Tag Archives: legislative scrutiny

Protecting the rule of law in public health emergencies  

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The Covid-19 pandemic tested the UK’s capacity to respond to a crisis, including its ability to maintain the rule of law. The Independent Commission on UK Public Health Emergency Powers considered how far current legal frameworks and parliamentary procedures protect the rule of law and human rights, and how far they promote accountability, transparency and parliamentary control of executive action. Its final report and recommendations are summarised here by Katie Lines.  

Towards the end of this week, on 18 July, the UK Covid-19 Inquiry will publish its first interim report on the UK’s resilience and preparedness for the coronavirus pandemic. ‘Resilience and preparedness’ is one of many topics the UK Inquiry aims to cover in its terms of reference, which include health and social care, and economic responses to Covid-19. However, the constitutional and rule of law dimensions of the UK’s Covid-19 response fall outside the Inquiry’s key areas of focus, as do parliamentary proceedings during the pandemic. These items are also not central to the Scottish Covid-19 Inquiry’s investigations. 

To ensure that the constitutional dimensions of the Covid-19 pandemic receive independent scrutiny, in 2022 the Bingham Centre for the Rule of Law established the Independent Commission on UK Public Health Emergency Powers. The Commission published its report on 15 May this year after 15 months of intensive work by the 12 Commissioners, chaired by former Court of Appeal judge Sir Jack Beatson. The Commission considered both written and oral evidence, and comments on their preliminary findings, from 82 individuals and organisations across the UK and in 10 other jurisdictions. The report’s 44 recommendations for change cover the design of legislation, the role of parliaments, the clarity and certainty of emergency public health laws, the enforcement of public health restrictions, and the management of a public health emergency in a country with devolved governments and legislatures. This blog highlights some of the Commission’s key recommendations. 

The role of parliaments 

The Commission has significant concerns about the extent to which the UK Parliament and the three devolved legislatures were able to provide appropriate scrutiny and oversight of government law-making during the Covid-19 pandemic. A number of its recommendations focus on enhancing the role of parliaments.  

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The new voting system for mayors and PCCs: how it affects democracy

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This month’s elections for mayors and police and crime commissioners were contested under a revised voting system. In a post published yesterday, Alan Renwick found that this change had a substantial impact on the results, to the benefit of the Conservatives. Here, he concludes that it also harmed democracy. 

Elections of mayors and police and crime commissioners (PCCs) were previously held under the Supplementary Vote (SV) system, where each voter could express first and second preferences. Now they take place using First Past the Post (FPTP), where there is a vote for a single candidate. The previous post in this series showed that this change produced a marked shift in the outcome of the elections held earlier this month, and that it did so entirely to the benefit of the Conservatives.  

That a change in the rules should favour those in power who instigated it is already cause for concern: democracy requires a level playing field. But ministers might defend the reform on the basis that the new system is superior on democratic grounds to its predecessor and that it was introduced fairly. Both of these claims therefore require interrogation. How do the two systems compare in terms of democratic quality? And was the process through which the change in voting system came about appropriate?  

Which voting system is more democratic? 

As I outlined in a blogpost published when the bill changing the voting system was before parliament in 2021, ministers argued that FPTP is the more democratic system: SV, they said, allows losing candidates – those coming second in terms of first preferences – to win. But this argument is circular: it works only if we have already accepted the FPTP definitions of ‘winner’ and ‘loser’.  

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