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What does petitioning in the 20th century show us about the relationship between people and parliament?

By Anna Bocking-Welch, Richard Huzzey, Cristina Leston-Bandeira and Henry Miller

Petitions and Parliament

Studies of twentieth-century Britain, whether by politics scholars or historians, have generally assumed the irrelevance of petitioning. Colin Leys opened his classic 1955 article on the subject by asking ‘is petitioning a sufficiently important phenomenon to merit attention from students of politics?’ (Leys 1955: 45). For historians tracing the development of the ‘Westminster model’, petitions seemed less important than party politics and elections. The twentieth-century was after all when universal electoral franchise was affirmed, with the development of mass (grass roots based) parties, and when the representative chain from vote to parliament to government became most firmly established. In that context, a tool such as petitions, which had in the nineteenth-century become a key mechanism to enfranchise those at the margins of the political system, seemed irrelevant. And nowhere is this clearer than in Parliament. And yet, extensive literature also shows an expansion of participatory forms of democracy in the twentieth-century (e.g. Cain et al 2003; Dalton 1988; Pattie et al 2004), particularly from the 1970s onwards. So, what does the assumed irrelevance of petitions to the UK Parliament tell us about its relationship with the people during the twentieth-century? There was a clear decline of the number of petitions formally received by the House of Commons during the twentieth century. As Figure 1 shows, there was a dramatic collapse of the number of public petitions (i.e. excluding local or private legislation) during the First World War. To put these figures in historical context, during the nineteenth-century, the Commons typically received 10,000 public petitions, and on occasion as many as 20,000 and even 30,000 public petitions in a session (Huzzey and Miller 2020: 139); with the introduction of e-petitions to parliament in 2015, those numbers would climb up to over 10.000 again (Leston-Bandeira 2019: 423). The nadir for petitioning the Commons came in the middle decades of the twentieth century.

Figure 1: Number of public petitions to the House of Commons (1900-2000)

Sources: 1900-31 period: Parliamentary Papers, Annual Returns of the Number of Public Petitions Presented to the House of Commons (1900-31); 1932-2000 period: Philip Loft, Petitions in the UK, House of Commons Library, Briefing Paper, Number CBP 8620, 11 July 2019, p. 14,

Following a Report by the Select Committee on Procedure (1972-73), the Public Petitions Committee, which had been established in 1833 to receive, record, and classify public petitions to the Commons, was abolished in 1974. The Report had argued that the Petitions Committee was redundant given the small numbers of petitions. It met around four times a session, and some meetings lasted less than a minute. Yet the Report was something of a missed opportunity to re-imagine petitions as a tool for wider public engagement with Parliament. During the hearings, the chairman of the Petitions Committee had agreed that it should be abolished unless reformed. But his proposals for strengthening the Committee, including giving it powers of investigation, as the powers of the current Petitions Committee (re-introduced in 2015), were dismissed out of hand (Procedure Committee 1972-73). A few years later a former member of the Petitions Committee blamed party whips for refusing ‘to give us the power which would make public petitions worthwhile. The powers in authority then decided to abolish the Committee rather than make it truly effective.’ (Leslie Spriggs, Hansard, 16 March 1976, volume 907, column 1169).

Despite the clear decline in the overall number of petitions to the Commons, we must be mindful of some of the limitations of the data. The data in Figure 1 indicates the number of petitions presented, but not how many people had signed them. First, there were still examples of large, mass petitions to Parliament, in some cases signed by millions of people. During the Second World War, petitions for increased state pensions were presented in 1939, 1943, and 1945, and signed by 5m, 4.1m, and 6m people respectively (Loft 2019: 15). Given the party political truce at the time and the suspension of general elections, petitions were a particularly important method for political participation and representation during wartime. 

Second, the data doesn’t capture more informal petitions to individual MPs, which remained very common, and if anything increased, in the twentieth-century. For instance, in 1922, as part of its campaign to lower income tax, the Daily Mail organised over 500,000 telegram petitions from readers directed to MPs, but intended to pass these on to the government (Daily Mail, 2 May 1922: 8) – as a result the House of Commons wouldn’t officially record this type of petition.

Petitions to Parliament then could still be important, and there was something of a revival of the number of petitions received by the Commons in the 1980s and 1990s, as indicated in Figure 1, which anticipated the emergence of e-petitions after 2000. Noting the ‘considerable increase’ of petitioning the House, in 1992 a new Procedure Committee Report recommended modernising the rather ‘archaic’ language required in parliamentary petitions but concluded that existing ‘procedure is basically sound’ (Procedure Committee 1991-92).

Petitions: global, national, local

The decline of petitions to Parliament seems to be due to the expansion of powers of other key institutions such as the executive, local government, and administrative or judicial bodies. This meant that petitions formerly directed to the Commons, were now sent to other authorities (Huzzey and Miller 2021: 242-3). When placed in a comparative perspective, the UK experience was part of a broader trend away from petitioning national legislatures to other authorities without institutional petitions systems, as evident in France and the USA (Huzzey and Miller forthcoming).

