Tag Archives: Hannah White

The Good Parliament: what kind of Speaker do we need?

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image_preview.jpgIt has been three years since The Good Parliament report made its recommendations on how to make parliament more diversity sensitive. Since then, the Cox report in the Commons has emphasised that reform of parliament and its internal processes remains necessary. In this post, the author of The Good Parliament, Sarah Childs, examines how the next Speaker could improve upon the work of their predecessor.

The next Speaker of the House of Commons will be elected on 4 November. The procedure involves a secret ballot of MPs, with successive ballots ‘until either a candidate wins more than 50% of the vote, or only one candidate remains’. The election comes at a time of political and, possibly institutional, crisis. Parliament is beset by swirling questions about its constitutional role and about what it means to hold elected office in the UK. On this blog, Dr Mark Bennister has drawn attention to the context, one marked by the politics of Brexit, parliamentary sovereignty, Speaker impartiality, institutional trust, backbenchers’ ‘rights’, and the building’s restoration and renewal. The question of the bullying and harassment of staff on the parliamentary estate and the Commons’ wider culture are also rightly part of this. 

The culture of the Commons was one of the three dimensions identified in The Good Parliament, a report published back in 2016. While only looking at Members, the report laid bare the extensiveness of diversity insensitivities at Westminster. Together with redressing inequalities of participation in the House and discriminatory and exclusionary parliamentary infrastructure, the report identified 43 recommendations that would transform the Commons into the Inter-Parliamentary Union’s ‘truly representative, transparent, accessible, accountable and effective parliament’.

Much has been achieved since then via the Speaker’s Reference Group on Representation and Inclusion, which was set up and chaired by John Bercow. It comprised male and female MPs with an established interest in equalities from across the parties, and included longstanding and newer MPs. Some dozen recommendations have been implemented in full, with another good handful still in train. Its most high profile successes include in 2017 the permanent establishment of the Women and Equalities Committee (WEC), which is chaired by Maria Miller, and in 2019 – working with the Mother of the House, Harriet Harman – the introduction of proxy voting for MPs on baby leave. The new EU SI Committee is required to be gender balanced because of an amendment tabled by members of the Reference Group; the diversity of Committee witnesses is now monitored by the administration and is a key concern of the Liaison Committee; and in a first for an established democracy, the IPU undertook a Gender Sensitive Parliament Audit (on which WEC was taking evidence at the time of prorogation). Continue reading →

Voting for Brexit: the practical and constitutional barriers to getting consent for the withdrawal agreement before exit day

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MIKEMASSARO.9198.CROPPED..hannah.114x133_0_MIK4282.cropped.114x133The government has repeatedly given assurances that parliament will be offered ‘a meaningful vote’ on the final Brexit deal, which is still being negotiated. In this post, Hannah White and Raphael Hogarth discuss the challenges of meeting that commitment and argues that the binary choice of ‘deal’ or ‘no deal’ is a false one. They also discuss some of the practical and constitutional issues raised by the government’s legislative plans to implement Brexit within a very short timeframe.

By October ministers hope to have negotiated a withdrawal agreement on the terms of the UK’s departure from the European Union, and a ‘framework for a future relationship’ on long-term UK-EU relations. To reach agreement with the EU on these documents in so little time will be a monumental challenge for the government – but when this challenge is complete, a new one begins. The government will then have to shepherd these documents through a number of processes in parliament.

Our new report, Voting on Brexit, sets out what the government has to do in order to get its deal through parliament, and give effect to that deal in domestic law. Below are seven key messages from that research.

1. The government’s timetable for getting its deal through parliament is ambitious

The government has promised to seek parliament’s approval for both the withdrawal agreement and the future framework in one go. However, there will be very little time in which to do so. The UK is currently set to leave the EU on 29 March 2019. That means that there will be only six months available for scrutiny and approval of the deal.

This should be enough time, providing nothing goes wrong. But if negotiations drag on past October, or parliament raises significant objections to the deal that require a renegotiation or referendum, or if the European Parliament raises its own objections, then the timetable could be unachievable. The government would need to consider seeking an extension of the Article 50 period in order to complete its negotiation and allow time for scrutiny and approval. Continue reading →