Tag Archives: Dave Busfield-Birch

The Constitution Unit blog in 2021: the year in review

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2021 has been a fascinating time to be writing about the UK constitution, its institutions and those involved in working within them. The government, despite the pandemic, has proposed a raft of policies with constitutional implications, including a restriction of judicial review, changes to the right to protest, human rights reform and an online safety bill shorn of a previous commitment to safeguard democracy from online harms. As the year comes to an end, blog editor Dave Busfield-Birch offers a roundup of the year just gone, as well as a look at the reach of the blog through the lens of its readership statistics. 

2019 was a year of constitutional flux and tension, with a new Prime Minister, a new Brexit deal and a new parliament. In 2020, COVID-19 upset the political calculus and posed challenges aplenty for the constitution and its watchdogs. 2021 saw the country seeking to find its way as COVID-19 conditions became the new normal, within a context of a government that has persistently broken rules and violated norms (and not always to its advantage). Below are our most popular blogs from the past year, preceded by a personal selection by me, at the end of my fourth year as blog editor.

Editor’s picks

A woman’s place is in the House: reclaiming civility, tolerance and respect in political life, by Dame Laura Cox.

If I have a constitutional niche, it is parliamentary standards of conduct and the slow evolution of the standards regime at Westminster. Outside of the Unit, I provide free employment law advice to members of the public, with an emphasis on discrimination. This post was therefore always going to be included on this list.

Dame Laura, who produced a seminal report on the bullying and harassment of parliamentary staff, argues with eloquence and passion that the behaviour of too many parliamentarians is misogynistic and a cause of capable women leaving parliament, or having to accept behaviour that would not be permitted in any other workplace. She says that this is in part an institutional problem, and calls for a more open, tolerant, respectful and conciliatory politics.

‘Our travel difficulties haven’t been well-understood by the Government’: life as an MP from the smaller opposition parties during the pandemic, by Louise Thompson and Alexandra Meakin.

One of the country’s foremost experts on small parties and (in my opinion), the go-to source for analysis of Restoration and Renewal of the Palace of Westminster, team up here to fantastic effect. They outline how smaller parties have been disproportionately affected by government choices about how parliament should operate during the pandemic. They offer a warning that this might have long-term and unintended consequences: failure to enable the voices of MPs from Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales to be heard may lead to constituents in these nations feeling voiceless in an institution that no longer represents them.

The post is one of a long-running series on the impact of COVID-19 on our constitution and its institutions.

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Ministerial standards in Westminster and beyond

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Ministerial standards and the mechanisms for enforcing them have been in the news more than usual over the course of the last twelve months, making clear the limitations of the current rules and systems of regulating ministerial behaviour. In May, the Unit hosted an expert panel to discuss how the standards regimes work in the UK, and what reforms might be desirable. Dave Busfield-Birch summarises the contributions.

On 24 May, the Constitution Unit hosted an online webinar entitled Ministerial Standards in Westminster and Beyond. Unit founder Robert Hazell chaired the event, which had three distinguished panellists: Alex Allan, former independent adviser to the Prime Minister on ministerial interests; Susan Deacon, a former minister in Scotland who also sat on the Scottish Parliament’s Standards and Procedures committees; and Richard Thomas, a member of the Advisory Committee on Business Appointments (ACOBA), which advises ministers and senior officials on potential conflicts of interest when they take up appointments after leaving Whitehall.

This post summarises the main contributions of the speakers: the full event, including the lively and informative Q&A, is available on our YouTube page.

Alex Allan

Alex Allan started his contribution by offering a little bit of history about the ‘rather strange document’ that is the Ministerial Code. Something similar to the Code has been in place since the Attlee government, but perhaps the most significant changes came in 1995 when the Committee on Standards in Public Life (CSPL) produced its first report, and outlined ‘Seven Principles of Public Life’, which are commonly referred to as the ‘Nolan principles’.