While petitions recorded by Parliament’s institutional ‘petitions system’ declined, petitioning remained a popular, widespread, ubiquitous form of political activity directed at national, but also international and local authorities. This explains why late twentieth-century surveys of political participation repeatedly found that a majority of British respondents had signed a petition (Dalton 1988; Pattie et al 2004; Huzzey and Miller forthcoming). Research by Michael Rush shows a steady increase across the century in citizens contacting MPs, reflected in an exponential growth in post to MPs and the development of the practice of constituency surgeries (Rush 2005); in many ways this reflects the expansion of the State’s, and consequently Parliament’s, areas of responsibility in the post-war period. So, the decline of petitions to Parliament does not signify in itself a decline of citizens getting involved with politics or reaching out to authorities.

Petitions to Number 10 Downing Street became in fact a popular choice for petitioners, who recognised the growing power of the prime minister. Moreover, presenting petitions to Number 10 created spectacles that attracted media coverage for campaigns. In the early twentieth-century suffragettes attempted to gain admittance to Number 10 to personally present their petitions to the Liberal Prime Minister H.H. Asquith (Miller 2021: 338-42). Campaigners made the presentation of petitions to Number 10 as visually interesting as possible to maximise photo opportunities. For example, in April 2000, campaigners for global education, marched to Downing Street carrying petitions in the shape of life-size cut-outs of the Prime Minister, Tony Blair (Independent, 21 April 2000: 8).

Petitions were also frequently directed to local councils on a range of issues, including road safety, health, education, and housing. Other petitions were directed at international authorities, such as Jubilee 2000, a global campaign for the cancellation of developing world debt, whose petition was sent to the UN. The Anti-Apartheid Movement sent a series of petitions to the UN and also Commonwealth bodies in the 1970s, while in the previous decade anti-Vietnam War protestors presented petitions to the US embassy in Grosvenor Square.

Such was the ubiquity of petitioning, that petitions were not limited to formal political institutions, but were also sent to companies and other bodies. In the 1970s, for example, gay rights campaigners petitioned breweries regarding the refusal of particular pubs to serve gay customers (Gay News, 2 April 1975, p. 1).  

In explaining why people petitioned, our research suggests that we should pay less attention to authorities and institutions, or specific direct policy outcomes, and more to the uses of petitioning to campaigners, activists, and ordinary citizens. As has been recognised by US political scientists, signing petitions was and is a tool of political organisation and recruitment (Carpenter 2016), and a gateway into wider activism (Carpenter and Moore 2014). As shown by Leston-Bandeira more recently (2019), petitions play a wide range of roles in political systems, such as in linkage and campaigning, besides actual policy and scrutiny roles.

The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament regularly organised petitions to Parliament, prime ministers, and international authorities, from the late 1950s to the 1980s, all of which were unsuccessful if judged in terms of changing UK defence policy. Yet as CND’s Campaign newspaper put it in 1983: ‘in itself the petition is largely irrelevant, rather we use it as an enabling tool’ (Campaign 1983). The local gathering of signatures was typically combined with other activities, such as fund-raising, and leafletting. The presentation of CND petitions in Westminster or Whitehall was usually accompanied by a march and rally, with the aim of energising supporters, exerting pressure on politicians, attracting media coverage, and raising public awareness.

Conclusion

In twentieth-century Britain, petitioning was valuable to campaigners, signatories, activists, civil society actors, and ordinary people, for a range of reasons, and this remained true even if their requests were not directed at Parliament or granted by authority. In particular, the signature gathering process and presentation of petitions provided focal points that connected and underpinned other types of political activity. Although the number and importance of petitioning Parliament was diminished compared to earlier centuries and today, petitioning remained a widespread, popular, political activity across Britain. The decline of petitions directed to the House of Commons indicates instead a preference from citizens for other institutions, reflecting an expansion of powers and visibility of other authorities. It also denotes a missed opportunity for Parliament which, following the abolishment of its Petitions Committee in 1974, lost relevance for many of these ongoing campaigns.

The Petitioning and People Power in twentieth-century Britain project is funded by a research grant from the AHRC and ESRC (AH/TOO3847/1)

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January 2022 Newsletter

Happy New Year! We hope that you are keeping safe and well. We have some updates for you in this shorter than usual newsletter:

  1. PSA Annual International Conference 2022
  2. Book Launch: Deliberative Accountability in Parliamentary Committees
  3. Parliamentary Engagement Opportunities for Researchers
  4. Membership & Funding of PSA Parliaments
  5. PSA Parliaments Working Papers Series
  6. Recent Publications that have Caught Our Eye
  7. Recently on the Blog

If you have any notices/messages you would like us to circulate to the group, please let us know.

1. PSA Annual International Conference 2022

Registration has opened for the 2022 PSA Annual Conference being held in York and digitally in April 2022 (early bird prices end on 24 January 2022). Full details of the conference and how to register can be found on the PSA22 website.

