Tag Archives: Constitutional Reform and Governance Act

Labour’s removal of hereditary peers from the House of Lords: 10 key questions answered

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Labour’s 2024 general election manifesto promised to remove the remaining hereditary peers from the House of Lords. Today, the House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill has its second reading in the House of Commons. In this post, Constitution Unit Director and House of Lords expert Meg Russell explores 10 key questions about the bill and Labour’s policy. For example, who are the hereditary peers? How did they get into the House of Lords? How have they survived so long? And what effect will their departure have on the House of Lords? 

  1. How long have the hereditary peers been in the House of Lords? 

The history of the House of Lords is long and complex. It is an ancient institution, but has changed very substantially over the years. The roots of the chamber can be traced to bodies that were drawn together to advise the monarch as long ago as the medieval period. Individuals called to those early assemblies were powerful figures, including major landholders and representatives of the church. Around the 14th century they began meeting separately from others representing the people – so that parliament developed into two distinct chambers, which became the House of Lords and the House of Commons. Initially, there was no guarantee that an individual called to one meeting of the upper chamber would be called to the next. But membership gradually stabilised, and it became established that the members of the nobility who took seats would pass these down the family line along with their titles. By the 13th century the chamber included earls and barons, while the titles Duke and Marquess date to the 14th century 

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International agreements: what is parliament’s role, and why does this matter?

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This is the first edition of this briefing. It has since been updated. Read the most up-to-date version and other briefings on the Constitution Unit’s website.

Treaties and other international agreements have a major effect on citizens’ day-to-day lives. But the mechanisms for parliamentary involvement in scrutinising and agreeing them are widely considered inadequate. Lisa James and Arabella Lang explain how these mechanisms work, and how they might be reformed.

Background

International treaties and other agreements are vital policy tools in a world where many problems and solutions cross borders. But the UK parliament has limited involvement in them, which is increasingly considered inadequate. Parliamentary committees such as the Commons Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee, the Lords International Agreements Committee, and the former Commons International Trade Committee – as well as external experts – have consistently called for a greater role for parliament in both making and approving international agreements.

What are international agreements?

International agreements vary hugely in their scale and scope. They include large trade agreements between several states, such as the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), which the UK is in the process of joining; security, data or visa agreements between two governments; international human rights and refugee conventions; and agreements governing international organisations such as the EU or UN. At one extreme, it can take years to set a negotiating mandate, conduct negotiations, agree and sign a text, implement and ratify the agreement, and bring it into force. Or, at its simplest, an agreement might consist of an exchange of letters between two states.

International agreements also vary in their effects. Some are legally binding treaties, with consequences under international law for any breaches. Others are not legally binding but still have political force, and may entail spending commitments or have other significant impacts. The UK–Rwanda agreement on offshoring asylum seekers, for example, was initially a non-binding Memorandum of Understanding, before the two governments negotiated a binding treaty.

During the UK’s EU membership, many of the international agreements affecting the country were negotiated and scrutinised at EU level. Following Brexit, the UK is now conducting more of its own international negotiations. This has brought increasing attention to how those negotiations and the resulting agreements are – or should be – scrutinised and approved domestically.

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The civil service: what is its role?

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This is the first edition of this briefing. It has since been updated. Read the most up-to-date version and other briefings on the Constitution Unit’s website.

Recent years have seen significant tensions between ministers and civil servants, with allegations of bullying by ministers and leaking by civil servants, and a number of permanent secretaries forced out. This has prompted debate about reform. Lisa James, Meg Russell, and Alan Renwick argue that any changes to the form and functions of the civil service should have at their heart the core civil service principles of integrity, honesty, objectivity and impartiality.

Background

The civil service is a vital part of the UK’s constitutional system, and is central to helping the government of the day to develop and implement policy. Nonetheless, there are perennial tensions and questions about its role, which have heightened in recent years. The volume and tenor of recent attacks by some politicians on the civil service have provoked particular concern.

This briefing explains the role of the UK civil service, and how it works with ministers. Some civil servants have frontline delivery roles – for example, jobcentre workers, border officials and prison officers. But the briefing focuses on those civil servants who work in central government departments, particularly those working with and around ministers on policy.

What is the role of the civil service?

The UK civil service is permanent and politically impartial. Civil servants continue in post when governments change, and are forbidden from offering political advice to ministers – a role performed instead by special advisers. They must also maintain individual impartiality (which precludes, for example, senior civil servants engaging in party political activities even outside their work).

