Parliamentary reform in the 2024 party manifestos

Posted on June 19, 2024 by The Constitution Unit

The main party manifestos have now been published, allowing exploration and comparison of their constitutional proposals. In this second post in a series on the manifestos, Meg Russell looks at the parties’ commitments on parliamentary reform. What are they promising, and what are the prospects for these proposed changes?

Yesterday on this blog, Lisa James reviewed the constitutional proposals presented by the political parties in their 2024 general election manifestos. Unsurprisingly, parliamentary reform is a key area that appears in several of them. Most parties include aspirations to reform the House of Lords, and some make other commitments on the House of Commons, or the overall power of parliament. This second post in the Constitution Unit’s manifesto series reviews these proposals, reflecting on their origins, merits, and prospects for implementation. It starts with the power of parliament as a whole, before moving to the Commons, and then the Lords.

The power of parliament

It is primarily the Liberal Democrats that give space to parliament’s overall place in the constitution – an area subject to significant recent controversy. The Brexit referendum of 2016 led to fierce clashes in parliament, and unusually high-profile arguments about both parliamentary procedure and the limits of the government’s prerogative power. Brexit also raised new questions about parliament’s powers over policy matters that returned to the UK following its exit from the European Union.

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The constitution in the 2024 general election manifestos

Posted on June 18, 2024 by Constitution Unit

With just over two weeks to go until polling day, most parties have now released their manifestos. In this post, Lisa James summarises their key pledges on the constitution, covering parliamentary reform, standards, the rule of law and rights protection, elections and public participation, media and democratic discourse, devolution and Europe.

With the 4 July general election fast approaching, political parties are releasing their manifestos. Though much of the election campaign has focused on the economy and public services, several of the manifestos also contain significant constitutional policy pledges. This post summarises the key commitments on the constitution, covering the manifestos of the main parties in Great Britain: the Labour Party, Conservatives, Liberal Democrats, Green Party, Reform UK, Plaid Cymru and Scottish National Party.

Parliament

The most striking commitment in relation to the House of Commons comes from Labour, which proposes a Modernisation Committee charged with assessing procedure, and improving standards and working practices. The party also proposes to grasp the nettle of House of Lords reform, pledging to scrap the remaining hereditary peers, introduce an age limit of 80 and ‘a new participation requirement’, and introduce reforms to ‘ensure the quality of new appointments’ and improve territorial diversity. Longer-term, the party commits to replacing the House of Lords with an ‘alternative second chamber that is more representative of the regions and nations’, and pledges to consult on proposals for doing so.

Lords reform is also pledged by the Green Party, which proposes replacement with an elected second chamber, and the Liberal Democrats (who propose to reform the chamber to have a ‘proper democratic mandate’ but offer no more detail). Reform UK proposes to replace the House of Lords with a ‘much smaller, more democratic second chamber’ – though it leaves further detail ‘to be debated’. The SNP supports abolition. The Liberal Democrats also propose strengthening parliament’s powers in relation to the calling of elections, trade deals, and military intervention. The Conservative manifesto contains nothing on the role of parliament.

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The public wants parliament to have a central role in legislation, so why does the Retained EU Law Bill enhance the legislative power of ministers?

Posted on February 12, 2023 by The Constitution Unit

The Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill is controversial for many reasons – not least the sweeping powers it grants the executive to change a swathe of laws. Lisa James and Alan Renwick discuss recent Constitution Unit survey results, which suggest that members of the public instinctively favour a central role for parliament in law making.

The Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill – or REUL Bill – is a complex and controversial piece of legislation. Its focus is the law which arose from the UK’s membership of the European Union. This ‘retained EU law’ is significant in both scale and scope: the government currently lists over 3700 pieces of such legislation, much of it implementing regulatory regimes across a number of major policy domains. Areas such as environmental protection, consumer rights and employment law are particularly affected.

The REUL Bill would automatically repeal most retained EU law at the end of 2023, and make it much easier for ministers to amend or replace. This approach has proved controversial in a number of ways. Business groups have raised concerns that previously settled areas of law could be disrupted at short notice, creating legal uncertainty. Environmental groups and trade unions, among others, have raised concerns about rights protections being lost. And some have questioned whether Whitehall really has the capacity to conduct a thorough and careful review of such a huge body of law by the end of the year.

