt their processes, and concludes that formalising some current informal arrangements and looking at ways to increase equalities of opportunity across all opposition parties would be sensible next steps.
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Monitor 91, published today, provides an analysis of constitutional events over the last four months, a period in which the government has announced numerous electoral reforms, created a new standards body, introduced a bill to increase public accountability, and continued progress on legislation to enhance devolution in England. However, in this post, which replicates the lead article from today’s new issue of Monitor, Meg Russell and Alan Renwick argue that many of the reforms fail to go far enough. They say that the government could be seeking to lead, and to set the tone on constitutional standards, but changes instead feel timid and reluctant in the face of serious threats.
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The House of Commons Backbench Business Committee was established in 2010, following recommendations from the ‘Wright Committee’ on reform of the Commons. At this 15-year point the committee is reviewing its operation, and in this post Meg Russell and Hannah Kelly summarise their submission to the review, which is due to be published shortly. They conclude that the Backbench Business Committee was an important innovation, but that changes are needed to get back to the Wright Committee’s vision of it helping facilitate a more responsive and independent House of Commons.
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September’s government reshuffle means that there is a new Leader of the Commons, and therefore a change to the leadership of the House’s Modernisation Committee. The new chair, Alan Campbell, might usefully study the committee’s 1997–2010 predecessor. In this post, Tom Fleming and Hannah Kelly summarise the key findings from a new article reviewing that earlier committee’s record.
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Between 2017 and 2025, the Canadian House of Commons operated a Prime Minister’s Question Period procedure, introduced by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. In a new published article summarised here, Ruxandra Serban explores how this procedure worked, and how it differed from the traditional Question Period model.
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