Another significant change came in 2007, when the Brown government published a paper on the governance of Britain, which resulted in the creation of the role of independent adviser on ministerial interests, a title held by Allan from 2011 until his resignation in 2020. Where there is an allegation about the conduct of a minister that the Cabinet Secretary feels warrants further investigation, the matter will be referred to the independent adviser. However, most of the work of the independent adviser is of little media interest, and involves dealing with declarations of ministers’ interests, which are examined by their permanent secretary and the propriety and ethics team at the Cabinet Office, before being examined by the independent adviser.

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The Constitution Unit blog in 2020: the year in review

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As was the case last year, 2020 has been a fascinating time to be writing about the UK constitution, its institutions and those involved in working within them (more so than anyone could have predicted in January). As the year draws to a close, blog editor Dave Busfield-Birch offers a roundup of the blog year just gone, as well as a look at the reach of the blog through the lens of its readership statistics. 

2019 was a year of constitutional flux and tension, with a new Prime Minister, a new Brexit deal and a new parliament. As challenging as 2019 was, however, 2020 has proved no less of a test for the constitution, its institutions and actors. It was always likely that the Brexit talks would not prove easy, and that the government’s Commons majority would not mean the Johnson government would automatically be able to bend parliament to its will. The pandemic has, of course, magnified the complexity of the government’s pre-existing challenges and raised a whole new number of policy problems, creating constitutional flashpoints aplenty. 

Below are our most popular blogs from the past year, preceded by a personal selection by me, at the end of my third year as blog editor.

Editor’s picks

The 2019 election campaign shows that abuse, harassment and intimidation of candidates is getting worse, especially for women, by Sofia Collignon.

It’s difficult to call this one of my ‘favourite’ blogs, but it’s definitely one of the most important that we produced this year. Women candidates continue to disproportionately experience intimidation and harassment during general election campaigns, and Sofia Collignon eloquently describes the specific problems they face. I have advised victims of harassment, discrimination and gender-based violence for most of my adult life, so this is a topic very close to my heart: sadly we still have a very long way to go.

The role of monarchy in modern democracy, by Robert Hazell and Bob Morris.

I studied history as an undergraduate and I always tended to focus on periods when the monarchy itself was in crisis and being challenged by other institutions. I therefore always enjoy editing Robert and Bob’s blogs on the subject. At the end of a busy year for the monarchy, which has had to adapt to both ‘Megxit’ and the pandemic, this blog stands out, summarising as it does the main conclusions of their new book, The Role of Monarchy in Modern Democracy: European Monarchies Compared. The book is fascinating, and I would also recommend viewing the launch event (chaired by Jonathan Dimbleby) on our YouTube page, where you can find video recordings of all our 2020 events. 

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Looking forward, looking back: an evening with Sir David Natzler

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IMG.2771On 19 March, the Unit held an event: ‘Challenges for Parliament: Looking Back, Looking Forward’, at which Sir David Natzler – who retired as Clerk of the House of Commons in February – spoke to Professor Meg Russell about his 40-year career in parliament. The discussion was both entertaining and informative; Dave Busfield-Birch summarises the key points.

Early days

Sir David first started working in the House of Commons in 1975, at what he called an ‘exciting time’, just two years after the UK had joined what was then known as the European Communities. His first assignment was as clerk to the European Legislation Committee, which was facing the novel challenge of sifting through the legislation passed by an unelected Council of Ministers sitting in the capital city of another country, and recommending which measures should be debated.

Parliament was unsurprisingly a very different place in the early years of Sir David’s Commons career. Talking of the key differences, he first spoke of how ‘expectations’ had changed significantly since then. For example, there were no limits on how long a Member could speak in those days. Whereas the Speaker (or one of the Deputy Speakers) can now impose relatively short time limits for MPs wishing to speak, that was not the case in 1975. Sir David considered this ‘almost one of the biggest changes’ of the past two or three centuries; that speaking for a long time can no longer be used to ‘destroy business’.

One of the other key differences between then and now is that the House of Commons lacked fiscal independence when he first started working there. It was instead reliant on the government for finance, thereby limiting its ability to take crucial decisions such as whether or not to recruit more staff. The Treasury hence had control of the Commons until the establishment of the House of Commons Commission in 1978, at which point the Commons became fiscally independent. Continue reading →