As announced previously, we are running five panels, on the below themes (the full list of papers and panels can be found on our website):

  • Parliamentary powers, prerogatives, and public engagement
  • How MPs use old and new media and how old and new media affects MPs
  • How to be a parliamentarian: how do Members participate?
  • Comparative and inter-parliamentary analysis
  • How to be a parliamentarian? Representation and roles

We will also be hosting a round-table event Exploring Parliament: Looking to the Future. The line-up for the roundtable has now been confirmed and promises to provide a fantastic conversation:

  • Dr Farrah Bhatti (Principal Clerk of Select Committees, House of Commons)
  • Simon Burton (Clerk of the Parliaments, House of Lords)
  • Professor Sarah Childs (University of Edinburgh)
  • Jack Sheldon (Cambridge University)

Whether in person or online, we hope to see you there!

2. Book Launch: Deliberative Accountability in Parliamentary Committees

We are delighted to announce that PSA Parliaments will be co-hosting the book launch of Cheryl Schonhardt Bailey’s forthcoming monograph Deliberative Accountability in Parliamentary Committees (Oxford University Press).

The launch will take place virtually on Wednesday 9th March 2022 between 3:00pm and 4:30pm GMT.

Full details of the event, including how to register, can be found here.

3. Parliamentary Engagement Opportunities for Researchers

Did you know you can subscribe to UK Parliament’s Knowledge Exchange Unit weekly round up to stay up to date with opportunities for researchers and experts to engage with the UK Parliament?

Please see here for details about how to receive information about calls for evidence from parliamentary select committees, academic fellowship opportunities, requests for expertise and more.

4. Membership & Funding of PSA Parliaments

Did you know that PSA Parliaments receive funding from the PSA based on our number of members?

So, if you are a member of the PSA but not yet an official member of PSA Parliaments, please sign up here so that we can maximise our funding and support the sub-discipline to an even greater extent.

5. PSA Parliaments Working Papers Series

As announced last month, we are now accepting expressions of interest to contribute to our working paper series, which publishes working papers across the sub-discipline of parliamentary and legislative studies.

You can read our first two working papers here and here.

If you are interested in publishing a working paper, please consult our submission guidelines.

6. Recent Publications that have Caught Our Eye

Siim Trumm and Andrew Barclay have published an article in Political Studies called Parliamentary Representation: Should MPs Prioritise Their Own Views or Those of Their Voters?

David Froomkin and Ian Shaprio have published an article in Political Studies called The New Authoritarianism in Public Choice.

Peter Allen has an article in Politics & Gender called Experience, Knowledge, and Political Representation.

And, finally, a new issue of The International Journal of Parliamentary Studies has also been published.

If you would like your published research to be featured in this section, please email Stephen with details.

7. Recently on the Blog

Our blog took a break during December while we were making mince pies and getting boosted. We’ll be back in January!

If you have an idea for a blog on some aspect of parliamentary study, please get in touch with our communications officer, Chris

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Blog

Reimagining impeachment: A new blueprint for our challenging times

By Chris Monaghan

Henry Dundas, the first Viscount Melville (1742-1811), holds an infamous place in British constitutional history: he was the last person to be impeached. His acquittal by the House of Lords in 1806 marked the beginning of what has become a long pause in the use of an impeachment procedure against politicians or public officials. The last time that events got anywhere near interrupting this long pause came in 2004 when a number of MPs, including our present Prime Minister Boris Johnson, sought to impeach Tony Blair over the invasion of Iraq. The impeachment motion was co-drafted by experienced MPs and placed on the House of Common’s order paper, though proceeded no further (for the motion and background see J Simson Caird, ‘Impeachment’ House of Commons Briefing Paper).

But could it be that the turbulence of recent years when there have been many complaints about the government’s disrespect for accepted constitutional norms, now demands that we shake impeachment processes out of their sleepy historical stupor? It might be possible that reimagining impeachment at Westminster provides a way of ‘shifting the balance’ towards a healthier constitutional equilibrium. Such a shift might have positive effects beyond thinking solely in terms of the executive and the legislature. However, we would need to consider what a new blueprint for impeachment would actually look like. This is important for when we consider below the problem that needs to be addressed, which is an increasing trend for certain members of the executive to display behaviour that demonstrates a failure to show proper respect to the accepted constitutional norms. 

The problem

The starting point is to address whether the executive is sufficiently responsible to the House of Commons for how it conducts the affairs of state and ministerial decision making. 

The balance between the different branches of the state is key. This responsibility of ministers to Parliament is the lynchpin of the Westminster system of government and our unwritten constitution, developed over time through custom and practice, some of its principles are reiterated today in the Ministerial Code. In making a case for impeachment, I am concerned that the House of Commons, as it is empowered at present, is not fully capable of holding the executive to account in performing its basic function of ensuring ministerial decision-making and the conduct of affairs of state are undertaken in accordance with prevailing political morals, procedures and expectations.

