Independent costing of election programmes: lessons from the Netherlands

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In May 2017, the Constitution Unit began a project seeking to understand how the quality of information and public discussion during election and referendum campaigns could be improved. The independent assessment of parties’ policy proposals could be one way of providing the public with high-quality, reliable information. Michela Palese outlines the debate on this topic and reports some initial findings from a research trip to the Netherlands, where such assessment of election programmes is a well-established feature of campaigns.

The Constitution Unit, with funding from the McDougall Trust, is seeking to understand how the quality of information and public discussion during election and referendum campaigns could be improved. As outlined in a previous post, we are looking at three potential approaches: directly banning false or misleading statements; promoting the availability of impartial and high-quality information; and fostering citizen deliberation. My research is currently focused on the second type. In this blog post I first outline the state of the debate on one strand of this approach – independent impact analysis of manifesto proposals – in the UK and summarise existing practice overseas. I then relate early thoughts from a research trip to the Netherlands, where an independent institute assesses the economic and financial effects of parties’ election programmes.

Manifesto budgeting in the UK

The independent assessment of electoral programmes is not a novel idea in the UK. Since 2013, the Labour Party has advocated extending the remit of the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) to include pre-election costing of opposition parties’ policy proposals. Labour argues this would benefit public debate by ensuring that voters were properly informed and restore public trust in politics by improving policy transparency. Some Conservatives – notably, Andrew Tyrie, the former chairman of the Treasury Select Committee – have endorsed this idea. The government, however, has rejected calls for an extension of the OBR’s remit on the grounds that that the Civil Service Code prevents it from examining opposition parties’ policies and that it should abide by the principle of political impartiality. Furthermore, Conservative MPs have argued that it is necessary to protect the credibility and independence of this relatively new institution, and that drawing the OBR into the highly politicised environment of an election would be unwise.

In evidence provided to the Treasury Select Committee in 2014, the OBR’s chair, Robert Chote,  indicated support for extending its role. In a letter to Andrew Tyrie, he said that ‘independent scrutiny of pre-election policy proposals could contribute to better policy making, to a more informed public debate, and could help facilitate coalition formation when party programmes need to be reconciled’. However, he also highlighted some issues that would need to be resolved, such as the establishment of ‘clear rules’ for parties, the availability of adequate resources, and the need for cross-party support for the change.

Both external and Treasury reviews of the OBR cautioned against expanding its role, arguing that currently the risks in terms of resources and independence could outweigh the benefits. These judgements, combined with the pressing matters surrounding Brexit, seem to have put the debate to rest for now.

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Labour’s unavoidable English question

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In 2015, the Conservative government implemented ‘English votes for English laws’ (or EVEL) in the House of Commons as a way of responding to the ‘English question’. Labour, by contrast, has had relatively little to say in this area – but were the party to form a government in the near future, it would be required to take some tough decisions. In this post, Michael Kenny assesses the possible routes forward for how Labour might respond to EVEL, in particular, and broader questions about English governance and devolution across the UK.

Brexit and its potential implications saturate British politics. But attention has lately shifted away from some of the complex constitutional questions which were aired in the days and months before the UK’s negotiations with the EU began. These include the thorny issue of how the UK government will handle the very different perspectives on Brexit which are held by the governments of Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales – which will move back to the foreground when the government formally requests the consent of the Scottish and Welsh parliaments for the European Union (Withdrawal) Bill currently passing through the Westminster parliament. Whether Labour in Wales and Scotland opt to oppose Brexit will be of particular importance in political terms.

A related, but distinct, issue which all of the main parties will have to consider soon is how those parts of the complex body of coming legislation which affect England in distinct ways, will fare. And this in a context where it is still taken as given, in Westminster at least, that the UK government can represent the interests of the entire UK and England at the same time, even when the current administration depends for its survival upon a small party that is based in Northern Ireland only.

The previous Conservative government introduced a complex and convoluted system – known as ‘English Votes for English Laws’ (or EVEL) – to handle such legislation, and sought to make political capital out of its ability to answer the English question – one of the great Cinderella issues of British politics.

Whether these opaque rules will be enough to deal with the increasingly political character of English national identity is a moot point. But in EVEL and the patchwork model of metro mayors and newly created combined authorities it has created, the government at least has something to say on the subject of English devolution (even if what Theresa May herself thinks about these changes remains a well-kept secret).

Labour, in contrast, seems to have little to say in this area – aside from promising a constitutional convention which feels like a fig leaf, rather than a signal of intent.

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Why do government MPs rebel more? Strategic party disloyalty in the House of Commons

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Despite high overall levels of party cohesion, rebellions occur relatively frequently in the House of Commons. In a new paper Jonathan Slapin, Justin Kirkland, Joseph Lazarro, Patrick Leslie and Tom O’Grady examine rebellions in the period from 1992 to 2015. They find that rebellion is much more common among government than opposition MPs and suggest that this is because disobeying the party whip is a strategic act, used by MPs to differentiate themselves from their party when this is most electorally useful. Tom O’Grady summarises here.

