Tag Archives: House of Lords Constitution Committee

How should the Lord Chancellor and law officers safeguard the rule of law within government?

Posted on by

The government has now published its response to the Constitution Committee’s report on the role of the Lord Chancellor and government law officers, making clear it will take no action based on the committee’s recommendations. Will Knatchbull discusses the key findings of the report and argues that in some cases the committee has expressed clear policy preferences but then declined to recommend mechanisms to implement them.

The House of Lords Constitution Committee published its report on the role of the Lord Chancellor and the law officers (legal ministers as a collective) on 18 January. Since the changes made by the Constitutional Reform Act 2005, further reforms have been considered in reports from the Lords Constitution Committee and the Commons Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee, a government consultation and a white paper. Ultimately, very little reform or reversal has occurred since the 2005 Act, and the government’s response to the report (published on 17 March), made clear that it will not review the existing arrangements.

The overall message of this latest report makes three important and related points: the value of the rule of law, the centrality of the legal ministers in being seen to uphold it within government, and the required character of the legal ministers to be able to do so. It is well summarised in this paragraph:

The thread running through this report is that the rule of law is vitally important to the health of our democracy. Whatever formal reforms might be contemplated, appointing those with the correct character, authority, intellect and independence is the best way to ensure that the Lord Chancellor and the Law Officers are able to defend it. [emphasis added]

This is an important statement and one that cannot easily be disputed. This blogpost will briefly examine three elements of the report: the engagement with the international rule of law, the nature of the role of Lord Chancellor and possibilities for reform of the role of the law officers. I will suggest the report is a step in the right direction. However, it may be too trusting of the political system and the politicians operating in it to produce and appoint individuals of the correct experience and calibre that would enable them to be the fierce guardians of the rule of law that the report envisages.

Continue reading →

The Fixed-term Parliaments Act did not cause the Brexit impasse

Posted on by

Next week MPs debate the government’s bill to repeal the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011. One argument frequently deployed for scrapping the Act is that it generated gridlock over Brexit. But, Meg Russell argues, no clear counterfactual to support this claim has ever been presented. In fact, when considering the possible scenarios, it seems likely that the situation would have been made worse, not better, had the Prime Minister retained an untrammelled prerogative power to dissolve parliament in 2017–19.

Next week MPs debate the remaining stages of the Dissolution and Calling of Parliament Bill, which seeks to repeal the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011 (FTPA). It proposes to reinstate the pre-FTPA position, whereby the Prime Minister would effectively control general election timing using prerogative power. A key argument deployed by those seeking repeal of the FTPA is that it helped to cause the Brexit deadlock of 2019: that the FTPA, as the Conservative manifesto put it, ‘led to paralysis at a time the country needed decisive action’. But to what extent is this really true?

While suggestions that the FTPA created the Brexit deadlock are commonplace, most experts who contributed to the three parliamentary committees that have considered FTPA repeal (the Commons Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee, Lords Constitution Committee and Joint Committee on the Fixed-term Parliaments Act) argued that the deadlock resulted from other factors. Most obvious were the post-2017 combination of a minority government, the need to deliver on a contested referendum result, and deep divisions within the governing party. These problems were clearly serious, and it is very far from clear that the FTPA could have resolved them.

A careful reading of the evidence presented to the three parliamentary committees, and of the Commons second reading debate on the bill, finds that most claims against the FTPA over Brexit are distinctly vague. No clear counterfactual is offered. This particularly applies to events during Theresa May’s premiership, when the most intractable problems arose. The situation did change in the autumn of 2019 under Boris Johnson (as discussed below), but the FTPA’s targeting as a causal factor dates back far earlier than this. Likewise, during interviews with a series of senior figures for a current book project on parliament and the Brexit process, I have asked several critics of the FTPA how, if Theresa May had been able to trigger an early general election without parliament’s consent, things would have turned out differently. I have yet to receive a convincing reply.

Continue reading →

Moving Westminster into a multi-parliament world: the Commons takes a fresh look at devolution

Posted on by

The UK’s devolved institutions in Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales celebrated their twenty-first anniversary this year. Their powers have changed several times since their creation, but much of this has occurred in an ad hoc way, without deep consideration at UK level of the overall devolution framework. Paul Evans explains how a new Procedure Committee inquiry into how the House of Commons should adapt to the ‘territorial constitution’ presents an opportunity to give some key devolution issues the attention they deserve.

Devolution in the UK turned 21 this year, and watching it grow has been a fascinating study in making up the constitution as you go along. The Scotland Act 2016 and the Wales Act 2017 (each of them the third major reworkings of the statutory basis of devolution in those nations in less than 20 years) declared the devolved legislatures there, along with their governments, to be a permanent part of the UK’s constitutional arrangements, which could be abolished only with the consent of the people in a referendum. 

In both those nations 16- and 17-year olds have been newly enfranchised and will participate in the elections of their parliaments next year. The Northern Ireland Assembly restarted (once more) in January after a three-year absence, and in May the Welsh Assembly renamed itself the Welsh Parliament (or Senedd Cymru if you prefer to use the UK’s – so far – only other official language). 