In my view, there is now a tendency in executive conduct n either being not prepared to accept the traditional obligations imposed by the constitution and expressed in convention, or to be too willing to push constitutional boundaries. This undermines the political morality of the constitution and the centrality of ethics and obligations in our public life (see for example Andrew Blick and Lord Hennessy, ‘Good Chaps No More? Safeguarding the Constitution in Stressful Times’).

The accountability mechanisms that the Commons currently has as its disposal have inherent limitations. Ministerial question time and select committees, whilst used increasingly effectively in drawing attention to matters of constitutional controversy, can raise public awareness and so exert pressure, but are not directly capable of ensuring ministerial compliance with the accepted norms and principles of good governance. The last resort of a no confidence motion, which if successful will trigger a prime ministerial resignation or general election, is so self-destructive to backbench MPs of the governing party as to be arguably ineffective for the purpose of securing real accountability. This is because bringing down a Prime Minister could reek havoc within their own political party, risks electoral defeat if this is accompanied by a general election, will incur the wrath of constituency party members, and possibly see an MP lose their seat. It should be noted that a no confidence motion should be distinguished from the willingness of MPs to rebel against their own government, as is currently the case with the government and conservative MPs who do not support any further Covid-19 restrictions. This is because the intent is not to bring down the government, but rather to use the threat of undermining the government to influence policy. 

A core problem is the lack of formal checks and balances in the UK’s unwritten constitution, and the dominance of the government over the legislature that has sovereign legal authority in the state. Where the Cabinet enjoys a comfortable majority in the Commons, as at present, and its own MPs and ministers are willing to accept or to ignore its leadership’s assault on the constitution, there is a virtual vacuum of accountability, however strenuous the attempts of the Supreme Court to fill the void.

There have been several well-catalogued cases of unconstitutional conduct in the last few years. They include the willingness of the present Prime Minister to abuse the royal prerogative to prorogue Parliament during the final crucial stages of the Brexit negotiations, and to undermine the reports of independent inquiries into cases of ministerial and parliamentary misconduct (see for example the criticism of the Prime Minister’s advice to the monarch concerning the prorogation of Parliament and the general background to the Supreme Court’s decision in R (on the application of Miller) v The Prime Minister). 

This increased willingness to disregard constitutional norms for reasons of self-serving political expediency risks undermining respect for British political rules and customs generally. It poses potentially catastrophic consequences too if politicians come to believe that any course of conduct can now be justified and override constitutional niceties simply by reference to its electoral and parliamentary majority: this is pure populism, the antithesis of constitutionalism. 

The solution

In my forthcoming book, Accountability, the Constitution and Impeachment: The Case for a Modernised Process in the United Kingdom (Routledge 2022), I argue that impeachment could provide a remedy. I envisage that the House of Commons could more overtly serve as the guardian of the constitution, possessing a modernised power of impeachment that focusses on breaches of the accepted norms of good governance, both in terms of competence and morality. It would not be concerned with allegations of criminal conduct which can and should be left to the ordinary courts. 

This would be a statutory mechanism, established by my proposed Impeachment Act. It would enable a quorum of MPs, which would be twelve, to initiate investigation of serious ministerial misconduct, provide a framework through which investigations would remove fruitless or politically motivated actions, and an independent means of adjudication and outcome, further elaborated on below. At this point it is worth noting that the quorum of twelve MPs was chosen as the number would ensure that there was always the possibility that an impeachment could be brought, but the relatively low number required would be balanced out against the checks and balances within the statutory framework.

Its principal value would be as a form of deterrent. My proposed modernised procedure would certainly make it easier to bring an impeachment action (removing uncertainty over the existence of impeachment, drawing MPs attention to its utility, and stipulating parliamentary time and resources beyond the gift of government), but in practice it would be rarely used. Its main purpose would be as an ultimate sanction if ministers choose to ignore constitutional conventions, or are simply inept. 

Its use as a deterrent would be further strengthened by including in the Impeachment Act a retrospective sanction, operating as a punitive sanction when the prime minister or minister is no longer protected by a government majority in the Commons. This would clearly distinguish it from a no confidence motion. It is clear that there could remain a valid reason for the House of Commons to proceed against former Prime Ministers, such as the continuing sustained criticism of Sir Tony Blair’s conduct over the invasion of Iraq (see for example the petition to rescind Blair’s knighthood).  In the case of serving ministers backed by the government majority, an impeachment process could allow a small number of MPs to commence a time limited examination into allegations of unconstitutionality or incompetence. The point of this would be a high-profile case being made for impeachment that would be accompanied by a report by leading experts, which in itself could serve as a deterrent in the first place, even if the minister was in the short-term protected by their party’s majority in the Commons. 

What would a modernised form of impeachment look like?

My proposals for a modernised impeachment process would be set out in an Impeachment Act. This reimagines impeachment, identifying its rationale and normative purpose, attempting to steer clear of the problems long associated with impeachment. For example, to address concerns over partisanship and MPs using impeachment to proceed against former ministers without merit for purely party-political purposes, I provide procedural safeguards. These include a central role played by the Speaker of the Commons, and a preliminary inquiry by an Independent Panel of Experts, followed by a report by an Impeachment Committee of the Commons. This committee would be specially created to carry out this purpose and would be independent of the Committee on Standards and Privileges.