The history of the Westminster parliament is full of colourful rogues whose independence from party leaders seems to endear them to the public. MPs like Dennis Skinner, who have often rebelled against their party leaders – and use parliamentary speeches to emphasise their independence – seem to have a special place in British voters’ hearts. This is increasingly backed up by academic evidence. When survey respondents are asked to pick between potential MPs, they tend to opt for candidates who won’t just slavishly toe the party line. The public seems to likes independence in it MPs, and wants to see more of it. This begs the question of why MPs choose to rebel, and how constitutional features encourage or discourage MPs from going alone. Our new paper sheds new light on this question by examining rebellions and speeches in the House of Commons from 1992 to 2015, encompassing Conservative, Labour and coalition governments. The key pattern that we highlight is that opposition parties experience far fewer rebellions than governing parties.

This isn’t driven by what might seem, at first glance, like the most obvious explanation: perhaps governments experience rebellion simply because governing parties are larger and more ideologically diverse. Instead, we compare rebellious behaviour amongst individual MPs when they are in government to rebellions by the very same MP when they are in opposition. In fact, the same MPs rebel much more often when in government. We measure MPs’ ideological positions, too, and demonstrate that these patterns are driven by the most ideologically extreme MPs, whose behaviour changes the most from government to opposition (the recent period under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership of the Labour party is an important exception – which I return to below). Moreover, when rebellious MPs dissent, they do it loudly and publicly when in government, but quietly and privately when in opposition. We find that the most rebellious MPs devote nearly three times as many parliamentary speeches to explaining their rebellious votes in government than they do when in opposition.

Take Phillip Hollobone, the Conservative MP for Kettering. During the 2010-15 coalition government, he was the most rebellious MP in the House of Commons, rebelling on 19.9% of total votes, a remarkable figure in Westminster where party cohesion is typically very high. He rebelled despite the fact that the vast majority of the government’s agenda moved policies in his preferred ideological direction. He was even willing to rebel against his party on votes containing core conservative principles, saying that they did not go far enough. In 2013, he went so far as to vote against the Queen’s speech. It was the first rebellion by government MPs against their own agenda since 1946. Hollobone, along with three other Conservative MPs, instead put forward an ‘alternative Queen’s speech’ outlining policies such as bringing back the death penalty, privatising the BBC, and banning the Burqa. But when the Conservatives were in opposition facing a Labour government, he rebelled against his own party leadership almost five times less, just 4.3% of the time. Why is this the case?

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The EU Withdrawal Bill: parliamentary prospects

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The EU (Withdrawal) Bill received its second reading in the House of Commons by a relatively comfortable margin in the early hours of Tuesday morning. During the remainder of its parliamentary passage the government is likely to come under greater pressure, particularly on the issue of the delegated powers in the bill. On 13 September the BBC’s Mark D’Arcy and the Hansard Society’s Ruth Fox spoke about the prospects at the Constitution Unit. Alex Diggens and Jack Sheldon summarise what was said.

The European Union (Withdrawal) Bill looks set to be one of the most significant and controversial pieces of legislation to pass through parliament in recent memory. Ostensibly a bill to repeal the European Communities Act 1972 and manage the process of converting EU law into domestic law, the bill has far greater scope. It hands significant delegated powers to ministers, allowing them to make changes to remedy supposed ‘deficiencies’ in both secondary and primary legislation through statutory instruments (SIs) and to implement the eventual withdrawal agreement. It also has major implications for the devolution settlements, as outlined in a previous blog post.

In the early hours of Tuesday morning the bill received its second reading in the Commons by the relatively comfortable margin of 326 votes to 290. However, the upcoming Commons committee and report stages, as well as the bill’s passage through the House of Lords, are likely to pose much greater difficulty for the government. On 13 September the Constitution Unit held a seminar to discuss the prospects. Chaired by the Unit’s Dr Alan Renwick, the panel comprised two experts on the dynamics at play: Mark D’Arcy, the BBC’s Parliamentary Correspondent, and Dr Ruth Fox, Director of the Hansard Society.

Dr Alan Renwick introduces the seminar

Mark D’Arcy

Mark D’Arcy focused his remarks on the party-political landscape in relation to the bill and the key types of amendments that are being brought forward.

On the party-political landscape, D’Arcy argued that the bill’s passage will be a drawn-out battle, but one that the government go into reasonably confidently. He said that 10 Downing Street is working hard to keep open links with all of the Conservative factions, and that none of them is seeking to kill the bill. The Tory ‘Remain’ contingent in the Commons is small, and they recall the infighting during the Major years; they therefore recognise that actively fighting Brexit would be ‘career death’. D’Arcy suggested that ‘Bregretters’ might be a more accurate term for this group as they do not actually seek to prevent Brexit. The House of Lords have expressed significant reservations about the bill, notably through the influential Constitution Committee, but D’Arcy predicted that they will be constrained by not wanting to be seen fighting against ‘the people’.

As soon as the second reading vote went through the Commons, queues were forming to put amendments forward. The ‘Bregretters’ put down several, led by the former Attorney General Dominic Grieve. The focus of their amendments was on overseeing the technical operation of the bill, particularly on identifying which SIs require thorough parliamentary scrutiny. Another group of amendments comes from the Labour ‘Remain’ group. These tend to be more ambitious – they keep open options for the future, for instance the option to remain in the Customs Union, or perhaps even the European Economic Area. Other groups have more niche concerns – for example, some MPs are pushing to entrench specific rights provided by EU law.

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