Brexit and parliament: an end of term report

Posted on August 6, 2019 by The Constitution Unit

On 22 July, the Unit, in association with The UK in a Changing Europe, hosted four experts on the legislative process, including our Director, Professor Meg Russell, for a panel discussion of parliament’s handling of Brexit. Sam Anderson summarises the main contributions.

On 22 July, the Constitution Unit held a packed event entitled ‘Brexit and Parliament: an end of term report’. As well as launching Unit Director Professor Meg Russell’s new Senior Fellowship with The UK in a Changing Europe, it offered a key opportunity to reflect on parliament’s recent performance on Brexit and what may lie ahead. The other contributors were Hilary Benn MP, Labour Chair of the Commons Exiting the European Union Select Committee; Chris White, Managing Director of Public Affairs at Newington Communications and former adviser to two Conservative Leaders of the House; and Dr Brigid Fowler, Senior Researcher at the Hansard Society, who leads its work on parliament and Brexit. The event was chaired by Dr Daniel Gover, Research Fellow at the Constitution Unit and Lecturer in British Politics at Queen Mary University of London. The discussion included whether parliament had used some of its more innovative procedures appropriately, potential next steps in the backbench fight to stop ‘no deal’ and public perceptions of how parliament is performing in the Brexit process.

Meg Russell

Meg Russell gave an overview of the three key research areas that her new fellowship will focus on.

1. How direct and representative democracy relate to each other in the UK

This has been one of the main issues raised by the 2016 referendum. The centrality of parliamentary sovereignty in the UK constitution means that there is a natural tension between representative democracy – where decisions are made by parliament – and direct democracy, involving the use of referendums. Referendums can undoubtedly create tensions with parliament’s representative function; however the Unit’s Independent Commission of Referendums concluded that in certain circumstances referendums can usefully complement parliamentary sovereignty.

The concepts of direct democracy and the overriding mandate of the referendum have fed debates about the role of parliament that have taken a ‘darker turn’ in recent months. Challenging parliament’s decisions is legitimate in a democracy, but threatening the right of parliament to sit and perform its constitutional and legal functions is something we never expected to see. This rhetoric seeks ‘to pit the people against parliament’, with the ‘worrying implication that the executive should cut loose’ of the accountability that lies at the heart of our system, in the name of the people. For example, many responses to a recent tweet from former Conservative MP Nick Boles, in which he expressed concern about the government ‘muzzling’ parliament, invoked ‘the will of the 17.4 million’, with some suggesting that the will of MPs no longer matters. Prorogation has been advocated by a number of Brexiteer MPs, to prevent parliament blocking a ‘no deal’ Brexit. However it has been criticised by other prominent Leavers, such as Sir Bernard Jenkin, Chair of the Commons Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee, and Andrea Leadsom, former Leader of the Commons.

2. The power of parliament over government policy

Professor Russell’s previous work has looked at the ways parliament exercises its power, including through select committees and the legislative process. Parliament is more powerful – and exercises that power in more subtle ways – than many often assume. The Brexit process has demonstrated this in a high profile way. A number of established patterns have continued: one is the anticipatory influence that the Commons has on government, such as when Theresa May offered MPs a vote on ‘no deal’ in March to avoid it being forced upon her. In addition, the Commons and the Lords have largely worked together as partners not rivals; the scrutiny role of select committees and the Commons chamber have been shown to play an important role in testing the claims and policies of ministers; and opposition days have been used in a number of ‘imaginative’ ways. Continue reading →

Rethinking democracy: is our democracy fit for purpose?

Posted on June 14, 2019 by The Constitution Unit

On 14 May, the Constitution Unit hosted an event to launch ‘Rethinking Democracy’, which was published by Political Quarterly earlier this year. The collection contains essays from leading academics, in which they explore the problems of representative democracy and suggest ways it might now be extended and deepened. In this blog, Tony Wright, Joni Lovenduski, Andrew Gamble and Albert Weale summarise their contributions to the event.

