Tag Archives: Levelling Up Housing and Communities Committee

Unchecked power? How recent constitutional reforms are threatening UK democracy

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The constitution has consistently felt under strain in recent years, following a succession of crises. Alison Young argues that a written constitution is not necessarily the solution to this problem, concluding that it is important to ensure that key constitutional guardrails are not just defended against abolition, but protected from gradual degradation as well.

Ever since the outcome of the Brexit referendum in June 2016, it seems like the UK constitution has lurched from crisis to crisis. Even after negotiating Brexit, the UK had to deal with a global pandemic – something, it would appear from hearings of the Covid-19 inquiry, for which the UK was not fully prepared.

With commentators naturally immersed in these key issues, there has been less attention paid to other, quieter, aspects of constitutional reform. The Dissolution and Calling of Parliament Act 2020, for example, appears to have barely registered with the general public. There is probably even less awareness of the changes to the oversight of the Electoral Commission provided for in the Elections Act 2022. Yet both reshaped the UK constitution.

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Parliament’s watchdogs: independence and accountability of five constitutional regulators

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The Unit today published a new report, Parliament’s Watchdogs: Independence and Accountability of Five Constitutional Regulators. Robert Hazell explains that public awareness of these regulators is low and the position of some of them in public life is precarious. He calls for several measures, including putting the CSPL on a statutory footing, protecting watchdogs from dismissal, and repealing the legislation allowing the government to produce a strategy statement for the Electoral Commission.

Origins of this study

The constitutional reforms of the last 25 years have seen an upsurge in the number of constitutional watchdogs. The Constitution Unit anticipated these developments from the start, with an early report on constitutional watchdogs in 1997 (Unit report no. 10). This interest was continued by Oonagh Gay and Barry Winetrobe, who wrote two major reports on watchdogs: Officers of Parliament: Transforming the Role (Unit report no. 100, 2003) and Parliament’s Watchdogs: At the Crossroads(Unit report no. 144, 2008).

Today sees the launch of a new report, Parliament’s Watchdogs: Independence and Accountability of Five Constitutional Regulators, (Unit report 195), by Marcial Boo, Zach Pullar and myself. Marcial Boo, former Chief Executive of IPSA, joined the Constitution Unit in late 2020 as an honorary research fellow. We asked him to do a study of those watchdogs which are directly sponsored by parliament, working with Zach Pullar, a young law graduate who has since become a Judicial Assistant in the Court of Appeal. There is an obvious tension with watchdogs whose role is to scrutinise the executive (like the Independent Adviser on Ministers’ Interests), being themselves appointed and sponsored by the government. Less obvious, but just as fundamental, is the tension for watchdogs whose role is to regulate the behaviour of parliamentarians, being themselves appointed and sponsored by parliament.

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