Alongside this, experts have warned that the bill as currently drafted would greatly empower the government at the expense of parliament, handing ministers sweeping powers to decide what law is repealed or preserved, and how it is amended. Such process-related concerns – regarding how legal change is enacted – are sometimes considered of interest only to experts. But recent Constitution Unit research shows that the public have clear instincts on how such processes should work – and express widespread support for parliament’s role in law-making.

The REUL Bill and parliamentary scrutiny

As currently drafted, the bill places significant powers and discretion in the hands of ministers. If passed in its current form, the clock would begin ticking on the sunset clause which would repeal most retained EU law at the end of 2023; from this point, parliament would have little say over what happens to retained EU law.

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The people most affected by COVID-19 should now be fully involved in the inquiry

Posted on September 22, 2022 by The Constitution Unit

The public inquiry into COVID-19 published its terms of reference earlier this summer, with its first ‘promise’ being that ‘People who have suffered during the pandemic will be at the heart of the inquiry’s work’. Simon Burall, Senior Associate at Involve, asks what this really means in practice, and suggests three questions we should ask ourselves to determine whether this promise is kept.

We have been locked down at least twice (and more depending on where you live in the country), schools have been closed, businesses lost and household budgets squeezed. To date, there have been over 200,000 deaths with COVID-19 on the death certificate. Nobody has remained untouched by the pandemic.

The UK COVID-19 Public Inquiry has been set-up to explore the impact of the pandemic, to examine the UK’s response, and to learn lessons for the future. Given the widespread impact of the pandemic, the Chair of the Inquiry, Baroness (Heather) Hallett is absolutely right to want to put the public at the heart of its work. It should be celebrated that this is the first of seven ‘promises’ that the inquiry has published. However, this ambition – and the inquiry in general – comes with risks. If this ambition is not met, and the public deem the inquiry to have failed to pass fair judgement, it could further undermine existing low levels of public trust in our politics.

So, this blogpost lays out three questions we will be asking to judge the extent to which the inquiry is keeping this promise, as it progresses in the months to come.

Are the public part of passing judgement and proposing plans for the future, or just witnesses?

The inquiry has been formally constituted and has a legal status as laid out in the 2005 Inquiries Act. The act lays out the statutory framework for the appointment of the Chair, how it should take evidence and produce its report. This will obviously, and rightly, restrict the ways in which the public can be involved, but there is much more the inquiry could do beyond publishing standard consultation questions, inviting a tiny number of members of the public as witnesses and meeting with specific groups which were particularly affected.

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Launching the Citizens’ Assembly on Democracy in the UK

Posted on September 17, 2021 by The Constitution Unit

The Citizens’ Assembly on Democracy in the UK – part of the Unit’s current research project examining attitudes to democracy in the UK – will meet for the first time this weekend. The project’s lead, Alan Renwick, here answers five key questions about what the Assembly will do, how it will operate, and why it deserves attention.

This weekend, 75 members of the public, from all walks of life and across the UK, will gather online to begin examining the question ‘How should the UK’s democracy work?’. This Citizens’ Assembly on Democracy in the UK is part of the Constitution Unit’s wider research project Democracy in the UK after Brexit, which is funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) through its Governance after Brexit programme.

1. What will the Citizens’ Assembly on Democracy in the UK look at?

The assembly will focus on how people think democracy in the UK should work. What principles do assembly members think the democratic system should uphold in its design and operation? How do they think power within the system should be distributed – in particular, what roles do they think should be played by core parts of the system, including parliament, government, courts, and members of the public? And what behaviours do they expect from politicians and their fellow citizens?

A citizens’ assembly is designed to enable informed discussion, so we cannot cover everything – we have had to make hard choices. We can’t get into the detail of institutions such as the voting system or House of Lords. Nor will we address the territorial dimension of democracy – how power should be distributed between UK-wide and devolved levels, or what powers local councils should have. These matters would require multiple assemblies meeting across the country.

Nevertheless, the discussions and recommendations will be as relevant in Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland as at UK level. The question of how democracy is best configured and practised applies equally in all these settings.

2. Why do these questions need attention?

Democracy works best when public confidence in its functioning is high. Yet confidence in the operation of the democratic system in the UK (as in many other long-established democracies) is low. Various surveys – including the British Social Attitudes survey and the Hansard Society’s Audit of Political Engagement – have mapped this problem over many years. But there has been little attempt to dig deeper into people’s thinking. The project will help fill that gap.

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The constitution in the 2024 general election manifestos

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The public wants parliament to have a central role in legislation, so why does the Retained EU Law Bill enhance the legislative power of ministers?

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The people most affected by COVID-19 should now be fully involved in the inquiry

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