Historically, once the Commons voted to impeach an individual, then that individual was tried before the House of Lords under the presidency of the Lord Chancellor. Clearly this process has become an anachronism and the involvement of neither the Lords nor Lord Chancellor are desirable today. 

If we are to draw up a modern impeachment process, it should draw on the experience of other comparative legislatures. A useful model is Denmark, where a minister who has been impeached by the legislature is then tried before a specially constituted Court of Impeachment. It was successfully utilised in 1995 in a gross case of illegal ministerial tampering with visa applications to prevent Tamil refugees entering the country. 

The House of Commons would fulfil its role as the guardian of the constitution by calling out unconstitutional conduct and impeaching those responsible. The impeachment is not the final determination of guilt, and it is important that there is a separate forum for reaching a verdict, which would be the Court of Impeachment. In my book I suggest the Court for UK purposes be composed of seven senior judicial office holders and seven suitably qualified lay (non-parliamentary) members serving ten years terms of office. After the lengthy pre-trial processes in Parliament, it would fall to the Court to determine whether a violation of the constitution as set out in the letters of impeachment had occurred. If the answer was yes then, then unlike the traditional operation of English impeachment in times past, there would be no custodial sentence or fine. I envisage that the remedies available to the Court be limited to a declaration of misconduct and/or disqualification from holding public office.

The proposals for reform in my book, Accountability, the Constitution and Impeachment: The Case for a Modernised Process in the United Kingdom, may appear radical, controversial and out of time. However, an impeachment process operating to support and strengthen the authority of the legislature and sanction ministers to comply with ideas and practices of good governance operates successfully elsewhere and should be seriously considered for the UK. As a concept it was pioneered in England in former times and subsequently emulated in other countries in modernised forms. 

A new impeachment process for the UK, working in the way set out at length and in detail in my book, is not designed to replace existing political accountability mechanisms, but rather to buttress and support those mechanisms, and draw attention to the great importance for ministers to respect the fundamental principles of good governance and our constitution. 

Chris Monaghan is a Principal Lecturer in Law at the University of Worcester. I am grateful to Professor Robert Blackburn, Professor Matthew Flinders, Professor Alison Young and Professor Mike Gordon for their extremely helpful feedback.

Accountability, the Constitution and Impeachment: The Case for a Modernised Process in the United Kingdom will be published by Routledge in June 2022. 

This post is cross-posted with permission from the United Kingdom Constitutional Law Association Blog and the original post is available here.

(Suggested citation: C. Monaghan, ‘Reimagining impeachment: A new blueprint for our challenging times’, U.K. Const. L. Blog (12th January 2022) (available at https://ukconstitutionallaw.org/)

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Blog

A committee is an organisation, not an institution – but what is an organisation? A response mainly to myself

By Stephen Holden Bates

I was surprised to read in John Connolly, Matthew Flinders and David Judge’s recent article on House of Lords committees that a co-authored paper of mine – indeed, one where I was the corresponding author – was used to support the view that committees should be considered institutions, rather than organisations. That’s strange, I thought, because that’s not what I think. However, there it is in black and white in our abstract (and again on page 437): “committees are institutions embedded in wider social structures”[1]. Below I set out why I think I was wrong to state that committees are institutions rather than organisations and why this categorisation matters. 

In defining committees as institutions rather than organisations, Connolly, Flinders and Judge follow the usage adopted by Longley and Davidson[2], citing the distinction drawn between them by Douglas North. In almost certainly the most famous and popular definition out there, North defines institutions as “the rules of the game in a society or, more formally… the humanly devised constraints that shape human interaction”. They consist of “both informal constraints (sanctions, taboos, customs, traditions, and codes of conduct), and formal rules (constitutions, laws, property rights)”. Organisations, according to North, are “groups of individuals bound by some common purpose to achieve objectives” and include “political bodies (political parties, the Senate, a city council, a regulatory agency), economic bodies (firms, trade unions, family farms, cooperatives), social bodies (churches, clubs, athletic associations), and educational bodies (schools, universities, vocational training centers)”.

It is not clear to me (and why I am so upset with myself) why, after reading these definitions, you would then want to categorise committees as institutions. It is true that some institutionalist scholars, such as Peters, argue that it is difficult to differentiate between institutions and organisations in practice. It is also true that other institutionalist scholars, such as Lagroye[3], are more concerned with the particular research programme surrounding some social phenomenon that may or may not be called an institution or an organisation, rather than whether the social phenomenon is correctly labelled as such. It is also true that yet more institutionalist scholars, such as Hodgson, have suggested that organisations are a special kind of institution. However, even if you follow Hodgson, organisations-as-special-institutions would seem the appropriate label for committees, rather than simply institutions.

