Tag Archives: Standing orders

Standards in the 2024 party manifestos

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The main party manifestos for the forthcoming general election have now been published, allowing exploration and comparison of their constitutional proposals. In this fifth post in a series on the manifestos, Lisa James looks at the parties’ policies on the standards system. What do they propose, what should they consider, and what might be missing? 

Standards scandals were a frequent feature of the 2019–24 parliament; MPs, ministers and even a Prime Minister were forced to resign amid controversy. In this context, expert bodies probed the strengths and weaknesses of the current system and suggested improvements, with major reports published by the Committee on Standards in Public Life (CSPL), House of Commons Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee, Boardman Review into the Greensill lobbying scandal, House of Commons Standards Committee, Institute for Government, UK Governance Project and Constitution Unit. And public opinion research revealed a strong appetite for reforms to enforce high ethical standards. Coming into the 2024 general election, political parties had both the impetus to take standards reform seriously, and no shortage of recommendations for how to achieve it. 

This blogpost assesses the manifesto commitments on reforming ministerial and parliamentary standards made by the Labour Party, Liberal Democrats, Green Party and Reform UK, with most of its material coming from the former two. The Scottish National Party does not address standards at Westminster; Plaid Cymru’s key pledge, on criminalising lying by politicians or candidates, was addressed in a previous post. And strikingly, given the party’s experiences in the last parliament, the Conservative manifesto makes no mention of standards at all. 

An Ethics and Integrity Commission? 

The most significant pledge in the Labour manifesto is to create a new Ethics and Integrity Commission. This policy has been well-trailed, and was the centrepiece of two major speeches by Angela Rayner in 2021 and 2023. But the manifesto gives scant detail on the commission’s remit and scope, saying only that it will have a brief to ‘ensure probity in government’. 

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The House of Commons row over opposition day amendments: procedural background and implications

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Last week’s opposition day debate in the House of Commons about Gaza and Israel was overshadowed by a bitter procedural row over the Speaker’s selection of amendments. But the rules governing opposition days – and their role in allowing these arguments – are not straightforward. Tom Fleming discusses the procedural background and implications.

The background

Last week saw a House of Commons debate about a ceasefire in Gaza and Israel overshadowed by a bad-tempered row about the Speaker, Lindsay Hoyle, selecting an amendment from the Labour Party.

This debate came on an ‘opposition day’. There are 20 such days in each parliamentary session, when MPs can debate motions put forward by opposition parties rather than by the government. Of these, 17 are allocated to the largest opposition party in the Commons (currently Labour), and three to the next-largest, which is currently the Scottish National Party (SNP). Last Wednesday’s debate was on an SNP motion calling for ‘an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and Israel’.

Usually when the House debates motions, MPs can propose amendments to them in advance, and the Speaker selects which of those amendments will be debated. MPs then vote on the selected amendments before voting on the final motion (incorporating any successful amendments).

If this usual practice were followed on opposition days, it could mean opposition parties’ proposals regularly not getting voted on. This is because any government amendment is highly likely to pass, after which MPs would only be able to vote on the amended motion, not the original proposal. In acknowledgement of this, government amendments on opposition days are voted on after the main motion. In contrast, any non-government amendment selected would be voted on before the main motion. But it is a long-established convention that when a government amendment has been selected, no further amendments are chosen.

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The UK Governance Project: proposals for reform

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A commission chaired by former Attorney General Dominic Grieve recently published a report on the current state of UK governance, which has identified substantial problems and made recommendations to improve matters. Here, Dominic outlines the report’s key conclusions and recommendations, ahead of an online Constitution Unit event at which he and fellow commissioner Helen MacNamara will discuss the report in greater detail and answer audience questions.

Introduction

The origin of this project was a shared concern amongst the Commissioners who came together to produce it, that the institutions which underpin our parliamentary democracy are losing credibility. This is certainly the view of the public. A 2023 Constitution Unit survey has shown that only 38% of respondents were ‘very satisfied’ or ‘fairly satisfied’ with the way UK democracy operates. In contrast 52% were dissatisfied. The same percentage agreed with the statement that ‘politicians tend to follow lower ethical standards than ordinary citizens’. Yet the same politicians are the lawmakers and governors who expect others to respect the rules they create. 

