Tag Archives: scrutiny

Parliamentary scrutiny: what is it, and why does it matter?

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Parliamentary scrutiny is at the heart of UK politics. In this post, Meg Russell and Lisa James examine the four key methods of parliamentary scrutiny, and offer proposals on how to strengthen it, calling for better behaviour by government and strong engagement from backbenchers.

Background

Parliament lies at the heart of UK politics. The legislature is a core institution in any democracy, but is particularly important in the UK, due to our tradition of ‘parliamentary sovereignty’. The government is dependent on the confidence of the House of Commons, which can potentially remove it from office. Parliamentary consent is required for primary legislation, and parliament is a particularly central and important body in holding ministers to account day-to-day.

This makes scrutiny – the detailed examination of policy proposals, actions and plans – one of the essential roles of parliament. Other functions include representation, and serving as a space for national debate – which in turn feed into parliament’s scrutiny function.

This briefing summarises why parliamentary scrutiny matters, what different kinds of parliamentary scrutiny exist at Westminster, some recent concerns about the decline of scrutiny, and ways in which it can be protected and strengthened.

Why does parliamentary scrutiny matter?

The government is responsible for much day-to-day decision-making, in terms of national policy formulation and implementation. But the government itself is not directly elected, and depends for its survival on the continued confidence of the House of Commons. This makes parliament one of the central checks and balances in the constitution – arguably the most central one of all. To provide government accountability, one of the core functions of parliament is scrutiny.

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Rebuilding and renewing the constitution: parliament

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A new Constitution Unit report by Meg Russell, Hannah White and Lisa James, published jointly with the Institute for Government, provides a menu of constitutional reform options ahead of political parties’ manifesto preparation. Its chapters appear on this blog throughout August, with this second excerpt identifying potential changes to parliament.

Recent years have seen significant tensions over the role of parliament, which came under particular pressure over Brexit and Covid. There have been concerns about declining standards of scrutiny, and parliament has yet to adapt fully to the new policy environment post-Brexit. There are long-standing concerns about the House of Lords, including over its size and the nature of prime ministerial appointments. Reforms could be very beneficial, to improve governmental accountability, to avoid the government advancing poorly thought-through policy, and thereby to build trust in political decision-making.

Numerous proposals have been made for change, both by external experts and by parliamentary committees. There are some long-running concerns which could be resolved quickly and easily by ministers as ‘quick wins’. Various other changes would necessarily require a little more time and consideration. Some of these are naturally subject to government initiative (e.g. legislation), but various others are formally within the purview of parliament itself and would be dependent, for example, on reviews by parliamentary committees. These would nonetheless greatly benefit from cooperation by the government. Large-scale House of Lords reform is the most obvious proposal which is more disputed, and would require further work – and potentially significant consultation and deliberation – before being ready to be implemented.

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Do the public really care about lying to parliament? Yes, they do

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MPs must weigh up this weekend how to approach the debate – and possible vote – on the Privileges Committee report on Boris Johnson. Snap polls show the public mood to favour strong action. Alan Renwick draws on Constitution Unit research showing that this desire for honesty in politics is deep and enduring. People want a robust standards system, in which lying to parliament is punished.

Snap polling conducted in the wake of this week’s Commons Privileges Committee report on Boris Johnson indicates that most people think the former Prime Minister did mislead parliament; they are far more likely to think that he was given a fair hearing than not and to believe that his punishment was too lenient rather than either too harsh or about right.

Such rapid polling always raises the question: are these views just a knee-jerk reaction, reflecting no deeper public sentiment? The answer is a simple ‘no’.

We at the Constitution Unit have carried out detailed investigations over the past two years into public attitudes towards the state of our democratic system. We conducted large-scale surveys in the summer of 2021 and again last summer. And we held a Citizens’ Assembly on Democracy in the UK over the final months of 2021. The first survey took place before partygate, while the second was in the field during Johnson’s final days in office, after he announced his resignation. The Citizens’ Assembly – which shows what a representative sample of the UK population thought about our democratic institutions after learning about the issues and discussing them over six weekends – reached its conclusions as the first partygate allegations were breaking, but before they peaked in early 2022. These sources thus provide a medium-term view on patterns of public thinking over the last two years, rather than being driven by this week’s events.

All the evidence shows that most people in the UK care a great deal about whether their elected representatives are honest. They think those who are not honest should be punished. They do not think it should be left to voters to use the one ballot they get to cast every four or five years to serve up this punishment. They want parliament to act against wrong-doing. If parliament fails to uphold the rules, they think matters may need to be taken out of MPs’ hands.

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What role should the monarch have in a constitutional crisis?

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Robert Saunders argues that the UK cannot rely on a ceremonial monarchy that seeks to remain apart from politics to protect the constitution from attack in times of crisis. For that, he concludes that other instruments will be needed, without which both monarchy and the constitution will suffer. This post is based on material from the Unit’s new report, The British Monarchy, co-published yesterday by the Unit and the UK in a Changing Europe.

For much of British history, it was hard to imagine a constitutional crisis without the monarch at its core. From the barons at Runnymede imposing Magna Carta on King John to the expulsion of James II in 1688, the English (and, later, British) constitution was forged in the collision between Crown and parliament. As late as the nineteenth century, suspicion of royal power pulsed through progressive politics. Victorians may have revered ‘Her Little Majesty’, but they also celebrated a ‘Glorious Revolution’ against royal tyranny and erected a statue of Oliver Cromwell outside Westminster.

With the decline of constitutional politics in the twentieth century, the political functions of the Crown slipped from public debate. Yet recent controversies have redirected attention to the role of the monarch at times of constitutional crisis. More specifically, they have reopened a question that deserves greater public discussion: who wields the historic powers of the Crown once the monarch is no longer politically active? Should there be any limit on their use by a Prime Minister?

An emergency brake

Some of the highest powers of the British state still technically reside with the Crown, including the right to declare war, conclude treaties and suspend parliament. By convention, those powers are exercised ‘on the advice of the Prime Minister’. But they do not belong to the Prime Minister, and might, in theory, be withheld.

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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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