Tony Wright

Earlier this year, I gave evidence to the House of Commons Liaison Committee (alongside Professor Meg Russell, Director of the Constitution Unit) on the topic of the effectiveness and influence of select committees. At that session, I was asked about the reforms instituted as a result of the recommendations in the 2009 report of the Reform of the House Committee, on which I served as chair. That committee came about because the expenses scandal had spurred me into writing to the Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, in a bid to encourage him to reform parliament in a way that might increase public regard for it, at a time when it was perhaps lower than it had ever been. The reforms made as a result of what is now called the Wright Committee have, I think, proved relatively successful. However, in that same letter I also proposed setting up what I called ‘a democracy commission’ to think through what kind of democracy we now wanted. Part of the problem I wanted that committee to deal with was the fact that people were increasingly disengaged from politics.

Ten years later, it is extraordinary what has happened: we have had democracy by the bucketload, so it’s claimed, and people’s engagement with politics has most definitely increased. But it wasn’t supposed to be quite like this. People like me had spent years looking for ways to replace or improve upon representative democracy, but now events have caused us to come to its defence. This is because this established democratic model is under assault across – and indeed beyond – the western world, and from all directions.

In this country, the 2016 referendum was the spur for this. And the result of that referendum was traumatic not just because we lost the vote, but because we lost the democratic argument. By this, I mean that we lost the argument when it comes to the idea of democracy itself. The Leave campaigns were the ones making the argument for democracy; they made the case for democratic self-government and sovereignty. And that case went unanswered, because instead of making a democratic argument, those campaigning for Remain focused on economics and how we would be ‘better off in’. There was a different argument that could have been made by Remainers, albeit a more complicated one. But it wasn’t made, and because of this, the proponents of a certain view of democracy prevailed. Continue reading →

Should we worry if MPs seize control of the parliamentary agenda?

Posted on January 27, 2019 by The Constitution Unit

Ahead of Tuesday’s votes on Brexit, attention has focused on the rights and wrongs of the House of Commons seeking to ‘seize control’. Meg Russell argues that there’s nothing unusual about a democratic parliament controlling its own procedure and business. Indeed, the core principle of parliamentary sovereignty already gives the Commons control by default.

With stalemate over the Prime Minister’s Brexit deal, rejected dramatically by the House of Commons on 15 January by 432 votes to 202, there is increasing talk of parliament ‘seizing control’. On Tuesday, following the Speaker’s controversial decision to allow a vote on Conservative backbencher Dominic Grieve’s amendment speeding up the timetable, MPs will vote on a series of propositions about what should happen next. These include a further proposal by Grieve that the government’s usual control of the agenda should be set aside on specified days to allow MPs to make decisions on Brexit, and a proposal from Labour’s Yvette Cooper that such control be set aside to allow time to debate a private member’s bill demanding that ministers avoid a no deal Brexit by requesting an extension to Article 50.

Consequently, some inside government have expressed concerns that the Commons, with the Speaker’s assistance, is overreaching itself. It has been reported that an internal government document warns of MPs’ moves ‘represent[ing] a clear and present danger to all government business’, and even meaning that ‘the government would lose its ability to govern’. One senior legal figure (whose career was spent inside the government) has argued that changes of this kind could set dangerous precedents for the future, even potentially dragging the monarch into a constitutional crisis (though other legal experts have firmly rebutted such claims).

So are we entering dangerous constitutional territory? What is, after all, so odd about the idea of a democratically-elected chamber gaining greater control over its own time, and its own rules? Continue reading →

More direct democracy or a more directed democracy in populist-run Italy?

Posted on October 12, 2018 by The Constitution Unit

For the first time since its inception, the Five Star Movement finds itself in government, with the stated intention of increasing the use of direct democracy by increasing the circumstances in which a national referendum can be held. Carlo Fusaro examines the proposals and their potential impact on Italian democracy.

This post intends to report on the most recent initiatives concerning referendums by the new populist majority in Italy, as represented in the government formed by the Five Star Movement (M5S) and by the League (formerly known as the Northern League), following the 4 March 2018 elections.

