Tag Archives: sewel convention

Is Tory unionism the greatest obstacle to Brexit?

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image_normalAs the Brexit process continues, the Conservative Party is finding it hard to reconcile its desire to leave the EU with its longstanding commitment to maintaining the territorial and political union of the United Kingdom. Michael Kenny argues that, far from introducing a destabilising element to an otherwise sound constitutional set-up, Brexit has instead amplified and accelerated the debate about the UK’s territorial constitution.

‘I didn’t know it would break the United Kingdom’. This regretful rumination from columnist Peter Oborne – in a fascinating interview given in the wake of the recanting of his support for Brexit – touches on one of the key developments in the Brexit story. This is the gathering realisation in some Conservative circles that leaving the EU may well be incompatible with one of the foundational values of the Conservative party – the preservation of the integrity of the United Kingdom.

The painful discovery that these two goals are very hard – and maybe impossible – to reconcile is one of the great under-estimated political ironies of Brexit. For it has been those calling for the UK’s departure from the EU who have talked most confidently and directly about the distinctive character of Britain’s model of parliamentary sovereignty and the territorially differentiated unity expressed in in its constitutional arrangements. And whilst anxieties about whether Brexit might reignite the independence cause in Scotland were aired in the campaign leading up to the 2016 referendum, for the most part these remained at its margins.

But Prime Minister Theresa May has sounded a more anxious note ever since she entered office in July 2016. She has repeatedly – and a little mechanically – invoked the importance to her own politics of ‘our precious union’, a mantra that betrays a telling worry about the implications of a vote which accentuates a growing sense of political differences across the different nations and peoples contained with it, and also signals the salience in her own mind of the question of what implementing Brexit means for the domestic union. Continue reading →

Beyond Brexit: Towards a British Constitution

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vb_image_70x90Brexit is a major constitutional change. It creates considerable constitutional uncertainty, but also opportunity. It could prove Britain’s constitutional moment. Vernon Bogdanor argues that just as joining the EU fundamentally altered the UK constitution, so Brexit could, by exposing the very nakedness of Britain’s uncodified arrangements, prove a catalyst for a written constitution.

During the period of membership of the European Communities/European Union, the UK was subject to a written or codified constitution, which was entrenched. Brexit is a process rare if not unique in the modern world, involving as it does disengagement from a codified to an uncodified system. It is just possible indeed that Brexit will lead to a codified constitution for the United Kingdom that would bring us into line with virtually every other democracy in the modern world.

At a seminar at King’s College, London shortly after the 2016 EU referendum, Takis Tridimas, a professor of European Law at King’s said that the result represented the most significant constitutional event in the UK since the restoration of the monarchy in 1660, since it showed that on the issue of Europe, the sovereignty of the people trumped the sovereignty of Parliament. Of course, from a legal point of view, the referendum was merely advisory, but the government committed itself to respecting the result and the outcome was seen by the majority of MPs as decisive. Since June 2016, therefore, both government and parliament have been enacting a policy to which they are opposed. That is a situation unprecedented in our long constitutional history. Europe, therefore, has been responsible for the introduction of a new concept into the UK constitution, the sovereignty of the people. On this issue, the people have in effect become a third chamber of Parliament, issuing instructions to the other two. The sovereignty of Parliament is now being constrained not by Brussels, but by the people.

The effects of the European Communities Act on the UK constitution

The main constitutional consequence of our EU membership was to restrict the sovereignty of parliament. Parliamentary sovereignty must be distinguished from national sovereignty, with which it is often confused. National sovereignty is engaged whenever a country signs a treaty. It is not an absolute, it can be pooled or shared with other countries, and it is a matter of political judgement how far it should in fact be shared. But parliamentary sovereignty – the notion that Parliament can enact any law it chooses – is not like that at all. It is an absolute. One either has it or one does not. One can no more be a qualified sovereign than one can be a qualified virgin. Continue reading →

Brexit and the territorial constitution: déjà vu all over again?

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wincottd (1)Brexit has led to conflict between Westminster and the devolved administrations, with the UK Attorney General recently going as far as referring the Welsh and Scottish Continuity bills to the UK Supreme Court. Here Daniel Wincott argues that the Brexit process has highlighted the flaws in the UK’s systems of intergovernmental relations and that action is needed to prevent repeating the mistakes of the past.