All in all, the journey towards a pragmatic form of de facto federalism in the UK has been a remarkably peaceful and generally good-natured velvet revolution. So perhaps it’s not so surprising that the House of Commons Procedure Committee has not felt the need to have a major review of the implications of devolution for the workings of the Commons since 1999.

Watching its progeny develop their own values and make their own decisions has, nonetheless, been a challenging learning experience for Westminster. The assertions of devolution’s permanency and its implication of equality of esteem between the four legislatures of the UK has often appeared more rhetorical than real. Whitehall seems never to have fully come to terms with the loss of centralised control which devolution necessarily entails. But, collectively, the elected members of the four legislatures have done little better in opening up and sustaining channels of communication – though some good work has been done at the margins. 

Continue reading →

Will the Lords block the UK Internal Market Bill?

Posted on by

Parliament will this week begin debating and scrutinising the UK Internal Market Bill, which the Northern Ireland Secretary has already acknowledged will, if passed in its current form, place the UK in breach of international law. When the bill reaches the upper chamber, what sort of treatment will it receive? Might the Lords block it? Unit Director and Lords expert Meg Russell offers her view.

Widespread shock greeted this week’s news that Boris Johnson hopes to set aside elements of the Withdrawal Agreement related to Northern Ireland – particularly when Northern Ireland Secretary Brandon Lewis admitted to the House of Commons that the UK Internal Market Bill drafted to achieve this ‘does break international law’. Former Conservative Prime Ministers Theresa May and John Major, and senior government backbenchers, loudly protested. Former Conservative Solicitor General Lord (Edward) Garnier expressed surprise that the government’s law officers – those ministers expressly charged with protecting the rule of law – hadn’t resigned.

After an emergency meeting, the European Commission vice-president demanded that the UK withdraw the plans. The Irish Taoiseach described them as ‘extremely divisive – and dangerous’, while the US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi warned that breaching international law would mean ‘absolutely no chance of a US-UK trade agreement’.

There are clear questions over whether such a controversial bill – whose Commons second reading is on Monday – can secure parliamentary approval. Specifically will it, as some suggest, be blocked by the House of Lords? A prior question is whether these provisions will make it through the House of Commons. Despite Johnson’s majority, Conservative dissent is unusually intense. This is unsurprising since, as many have recently quoted, that most iconic of Conservative prime ministers Margaret Thatcher consistently emphasised respect for the rule of law as a core Conservative value.

There is actually a prior question even to this, regarding whether the Commons will actually be asked to approve the offending clauses. In parliament the ‘law of anticipated reactions’ generally applies: sensible governments facing a likely Commons defeat will retreat on legislation if they can. When Charles Walker, vice-chair of the backbench 1922 Committee, was asked whether Conservative MPs would vote against the bill (21:18), he responded ‘I doubt we are to get to the stage where we are asked’. This implied that the Prime Minister would hear the drumbeats, and back down.

Continue reading →

Brexit and parliament: treaties beyond the EU

Posted on by

In the latest extract from our joint report on Parliament and Brexit, Jill Barrett argues that the need for effective scrutiny of post-Brexit trade deals is high, and that parliament needs to develop mechanisms to better scrutinise the deals made by the government.

Leaving the EU means the UK is not only leaving the EU trading bloc and negotiating a new future relationship with the EU, but also leaving its global network of trade treaties – which consists of 41 trade agreements covering 72 countries. All of these will cease to apply to the UK at the end of the transition period (31 December 2020, unless extended by agreement). The UK’s trade with other World Trade Organization (WTO) member countries will then take place on WTO terms, except where there is a new trade agreement in place.

The UK government is seeking to ‘roll over’ the 41 existing EU agreements, by negotiating similar new agreements with the third states concerned. So far, only 19 replacement agreements have been signed and a further 16 are ‘still in discussion’. In some cases, notably Japan, the other state is not willing simply to replicate the terms that it has with the EU, but is seeking further concessions from the UK. Achieving a deal in all cases by the end of 2020 will be extremely challenging, and some may well take considerably longer.

Now the UK has an independent trade policy it can also seek new trade relationships with states that are outside of the EU’s treaty network. The government has announced that its priority is to negotiate bilateral trade treaties with the USA, Australia and New Zealand, and one may expect the next phase to include negotiations with major emerging economies such as China and India. All of these will raise matters of intense interest to parliament and the public.

What is parliament’s role in relation to the making of treaties? Treaties are negotiated, adopted, signed and ratified by the government using royal prerogative (executive) powers. In legal terms, parliament has two distinct roles. First, the government is obliged to lay a new treaty before parliament for 21 sitting days prior to ratification, under the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act 2010 (CRAG). In theory, this gives parliament the opportunity to scrutinise the treaty and object to ratification, by passing a resolution. An objection by the House of Commons (but not by the Lords) would block ratification. Secondly, if implementation of the treaty requires new legislation, parliament has the power to pass or defeat that legislation (or amend it, if it is a statute). If essential implementing legislation is blocked, this would normally stop the government ratifying the treaty. Continue reading →