The proposals

While the two vice-premiers Matteo Salvini and Luigi di Maio have been making headlines in other areas, Riccardo Fraccaro, a University of Trento graduate in international environmental law who serves as the “minister for relations with parliament and direct democracy”, has recently announced the constitutional reform strategy of the Cabinet.

Since the Conte Cabinet was formed on 1 June 2018, the denomination of Mr Fraccaro’s ministerial assignment was intended to symbolise the M5S preference for direct democracy. The M5S claims to be a ‘non party’ (therefore a ‘movement’), based on the apparently bottom-up organisation of the followers of comedian Beppe Grillo’s blog. In fact it has been entirely created via the internet and factually set up by a web marketing company (Casaleggio Associati) whose present owner, Davide Casaleggio, holds full and personal control of the movement’s official internet platform (and the related big data). The latter is significantly named ‘Rousseau’ after the Swiss-French theoretician of direct democracy.

Understandably neglecting the total lack of transparency of the Rousseau platform, Davide Casaleggio himself has recently theorised that parliaments might cease to exist in the near future and has emphasised the unlimited potential of people’s direct participation via the net. Mr Fraccaro himself, as a member of parliament, introduced a private member’s bill in 2015 that was meant to strengthen and multiply the instruments of direct democracy already present in the Italian Constitution. It was not enacted.

Before any text had been submitted this time around, Mr Fraccaro (in parliamentary hearings on 12 and 26 July 2018) and his chief adviser on constitutional reforms, Professor Lorenzo Spadacini (in a password-protected article for the think-thank Astrid), had presented sufficiently detailed descriptions of the reform package they have in mind.

It is a relatively prudent set of proposals which would be difficult to describe as revolutionary, but which must be framed within the extraordinary conditions in which Italian democracy is struggling these days. The package is based upon the premise that any ambition of comprehensive reform even only of part II of the Italian Constitution should be set aside: this approach, it is claimed, is more in line with a full compliance of article 138 of the Italian Constitution (which regulates the constitutional amendment procedure). This said, the government (not without some hypocrisy) refrained from directly submitting proposals: but has in fact offered a detailed strategy, expecting parliamentary groups to introduce one single bill for each reform along the same lines. The novelty is that the voters will be allowed to cherry-pick among a series of single texts, one for each item. This might be justified by the fact that the announced amendments are in fact punctual and allow such an approach. Continue reading →

Is direct democracy effective? Yes, if it is citizens who start the process

Posted on July 7, 2016 by The Constitution Unit

In the first of a series of posts on the merits of referendums Lucas Leemann writes that landmark votes like the recent EU referendum may be the most atypical – and arguably worst – examples of direct democracy. He indicates that in cases where citizens have the ability to launch initiatives and call for referendums, it can play an important role in resolving problems on non-redistributive issues. This post was originally published before the EU referendum on Democratic Audit and is re-posted now with permission.

While landmark votes, like the recent EU referendum, attract a lot of attention and spur debates on direct democracy they might actually be the most atypical forms of direct democracy.

Direct democracy can enrich purely representative systems and have a beneficial impact on various outcomes. For most readers, the most relevant effect of direct democracy will be on policy congruence – i.e. the extent to which policies reflect the wishes of a majority of citizens. The optimistic promise of direct democracy is exactly that it will yield policies that are ‘more’ democratic, in the sense that they are supported by a majority of the citizens.

We can distinguish two important types of direct democracy: one where governments decide to grant their citizens the right to vote on a specific measure and another where the citizens can force the government to hold such a vote. The question of who can start the direct democratic process may appear secondary at first sight but it is actually one of the most important institutional details.

Continue reading →

The Constitution Unit Blog

Tag Archives: direct democracy

Brexit and parliament: an end of term report

Rethinking democracy: is our democracy fit for purpose?

Should we worry if MPs seize control of the parliamentary agenda?

More direct democracy or a more directed democracy in populist-run Italy?

Is direct democracy effective? Yes, if it is citizens who start the process

The Constitution Unit Blog

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