The territorial constitution is particularly fragile. Pursuing Brexit, Theresa May’s government has stumbled into deep questions about devolution. The territorial politics of Brexit is a bewildering mix of ignorance, apparent disdain, confrontation, cooperation and collaboration. Rarely have the so-called devolution ‘settlements’ appeared more unsettled.

The UK’s system for intergovernmental relations (IGR) between devolved and UK governments has been hidden in obscurity. Arcane processes – Legislative Consent Memoranda (LCMs – also known as Sewel Motions) and Joint Ministerial Committees (JMCs) – are now more widely discussed.

Brexit has revealed limits and weaknesses in existing devolution structures. UK intergovernmental relations is an unappetising spaghetti of abstruse acronyms, but compared to other multi-level states it is also remarkably informal and limited. Opportunities to develop the system may emerge, but it could also collapse under the pressure of leaving the EU. Continue reading →

Crisis, headache, or sideshow: how should the UK government respond to the Scottish parliament’s decision to withhold consent for the Withdrawal Bill?

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Different political actors have responded to the decision by the Scottish Parliament to withhold its consent for the UK government’s showpiece EU (Withdrawal) Bill in very different ways. Professor Nicola McEwen discusses the options open to both the Scottish and UK governments. 

After much deliberation, the Scottish Parliament voted by 93-30 to withhold consent for the EU (Withdrawal) Bill, the main piece of UK legislation paving the way for Brexit. Labour, the Liberal Democrats and the Greens accepted the SNP government’s charge that the Bill undermines the devolution settlement and the principles on which it was founded. On the same day, the National Assembly for Wales voted by 46-9 to grant consent for the Bill, with the Welsh government arguing that the amended clause 15 (formerly clause 11) and the agreement they reached with the UK government ‘defended and entrenched’ devolution. Only Plaid Cymru disagreed.

Consent was sought from both legislatures following the convention (usually referred to as the Sewel convention) that the UK parliament will not normally legislate in devolved areas, or alter devolved powers, without their agreement. The Withdrawal Bill alters the devolution settlements by placing a new constraint on devolved legislatures and ministers to avoid acting incompatibly with ‘retained EU law’, even in policy fields which otherwise fall within their remit. In its original form, this constraint was placed upon all retained EU law, with provision to release the constraint once it was agreed that there was no need to preserve a common UK legislative or regulatory framework. In its amended form, the Bill requires the UK government to specify in regulations the areas to which the restriction will apply. It introduced a time limit – UK ministers have two years from Brexit day to bring forward new regulations, and these would last for no more than five years. The amendment also places a duty on UK ministers to await a ‘consent decision’ before tabling the regulations, but herein lies the controversy. Whereas the Sewel convention assumes that consent means agreement, Clause 15 empowers UK ministers to proceed even if the ‘consent decision’ is to withhold consent. Continue reading →

Devolution and the repatriation of competences: the House of Lords Constitution Committee reports on the EU Withdrawal Bill

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The Constitution Committee of the House of Lords today published its report on the European Union (Withdrawal) Bill, which is set to have its second reading in the upper house this week. In this post, Stephen Tierney discusses the report’s findings on the devolution issues raised by the Bill and examines the suggestions for solving some of the problems posed by the legislation as currently drafted.

The House of Lords Constitution Committee has today published a comprehensive and critical report on the European Union (Withdrawal) Bill (‘the Bill’). The Bill’s second reading will begin in the Lords this week, with the government committed to bringing forward amendments to the Bill’s provisions regarding the devolved territories (in particular, the controversial clause 11), but as yet these have not been tabled.

Largely because of the government’s undertakings to change the Bill, and the fact that it trusts proposed amendments will emerge from negotiations between the UK government and devolved administrations, the Committee refrains from making its own detailed recommendations in relation to clauses 10 and 11. The Committee’s overall position is that: ‘the devolution settlements must not be undermined. We welcome the discussions that are currently taking place between the UK government and the devolved administrations to seek consensus on the approach of the Bill to meeting the challenges posed by Brexit.’ Nonetheless, the Committee is also clear that clause 11 as it stands is problematic and that amendments to the provision are ‘imperative’.

Continue reading →