Tag Archives: Campaign for an English Parliament

What an English Parliament might look like – and the challenges of giving it proper consideration

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meg_russell (1)Jack.000Constitution Unit researchers have been working on a detailed project on Options for an English Parliament, whose final report has just been published. In this post, report authors Meg Russell and Jack Sheldon reflect on the key design questions associated with the two main models for an English Parliament, and how proposals for such a body relate to wider political questions about the UK’s territorial future.

The idea of an English Parliament has a long history, but has been particularly actively lobbied for over the 20 years since the creation of devolved legislatures in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Originally an idea mostly taken up by politicians on the right, the proposal has recently begun attracting greater interest also from those on the political left. Supporters seek closer equity with the existing devolved areas, including more explicit representation of English interests, accountability for England-wide policy-making, the airing of English ‘voice’, and a forum where English identity can flourish. Yet some serious concerns have also been raised about the prospect of an English Parliament, most centrally fears that an elected body representing 85% of the UK population would become too dominant, stoking territorial tensions and destabilising the UK Union itself.

Starting with these aspirations and concerns, we have examined the available evidence from UK and overseas experience to explore the options for an English Parliament – on a Nuffield Foundation-funded project, which has just produced its final report. This sought neither to advocate for or against establishment of an English Parliament, but to tease out the kind of design decisions needed, and their likely implications. We identified that two primary models have been proposed for an English Parliament – which we call the separately elected and dual mandate models – and focus our analysis primarily on these. Proponents of both have set out relatively little detail about what in practice would be involved. But if an English Parliament is to be viable, some kind of blueprint is clearly required. We hope that our analysis will help to illuminate this debate, and provide useful insights for both supporters and sceptics of the idea of an English Parliament. Our conclusions relate not just to the institution itself, but to the knock-on effects it could have on UK-wide institutions and on UK territorial politics as a whole.

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Options for an English Parliament: implications for the UK’s central institutions

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Jack.000meg_russell (1)A Constitution Unit project has been examining options for an English Parliament. One factor that must be taken into account is implications for the UK’s central political institutions. Focusing on the separately elected model for an English Parliament, in this post Jack Sheldon and Meg Russell suggest that there would inevitably be substantial implications. Both the UK government and parliament would need restructuring, and there would be pressures to move towards more formal federalism.

Since autumn 2016 we have been working on a research project exploring options for an English Parliament. Various earlier posts have covered some of our findings, and our detailed report will be published very shortly. In this post we summarise some of our conclusions on implications for the UK’s central political institutions, including the UK government and parliament. We suggest that, in contrast to the relatively modest changes at the centre that resulted from devolution to Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales, an English Parliament would require substantial institutional restructuring.

For the sake of simplicity we assume here that an English Parliament would mirror arrangements in the existing devolved areas – that is, a directly elected body to which an executive headed by a First Minister would be accountable. Our report will also consider the implications of the dual mandate model for an English Parliament, under which the English legislature would be composed of Westminster MPs for English seats. While some of the issues covered here do not apply to that model, our report discusses how it too would have major consequences for the centre.

Powers

A necessary starting point in considering implications of an English Parliament is the powers that would be retained at UK level. Policy powers and financial arrangements for an English Parliament were covered in a previous blog post; in summary, its policy powers would probably be similar to those of the devolved legislatures in Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. Given the design of UK devolution, with policy areas such as education and health almost entirely devolved, this means that the legislative competence of the UK parliament would reduce very substantially. Continue reading →

A ‘dual mandate’ English Parliament: some key questions of institutional design

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meg_russell (1)Jack.000Almost 20 years after the creation of the devolved governments in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, England is the only country of the United Kingdom without its own devolved executive and legislative body. Meg Russell and Jack Sheldon offer their view on whether or not a dual mandate English Parliament is desirable or if it has the proper characteristics to be considered a parliament at all. 

Calls for establishment of an English Parliament have been made for years, particularly following Labour’s devolution in the 1990s to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Initially such proposals were largely confined to the right of politics, and appeared a relatively fringe interest. But in the aftermath of the Scottish independence referendum, and the new powers devolved to the Scottish Parliament, proposals have also begun to be heard from the political left. Nonetheless, advocates have rarely elaborated on their proposals in detail, and there are many unresolved questions relating to the likely powers, functions, structure and composition of such a body. Since autumn 2016, the Constitution Unit has been working on a research project exploring the options, and a detailed report is due to be published shortly. This post will concentrate primarily on the key institutional questions raised by what is known as the ‘dual mandate’ model for an English Parliament, which some proponents suggest could be implemented as an incremental next step from ‘English votes for English laws’ (EVEL). We ask whether this model for an English Parliament is as innocuous as it looks, and indeed whether what it proposes is a parliament at all.

Models for an English Parliament

The most instinctively obvious model for an English Parliament is to create a completely new body, elected separately from the House of Commons, to mirror the legislatures in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Variants of this separately-elected model have been proposed by such figures as David Davis, Frank Field and Paul Nuttall. It is also favoured by the Campaign for an English Parliament, founded in 1998. Establishing such a body would be a big decision, entailing significant political upheaval and cost. The idea has many opponents, including experts such as Vernon Bogdanor and Adam Tomkins. A key concern is that a new elected body representing 85% of the UK population would, in the words of the House of Lords Constitution Committee, “introduce a destabilising asymmetry of power”. For all of these reasons, adoption of this proposal continues to appear politically unlikely.

The second model is what we call the dual mandate model, which is presented as a more incremental change. Here Westminster MPs representing English constituencies would meet as an English Parliament at certain times. Proponents see this as building on the existing EVEL procedures, creating a far clearer delineation at Westminster between England-only and UK business (and thus dealing once-and-for-all with the famous ‘West Lothian question’). The most prominent supporter has been John Redwood, but similar arrangements have also been proposed by MP Andrew Rosindell, Welsh AM David Melding, journalist Simon Heffer and writers from the Adam Smith Institute think tank. Nonetheless, this model is rejected by the Campaign for an English Parliament as ‘English Parliament lite’. Continue reading →