legislation | The Constitution Unit Blog

The Westminster parliament is famous throughout the world, but often presented as relatively non-influential when it comes to making the law. Meg Russell and Daniel Gover‘s new book Legislation at Westminster is the most detailed study of the British legislative process for over 40 years, and challenges these assumptions. Here the authors summarise their findings on how different groups of actors at Westminster exercise subtle and interconnected influence, contributing to what they dub ‘six faces of parliamentary power’.

The Westminster parliament inhabits one of the most famous buildings in the world – emblematic both of Britain and of stable democracy. Yet when it comes to policy-making, and particularly to making the law, many see Westminster as relatively non-influential. In the popular media, parliament is frequently portrayed as a mere ‘rubber stamp’, where a docile Commons majority approves what government puts before it. Among academic authors views are generally more nuanced, but a mainstream public policy textbook nonetheless claims that ‘parliament plays only a limited role in decision-making in the British Westminster model’, while a recent British politics textbook suggests that ‘the House of Commons is misunderstood if viewed as a legislator’. Even scholars who celebrate parliament present the early stages of initiating and formulating legislation as ‘overwhelmingly a government-centred activity’. Despite the ostensibly central role of the ‘legislature’ in the legislative process, these specialists instead emphasise parliament’s other crucial functions, such as representation, scrutiny and legitimation.

Perhaps because it is thought likely to be fruitless, but also due to the painstaking work involved, until recently no large-scale study had been conducted on influence in the Westminster legislative process since Griffith’s classic 1974 Parliamentary Scrutiny of Government Bills. Griffith’s key finding was that many government amendments proposed to bills in parliament in fact responded to earlier proposals from non-government parliamentarians – showing that influence was more complex than it seemed. A major Constitution Unit project, funded by the Nuffield foundation, sought to explore how these dynamics may have changed, and specifically whether the ‘rubber stamp’ claim is correct. Our early quantitative results, based on study of over 4000 amendments to 12 case study bills passing through parliament during the period 2005-12, showed that it was not. The majority of government amendments with substance were traceable to parliamentary pressure, while the ‘failure’ of non-government amendments could not be taken at face value. Our newly-published book, Legislation at Westminster: Parliamentary Actors and Influence in the Making of British Law, tells a fuller story, drawing not only on amendment analysis, but also wider documentary analysis, and over 100 interviews with those closely involved in the passage of the 12 bills.

Part of the difficulty in assessing parliamentary influence is common perceptions of power. Looking for on-the-record changes wrought by parliament provides only a very narrow view. But it is often acknowledged in the politics and international relations literature that power takes many forms. One classic account suggests that it has three distinct faces, others that it has four or more; there are notions of hard and soft power, persuasive versus coercive power, and the ability to exercise power both positively and negatively. Such alternative conceptions have rarely been teased apart when discussing the power of parliaments.

Our study is organised by the various ‘actors’ in the policy process at Westminster, each of whom has a dedicated chapter. After introducing the basics of the legislative process and the case study bills, we go on to describe, using numerous quotations and examples, the diverse contributions that these actors make. This post provides a very short summary of our findings.

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The bill authorising the Prime Minister to trigger Article 50, enabling the UK to leave the EU, has cleared the Commons. It begins its consideration in the Lords today. In this post Lords expert Meg Russell discusses how the second chamber is likely to treat the bill. She suggests that this illustrates important dynamics between Lords and Commons, which are often disappointingly misunderstood both in the media and inside government.

The European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill is a simple two-clause measure to authorise the government to trigger Article 50 of the Treaty on European Union and thereby begin negotiations on the UK’s exit from the EU. This follows the ‘Leave’ vote in last June’s referendum, followed by the Supreme Court ruling that parliament’s authorisation was required. A previous blog considered the bill’s likely reception in the Commons, where it completed its initial stages on 8 February. Today the bill begins its consideration in the Lords, where it is due a two-day second reading debate, followed by two-day committee stage next week, and a day spent on remaining stages the week after that.

There has been much discussion of how the House of Lords will treat the bill – including wild speculation about possible retribution if peers try to ‘block’ the bill. Much of this fundamentally misunderstands the relationship between the two chambers of parliament, and the constraints within which the Lords always operates. The bill in fact nicely illustrates some of the subtleties of these relationships, and – while unusual in many ways – can serve as a case study of how the dynamics at Westminster work. By setting out how the Lords is likely to respond to the bill, this post seeks to communicate those wider dynamics.

As a starting point, two key features of the Lords are clearly pertinent, and feature prominently in stories about how it might respond to the Article 50 bill. First, the government has no majority in the chamber. As of today the Lords has 805 members, of whom only 252 are Conservatives. Labour has 202 seats, the Liberal Democrats 102, and the independent Crossbenchers – who do not have a whip or vote as a block – 178 (the remainder comprising bishops, smaller parties and other non-aligned members). This obviously, on the face of it, makes things look difficult for the government. Furthermore, the Lords is known to have an innate pro-‘Remain’ majority. The other obvious feature is that the Lords is unelected. This means (as further explored below) that it generally defers to the will of the elected House of Commons. Of course, the Commons also includes an innate pro-‘Remain’ majority. This presented MPs with various representational dilemmas (explored in the previous post) when debating the Article 50 bill. But the great majority concluded that the will of the public as expressed in the referendum must be respected – and hence that the bill should be approved. It passed its second reading by 498 votes to 114, and its third reading by 494 votes to 122. This is the starting point for debates in the Lords.

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