Contra Hodgson, I would want to maintain a sharp ontological distinction between institutions and organisations, even if they are always empirically intertwined. Drawing on Archer, institutions are part of the cultural fabric of society and organisations are part of the structural fabric. In making this distinction, I would also want to adopt definitions which differ slightly from North’s definitions above. Institutions are “systems of established rules, conventions, norms, values and customs; [they] consist of, or are constituted by, established rules, conventions, norms, values and customs”. Organisations are particular kinds of meso- or micro-level (depending on size!) social structures – “systems of human relations among social positions”. Following Elder Vass, those social positions which comprise organisations tend to be specialised and related hierarchically, although not always.

If we take UK Select Committees as an example (because that’s basically all I know about), select committees are organisations[4] made up of certain specialised social positions – chair, member, clerk, operations manager, media and communications officer, etc. – which are occupied by MPs and parliamentary staff and which have (relatively) defined chains of command. Committees-as-organisations are enmeshed within, and shaped by, numerous formal and informal institutions[5] (which are reciprocally shaped by the committees and the individuals who work within them). Some of these institutions operate within specific committees (for example, the custom in at least one committee that there is an unofficial Deputy Chair); some operate system-wide and at the level of Parliament (for example, the formal, codified rule that every government department will have a select committee shadowing it, or the informal convention that the Treasury Committee is chaired by an MP from the government benches, or the value of consensus that permeates committee interactions); and some are societal-wide (for example, laws regarding employment practices, or norms regarding acceptable behaviour during meetings). 

Why does it matter if we understand committees, not as institutions, but as organisations and, particularly, as organisations in the manner outlined above? Drawing on critical realist thinking, I would like to suggest it matters for at least two interrelated reasons. First, while both organisations and institutions contribute to outcomes, they contribute in different ways. Organisations and institutions are different kinds of social entities with different causal powers and mechanisms. For example, to use Elder-Vass’s phrase, coordinated interaction is an emergent property of organisations due to the way in which they bring individuals together through authority relations and within specialist positions. It is the coordinated interaction mechanisms of organisations which allows for the production of communal effort, a common purpose, and collective reflexivity, identity and strategic calculation, even if those outcomes are also mediated by norms of behaviour. So, the ability of a chair and members of a select committee to decide upon and subsequently run an inquiry, the forcefulness of committee recommendations, the efficiency and resourcefulness of parliamentary staff, and the reputation of committee chairs are due not only to parliamentary rules (institutions) and the intellect, charisma, etc. of individuals (agency) but also, crucially, the way in which those individuals are related to each other (organisation). Again drawing on Elder-Vass, if the MPs and parliamentary staff concerned were not organised into such committee organisations, these powers of select committees – to set the (parliamentary) agenda, to shape government policy, to raise the parliamentary and media profile of whoever is Chair – would not exist.

This, then, points to a second, larger reason why it is important to reflect on what committees are: our answer helps point us towards a particular way of looking at the world and, in turn, a particular kind of political science (and, indeed, a particular kind of politics). Understanding committees as organisations as outlined above is to make an ontological commitment about the social world that goes beyond the commitment made when understanding them as institutions and, by implication, as intersubjective elements of the cultural domain[6]. This understanding of organisations as structural “entities which ‘make a difference’ in their own right, rather than as mere sums of their parts” – as part of “the material circumstances in which people must act and which motivate them to act in certain ways” – helps to differentiate realists from: 

This particular realist view of committees-as-organisations, then, points us towards a particular kind of parliamentary studies; one which seeks causal explanations underpinned by a non-Humean notion of causality and within which structural features of parliaments and society contribute by necessity to such explanations, not only because they are analytically useful but also because they have a meaningful social reality. Conceptualising committees differently would likely lead us down another path of how to study parliaments.

Dr Stephen Holden Bates is a Senior Lecturer in Political Science at the University of Birmingham.

[1] I put this lack of intellectual consistency and betrayal of my critical realist roots down to the fact that I was a father of 9-month-old twins at the time of submitting the article and had had about 3 minutes of sleep since they had arrived on the scene.

[2] Although note on page 5 that, when noting the vigour of modern-day committee systems, Longley and Davidson favourably quote Mattson and Strøm: “By broad consensus, committees are considered one of the most significant organizational features of modern parliaments” (emphasis added).

[3] Thanks to Claire Bloquet for discussions about French institutionalism and how it differs from versions I’m more familiar with.

[4] Which are part of a larger organisation called Parliament which, in turn, is part of a larger organisation called the state.

[5] As well as broader social structures.

[6] Or the non-commitment of not thinking the difference matters.

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Blog

Does being watched make MPs behave better? 

By Ben Worthy and Cat Morgan ( Birkbeck, University of London)

One of the central dilemmas of democracy stems from the information gap between voters and those they elect. After politicians are elected, a yawning knowledge gap opens up between the seemingly all-knowing elector and the only occasionally interested or rarely watchful constituents. Of all the information gaps across democracies, this is perhaps the most fundamental, the most fragile – and the most fraught with complications.  

