Tag Archives: Margaret Thatcher

Setting up the COVID-19 inquiry: an expert view

Posted on by

The inquiry into the COVID-19 pandemic is due to start work in the spring, chaired by Baroness (Heather) Hallett, a former Court of Appeal judge. It will be one of the most complex inquiries in legal history, and highly charged politically, with over 150,000 deaths so far, and the pandemic far from over. In January, the UCL Political Science Department hosted an expert panel discussion to pool advice on how best to set up a complex inquiry to ensure that it works speedily and efficiently, victims feel they have been heard, and the findings are accepted as legitimate. Ioana Măxineanu summarises their contributions.

On January 13th, the UCL Political Science Department hosted an online seminar entitled Setting Up the Covid Inquiry. The event was chaired by Robert Hazell, and brought together three distinguished panellists previously involved in high profile inquiries: Lord (Nicholas) Phillips, chair of the BSE Inquiry (1998-2000); Margaret Aldred, secretary of the Iraq Inquiry (2009-2016); and Brian Leveson, chair of the inquiry into press regulation (2011-2012).

This post summarises the initial contributions of the three speakers. The full event, including a very informative and interesting Q&A, is available on the Political Science Department’s YouTube page.

Lord Phillips

Lord Phillips started by explaining the background of the BSE Inquiry. In 1986, the first case of BSE (mad cow disease) was identified in England. The disease deforms the proteins in the brain, and is inevitably fatal. The Conservative government appointed an expert committee to advise on the possibility of humans contracting the disease. The committee concluded that the risk was remote, a view the government passed on to the public. Unfortunately, that was wrong. In 1995, the first death of a man who contracted the human equivalent, Creutzfeldt–Jakob Disease, was identified. Many felt misled by the previous guidance.

In late 1997, a non-statutory public inquiry was set up by the incoming Labour government. Lord Phillips was provided with two assessors: June Bridgeman, a retired senior civil servant, and Professor Malcolm Ferguson-Smith, a geneticist. They were full members of the tribunal, so they could write appropriate sections of the report. Paul Walker, a barrister in Lord Phillips’ chambers, was appointed as counsel to the tribunal.

The inquiry’s terms of reference required Lord Phillips to report within a year, which he had to extend twice. In the end, the Inquiry took nearly three years. It looked at 10 years of government activity, with a huge amount of documents. A large team of young people, many of them students, was recruited to help digest the documents.

Continue reading →

Post-truth – and post-conservative? How Boris Johnson’s Conservative Party poses a threat to the quality of our democracy

Posted on by

The Johnson government, and the Prime Minister himself, have been much criticised for their propensity for breaking rules, laws and conventions. Tim Bale argues that the government seems bent on freeing itself from the constraints that we used to take for granted, and has embraced populism in a reckless manner. He calls on ministers to reconsider their attitude to the rules of the constitutional system before it is too late.

I’m no expert on the constitution, the courts or the more arcane aspects of parliamentary procedure. But I can, I suppose, claim to know a bit about the Conservative Party. And I’m growing increasingly concerned.

The party has always been protean – shifting its shape, changing its colours like a chameleon to best suit the conditions in which it finds itself. But there have always been limits.

Margaret Thatcher may have been a disruptor, particularly when it came to undoing the post-war settlement to which her predecessors reluctantly agreed. Yet one always felt she had a basic respect for the conventions of representative democracy and the rule of law, even on those occasions where she and her governments pushed against them.

And the same went for her successors as Conservative premiers, John Major, David Cameron and Theresa May. But Boris Johnson? I’m not so sure.

Wherever you look now, you see a government seemingly bent on freeing itself from the constraints that we used to take for granted – and that, in some ways, our uncodified constitution and parliamentary conventions left us little choice but to take for granted.

Continue reading →

Choosing a Prime Minister: their exits and their entrances

Posted on by

rodney.brazier.2013.jpg

Seventeen of the Prime Ministers to take office since 1900 left office for reasons other than defeat at a general election. In this blogpost, Rodney Brazier, author of the recently published Choosing a Prime Minister, reflects on how those Prime Ministers have secured and surrendered the keys to Number 10, and the Queen’s role in their appointment.

It’s unlikely that Boris Johnson spends much time thinking about the next election. Thanks largely to him the government obtained an 80-seat Commons majority at the polls just over six months ago, and each member of his Cabinet gave pledges of personal loyalty before getting their jobs. What could possibly go wrong? But if any of his close advisers were to read my book Choosing a Prime Minister then brows might furrow. The book notes that 17 of the two-dozen individuals who have occupied Number 10 since 1900 were forced to leave without any push from the voters. Illness or old age, revolts in the governing party, loss of the confidence of the House of Commons, or personal political blunders all contributed to that high total. Indeed, three of Johnson’s four immediate predecessors (Tony Blair, David Cameron and Theresa May) quit without the electorate’s help. Ill health and party coups were the main, but not at all the only, causes of all those 17 exits. Johnson himself had a brush with death in March. I would bet good money against the present Prime Minister leading the Conservatives into the next general election.  Continue reading →