Tag Archives: Ponsonby rule

Reforming the royal prerogative  

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The Brexit process raised questions about how – and in what areas – the royal prerogative should operate. Following a lengthy project, which has resulted in a new book on the subject and a Unit report – published today – on options for reform, Robert Hazell explains why the prerogative matters, and how it might be reformed to strike a better balance between parliament and the executive.

The royal prerogative has long been a mystery to most observers. I have now produced a book Executive Power: The Prerogative, Past, Present and Future to help demystify it. It was written with my former researcher (now a barrister) Tim Foot, and covers the whole range of prerogative powers, from going to war and ratifying treaties, appointing and dismissing ministers, regulating the civil service and public appointments, to the grant of honours and pardons and the issue of passports. The book’s 19 chapters provide a comprehensive guide to the operation of the prerogative – past, present, and future – together with suggestions for reform.

Working with us was another researcher, Charlotte Sayers-Carter, and Charlotte and I have distilled the key findings of our book into a much shorter report, Reforming the Prerogative. It selects just five powers, to illustrate the scope for reform through codification in statute, soft law, or by clearer and stronger conventions. This blog offers edited highlights from the book and the report, to explain why the prerogative matters; to illustrate this with a few prerogative powers; and to suggest ways in which it might be reformed.

What is the prerogative?

The prerogative derives from the original executive powers of the Crown. Over the years these have been overlain and superseded by statute, and most powers have transferred to ministers. The monarch retains the power to summon, dissolve and prorogue parliament; to grant royal assent to bills passed by parliament; to appoint and dismiss ministers. The main prerogative powers in the hands of ministers are the power to make war and deploy the armed forces; to make and ratify treaties; to conduct diplomacy and foreign relations; to grant peerages and honours; to grant pardons; to issue and revoke passports.

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Parliamentary scrutiny of international agreements should not be limited to legally binding treaties

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Last week, the Constitution Unit published a blogpost which posed five key questions for the Conservative leadership contenders, one of which focused on rebuilding parliament’s scrutiny role. In this post, David Natzler and Charlotte Sayers-Carter argue that such scrutiny should include telling parliament about politically significant international agreements it has made and allowing for oversight and the expression of dissent.

On 11 May Prime Minister Boris Johnson signed bilateral security agreements with Sweden and Finland. At that time both countries were actively considering applying for membership of NATO, which they did together a week later, on 18 May. Once objections by Turkey to their membership had been dealt with, NATO agreed to these applications at its June meeting in Madrid. Now they have been admitted, the necessary amending Protocols to the North Atlantic Treaty will be laid before parliament. Under the terms of Part 2 of the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act 2010 (CRaG), it is usual practice that the government can ratify a Protocol unless there has been a parliamentary objection within 21 sitting days. NATO expanded to include the Baltic states in 2004, Montenegro in 2016 and North Macedonia in 2019. On none of these occasions was positive assent given by parliament; in the absence of dissent within 21 days of their laying, the Protocols were duly ratified. However, viewing the current circumstances as an ‘exceptional case’ to which the 21 day requirement can be disapplied under section 22 of CRaG, the government intends to proceed with ratification before parliament breaks for summer recess.

The 11 May agreements may have looked like stopgap measures, an interim bilateral version of the regime of multilateral mutual protection offered under Article 5 of the NATO treaty, but the Prime Minister explicitly said that they were not, and the leaders of both countries went out of their way to assert that the agreements would make their countries more secure. Although appended to both agreements were confirmations that they did not give rise to legally binding commitments under international law, they have been described as ‘solemn declarations’. While the UK might very well have been expected in any event to have come to the assistance of either country in an emergency if a request had been made, the situation following the signing of these agreements was different, in that there was a real prospect that British armed forces could have been actively engaged in coming to the assistance of these hitherto neutral countries as a fulfilment of these agreements.

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Parliament and treaty-making: from CRAG to a meaningful vote?

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Hestermeyer (1)Yesterday, the House of Lords debated three international treaties, in line with the process established by the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act 2010 (see here for the transcript of the debates). Holger Hestermeyer discusses how the process of treaty ratifaction works, how it has been affected by the meaningful vote mechanism created by Brexit, and what lessons can be learned from the way in which other countries and organisations ratify treaties.

There has hardly been a day in the last two years in which treaties have not taken centre stage in the public debate. From the Withdrawal Agreement to the future trade relationship with the EU, from discussions about leaving the European Convention on Human Rights to proposals to join the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) treaties have become essential for the future economic and political outlook of the UK. But as treaties have obtained a central role in the debate, the question of how treaties are made has also become a topic of discussion, in particular the role of parliament. In the UK, that role is limited: parliament can merely delay treaty ratification. It can also vote down implementing legislation, but it does not (or did not, before the Withdrawal Agreement) get a vote on the treaty itself. A separate system is in place for the scrutiny of EU treaties, but this is outside of the scope of this blogpost and will be coming to an end with Brexit.

The UK constitutional setup is somewhat unusual. In many countries, the executive needs to obtain parliamentary consent for certain types of treaties to be able to ratify. Whether and to what extent the UK system of treaty scrutiny is in need of reform is now the subject of an inquiry in the House of Lords’ Constitution Committee, but treaty scrutiny has also played an important role in the discussions on the Trade Bill 2017-2019 and is the subject of EDM 128, which was tabled on 4 July 2017 has attracted 125 supporters. This blogpost will briefly describe how treaties are made with particular regard to the UK. It will then discuss why there is a call for reform. Finally it will turn to what such a reform could look like and what lessons can be drawn from other systems, such as the US, the EU, France or Germany.

How treaties are made

The treaty-making process can vary according to a number of factors, such as whether a treaty is formally concluded as a treaty or through an exchange of notes or whether a treaty is bilateral or multilateral. In general, the parties decide to try and negotiate a treaty with a defined partner, prepare internally (e.g. though consultations) setting their objectives, and then conduct the negotiations. Once the negotiators have reached agreement, the text is finalised and the parties can sign. Usually the signature does not yet bring the treaty into force – most treaties require another formal act expressing the consent of the state to be bound, referred to as ‘ratification’. Continue reading →