This gap can be both profound and dangerous for democracy. The information asymmetry can mean that once elected, representatives could easily engage in hidden behaviour that runs contrary to what their voters want. As Strom argues, this includes voting against their constituents’ wishes, using their position to make money, or simply not doing their job very well. As we’ve seen from the Brexit votes and, more recently, the lobbying smash and burn U-turn around Owen Patterson, this is not some abstract possibility.  

So how can we stop legislators ‘deviating, rent seeking or shirking’? One way is to simply provide more information or data to voters. Transparency advocates argue that this can have two separate effects. There’s the concrete impact of exposing individual legislator’s behaviour when it’s out of line or out of order. Then there’s a broader effect through ‘anticipated reactions’, meaning that the mere possibility of being watched makes misbehaviour less likely.  

Yet, with these solutions come with a warning. The hoped-for effects hinge, crucially, on if politicians perceive themselves to be watched. It also assumes what watching will then do. Being watched should, in theory, make us behave better, but it can also just make us better at hiding, or even throw the spotlight into the wrong place.  

Watching Parliament in 2021 

Our Leverhulme Trust funded study has looked at who is watching Westminster. Over the last decade, there are certainly many new ways to do so. Since 2005, a host of new formal and informal ‘political observatories’ or  Parliamentary Monitoring Organisations which aim to put ‘politicians permanently on their toes’. A family of political theory label this ‘monitory’ or ‘counter democracy’ and hope it creates permanent accountability and even ‘humility’ among those under observation.  

In the UK, there is now an ecosystem of ever-expanding tools and sources. You can see data direct from Parliament itself detailing attendance, voting and activity. There’s also a growing number of third parties providing monitoring, most famously TheyWorkForYou, providing individuals MPs’ voting and activities, and Public Whip, collecting rebellion data. If the data isn’t there you can ask for it via an FOI, as someone did about Owen Paterson long ago.  

Beyond this, there’s a shifting landscape of searchable digital platforms of MPs’ expenses data, Register of Interests declarations and sites watching everything from Climate Change voting records, which MP earned the highest additional income 2017-2019 (clue-he’s Prime Minister) to the changes made to MPs’ Wikipedia pages. The data is certainly there, but is it having an effect? 

Who is watching? 

For data to have an effect, it needs to be used. Analysis of TheyWorkForYou.com found users to be a mixture of the engaged public, private companies, NGOs, and the media, with most users already engaged or interested in politics. Outside of these usual suspects academics are significant data users, creating detailed analyses of which MPs blocked Brexit.  

Another interesting group of users are MPs themselves and their staff. TWFY cite 2% of all users as coming within the Parliamentary estate. Their use of data seems to be a mixture of research on others, self-defence of their own records, and championing their reputation. Labour MP Madeline Moon used the data to defend her work: 

TheyWorkForYou says that I have above-average commitments in terms of debates, I ask above-average numbers of questions and I have an above-average response to my electorate when I have letters, although I admit that it also indicates that my voting record is lower than some (HC Deb, 26 September 2019, c958) 

Not only the users but the uses are varied, and data are deployed in a seemingly infinite variety of ways. They are deployed heuristically to understand MPs’ voting positions, or inferentially, around lobbying or donations. Aggregated data easily becomes a metric to measure, compare and create yardsticks for what constitutes a ‘good’ or ‘bad’ MP, giving the illusion of objectivity and measurability. 

Once gotten by these groups, data are then picked up or developed by the media, campaigners as well as across social media. After the controversial Owen Paterson ‘standards’ vote data was quickly found on how many of those supporting Paterson had an outside income or were themselves under investigation. The public may become caught up when data is used to drive a narrative, when it is part of a wider campaign or when they purposely or accidentally see a tweet or an article. What happens next can be unexpected. A lot of monitoring fizzles into an angry wave but not always. In 2013, The Sun used voting record data to create a list of the country’s ‘laziest MPs’ featuring Lucy Powell, who quickly pointed out she was on maternity leave. Not only was the article withdrawn, but the controversy helped the push for proxy voting in 2019.  

What impact is it having? 

MPs do feel they are ‘being watched’ and behave according, albeit to very different degrees. The exact impact is highly dependent on the individual, with MPs in safe or unsafe seats likely to behave very differently. It is also dependent on the data itself, as most voting behaviour can (perhaps) be justified in a way that expenses largesse cannot.  

Monitoring and watching have most frequently led to accountability. MPs put out more explanations and justifications in Hansard, on Twitter or in the local press – some of which are anticipated (“how will your MP vote”). In 2020, Conservative MPs voting against the government’s Covid-19 lockdown measures and tier system took to Twitter to explain their decisions – both before and after key votes.  

In terms of any ‘anticipated effect’, there is evidence of some behaviour change when MPs are under scrutiny, with a reluctance to claim expenses (especially by women MPs) in the Commons.  