However, the civil service is not independent. Its fundamental role is to serve actively the government of the day in policy development and delivery. This does not simply mean following ministers’ instructions: good governance requires ministers to draw on a range of objective, evidence-based advice and balanced perspectives before making decisions. Hence civil servants provide such advice on the pros and cons of policy options – even if that sometimes contains unwelcome messages. Civil servants also translate policy decisions into action, implementing the policy direction set by ministers.

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Reforming the royal prerogative  

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The Brexit process raised questions about how – and in what areas – the royal prerogative should operate. Following a lengthy project, which has resulted in a new book on the subject and a Unit report – published today – on options for reform, Robert Hazell explains why the prerogative matters, and how it might be reformed to strike a better balance between parliament and the executive.

The royal prerogative has long been a mystery to most observers. I have now produced a book Executive Power: The Prerogative, Past, Present and Future to help demystify it. It was written with my former researcher (now a barrister) Tim Foot, and covers the whole range of prerogative powers, from going to war and ratifying treaties, appointing and dismissing ministers, regulating the civil service and public appointments, to the grant of honours and pardons and the issue of passports. The book’s 19 chapters provide a comprehensive guide to the operation of the prerogative – past, present, and future – together with suggestions for reform.

Working with us was another researcher, Charlotte Sayers-Carter, and Charlotte and I have distilled the key findings of our book into a much shorter report, Reforming the Prerogative. It selects just five powers, to illustrate the scope for reform through codification in statute, soft law, or by clearer and stronger conventions. This blog offers edited highlights from the book and the report, to explain why the prerogative matters; to illustrate this with a few prerogative powers; and to suggest ways in which it might be reformed.

What is the prerogative?

The prerogative derives from the original executive powers of the Crown. Over the years these have been overlain and superseded by statute, and most powers have transferred to ministers. The monarch retains the power to summon, dissolve and prorogue parliament; to grant royal assent to bills passed by parliament; to appoint and dismiss ministers. The main prerogative powers in the hands of ministers are the power to make war and deploy the armed forces; to make and ratify treaties; to conduct diplomacy and foreign relations; to grant peerages and honours; to grant pardons; to issue and revoke passports.

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Parliamentary scrutiny of international agreements should not be limited to legally binding treaties

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Last week, the Constitution Unit published a blogpost which posed five key questions for the Conservative leadership contenders, one of which focused on rebuilding parliament’s scrutiny role. In this post, David Natzler and Charlotte Sayers-Carter argue that such scrutiny should include telling parliament about politically significant international agreements it has made and allowing for oversight and the expression of dissent.

On 11 May Prime Minister Boris Johnson signed bilateral security agreements with Sweden and Finland. At that time both countries were actively considering applying for membership of NATO, which they did together a week later, on 18 May. Once objections by Turkey to their membership had been dealt with, NATO agreed to these applications at its June meeting in Madrid. Now they have been admitted, the necessary amending Protocols to the North Atlantic Treaty will be laid before parliament. Under the terms of Part 2 of the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act 2010 (CRaG), it is usual practice that the government can ratify a Protocol unless there has been a parliamentary objection within 21 sitting days. NATO expanded to include the Baltic states in 2004, Montenegro in 2016 and North Macedonia in 2019. On none of these occasions was positive assent given by parliament; in the absence of dissent within 21 days of their laying, the Protocols were duly ratified. However, viewing the current circumstances as an ‘exceptional case’ to which the 21 day requirement can be disapplied under section 22 of CRaG, the government intends to proceed with ratification before parliament breaks for summer recess.

The 11 May agreements may have looked like stopgap measures, an interim bilateral version of the regime of multilateral mutual protection offered under Article 5 of the NATO treaty, but the Prime Minister explicitly said that they were not, and the leaders of both countries went out of their way to assert that the agreements would make their countries more secure. Although appended to both agreements were confirmations that they did not give rise to legally binding commitments under international law, they have been described as ‘solemn declarations’. While the UK might very well have been expected in any event to have come to the assistance of either country in an emergency if a request had been made, the situation following the signing of these agreements was different, in that there was a real prospect that British armed forces could have been actively engaged in coming to the assistance of these hitherto neutral countries as a fulfilment of these agreements.

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