It should therefore come as little surprise that 78% of respondents also considered that ‘healthy democracy requires that politicians always act within the rules’. Yet in recent years there is plenty of evidence that this has not been happening. Government ministers have been found to be ignoring the ministerial code of conduct under which they are supposed to operate. When they have, nothing has been done about it. We have had a Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, who was found by the Commons Privileges Committee to have deliberately misled parliament. The principle that appointees for life to the House of Lords as legislators in a revising chamber should be of conspicuous integrity, has been shown to be capable of being flouted at Prime Ministerial will. The Electoral Commission, which was created to ensure that elections should be free from improper interference by the government or other interests, has had its powers and independence reduced.  It has become more obvious than ever, particularly during the Covid-19 pandemic, that the powerful degree of control that a government exercises over parliament is not conducive to the enactment of properly scrutinised primary laws and secondary legislation.

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The Dissolution and Calling of Parliament Bill – a return to constitutional normality?

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Alison Young argues that the Dissolution and Calling of Parliament Bill transfers power from parliament to the government, and not to the people, and that it is wrong to place the blame for the extraordinary events of 2019 on the provisions of the Fixed-term Parliaments Act.

The Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011 (FTPA) has not had a good press. So much so, that a promise to repeal the Act was included in the 2019 manifestos of both the Labour Party and the current Conservative government. However, as the second reading of its replacement, the Dissolution and Calling of Parliament Bill demonstrates, the apparent consensus ends there. There appeared to be two strong themes to the debate. First, how far does the FTPA’s replacement transfer power from parliament back to the government, or from parliament back to the people? Second, to what extent did the FTPA cause the difficulties – however defined – for the then Conservative minority government in 2019?

Turning back the clock

The FTPA placed the prerogative power of the dissolution of parliament on a statutory basis. It fixed the terms of the Westminster parliament to five years, setting the dates for general elections. It provided two ways in which parliament could be dissolved earlier. First, it was possible for two-thirds of the members of the House of Commons to vote in favour of an early parliamentary general election. Second, dissolution could occur following a vote of no confidence, if, within a two week period, it proved impossible to form a government which had received the backing of a vote of confidence from the House of Commons.

The Dissolution and Calling of Parliament Bill aims to return the Westminster parliament to the position prior to 2011. It repeals the FTPA (section 1) and ‘revives’ the prerogative power to dissolve parliament and to call a new parliament (section 2). However this is interpreted, it is clear that the bill’s intention is to ensure that parliament can be dissolved and recalled ‘as if the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011 had never been enacted’ (section 2). Fixed terms of five years are now replaced with a maximum five-year term (section 4). Moreover, the bill seeks to make the dissolution and calling of parliament non-justiciable (section 3) – arguably making the prerogative powers even less subject to judicial review than was the case prior to 2011.

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Deliver us from EVEL? Is the government right to abolish ‘English Votes for English Laws’?

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Following reports that the UK government is considering abolishing the ‘English Votes for English Laws’ procedures in the House of Commons, Daniel Gover and Michael Kenny argue that, although EVEL has some flaws as a solution to the ‘West Lothian Question’, abandoning it will also leave open bigger questions about how England should be represented within British parliamentary government.

According to a recent report in The Times, the UK government is preparing to abolish the ‘English Votes for English Laws’ standing orders in the House of Commons. This suggested that ministers have already been consulted on the move and look set to lend it support. The change would also need to be approved by MPs, but only a single vote in the Commons would be needed to make this important constitutional change.

That such a move is being considered by the current government is surprising and unexpected in equal measure. Proposals for various forms of EVEL, as an answer to the infamous ‘West Lothian Question’, have been championed by the Conservative Party ever since the advent of Scottish and Welsh devolution in the late 1990s, and have featured in every one of its general election manifestos between 2001 and 2015. Despite agreeing to an independent commission, the Liberal Democrats ultimately blocked this reform during the period of coalition government. It was only in October 2015, once the Conservatives held power alone, that the change was implemented. Few would have expected that a government with such a strong focus upon English voters outside large urban areas would seek to repeal it.

One part of the explanation for this may be an increased willingness of the current Conservative government to disown elements of the Cameron legacy. But it also reflects the influence of a rising current of ‘neo-unionist’ sentiment within the party, which believes that the imperative to secure Scottish consent, in the wake of growing support for a second independence referendum, is more important than English grumbles about the West Lothian anomaly. This is perhaps ironic, since EVEL was envisaged by its architects as a means of assuaging discontent with the Union, by protecting against a situation in which MPs from outside England’s borders could make the difference on England-only legislative decisions.

What is also notable about the idea of repealing EVEL is that little sense of how it has operated has informed this declaration of intent.

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