Beyond the individual data can be used to rank or compare and can become a benchmark, and a basis for a moral judgement. There is evidence that monitoring, as with monitoring data elsewhere, compels members to ‘raise their reputational game’ and to be ‘be seen doing it’ (Mau 2019, 163).  

While this can drive ‘better’ behaviour, can it also lead to gaming? Nick De Bois, an MP with a very slim majority, pointed out  in his memoirs that MPs can speak in debates 

Sometimes…so you can enlighten constituents on your position on any given issue. Either that, or because it’s not a good thing to have against your name ‘Below-average number of speeches in the House of Commons’ on that pesky ‘They Work for You’ website, which relentlessly measures how active you are in the chamber. 

But MPs do not feel they are being watched fairly. They seem to feel that monitoring is skewed or biased. 30 Conservative MPs published an open letter to the Guardian in 2019 complained about being misrepresented on their climate change records and a full 50 complained in a letter to the Head of mySociety in 2021 about the same thing.  

Nor are they being watched evenly. Certain MPs are watched more than others, and there are skews and biases. Moreover, the data only highlights some areas, such as voting or expenses, leaving constituency work or lobbying in darkness.  

Are politicians behaving better?  

More data does make for some better behaviour. Overall, it increases accountability, justification, and explanation – as well as representation. MPs are explaining more and even folding data into their representative performance. It has also created behavioural change and driven measurement rankings, which itself has an anticipatory effect – no MP wants to be on this sort of list.  

Monitoring has a self-perpetuating momentum, and data about MPs staff, familial employees or meetings has shifted the boundaries of what is known about legislators and for what they are accountable. It has opened new areas intentionally or by accident. An MP in 2021 must be aware of their voting record, their attendance and expenses in a way they would not have been in decades past.  

However, Parliament is a political place, so it’s no surprise that data equals political conflict. Data is used by groups against individuals, groups, and the institution for political and partisan reasons. This then provokes, in turn, explanation, resistance and further conflict. Data can sometimes close the gap between voters and legislator, but it can make for more conflict and controversy as it does so. 

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Blog

Exposing the hidden wiring of the Parliament

By Ben Yong (Durham University)

‘Who runs the House?’ While most people were watching the Johnson government stumble from one crisis to another in early December 2021, peers in the House of Lords repeatedly asked this question in a rare debate on House governance. How the House of Lords (and Parliament as a whole) is run and the arrangements underpinning that may seem mundane, but ‘mundane’ issues can tell us something about the UK’s constitutional arrangements which are lost in theoretical frameworks such as political and legal constitutionalism, or separation of powers theories which focus on relationships between the branches of government.  

The Lords debate was in part prompted by a House of Lords External Management Review (‘EMR’), published in early 2021, which looked at how the House of Lords is governed and services and support administered. The EMR concluded, amongst other matters, that the accountability arrangements for the administration of the Lords were far from clear. Ultimately, the EMR recommended that the House of Lords Commission needed to be put on a statutory basis; there needed to be a clear statement of the governance arrangements; and a Chief Operating Officer should be appointed.

The debate highlighted that peers’ knowledge of the EMR and the general principles of House governance in the Lords was spotty. Indeed, some peers expressed surprise that the Leader of the House did not, in fact, lead the House (a misconception also common among MPs). Lord Davies’ comment summed up the view of many who attended the debate: ‘The governance of the House is … a mystery to me.’ Other contributions were evidence of Yong’s Law: the longer a debate on House governance continues, the greater the possibility that someone will mention catering, and its cost. Significantly, several Peers expressed fears about the imposition of bureaucratic structures upon a House which had traditionally seen itself as self-regulating.

Anyone with a knowledge of previous reviews of Lords governance would be unsurprised by this, or the EMR’s conclusions and recommendations (for a more in-depth discussion of House governance, see Ben Yong, ‘The Governance of Parliament’ in Alex Horne and Gavin Drewry (eds), Parliament and the Law (2nd edn Hart 2018) 75). Indeed, weak House governance and the confusion of parliamentarians has been a persistent issue in both the Commons and the Lords. 

So what are the governance arrangements of the Houses and why does it matter? Each House has an administrative organisation responsible for providing infrastructure and support for parliamentarians so that they can carry out their constitutional functions. This administration sustains and strengthens the House as an institution. The governance arrangements set out who is in control of the administration; and provide a line of accountability for the provision of that administration. 

One part of the governance arrangements is led by members; the other by officials. In the House of Lords, for instance, on the member side, there is the House of Lords Commission, responsible for political and strategic direction for House administration. The Commission is chaired by the Lord Speaker, and consists of (amongst others) the Leaders of the three parties, the Crossbenchers Convenor and the chairs of certain domestic Committees. Below the Commission are a number of domestic committees which scrutinise the internal working of the House (as opposed to select committees, which scrutinise the work of the executive), and support the Commission. On the official side, there is the Management Board, led by the Clerk of the Parliaments, which is responsible for implementation of Commission policies and day-to-day administration.  

Together these groups work to support peers in their work and maintain the institution. But there are problems. A key one is that the Lords House Commission is structured to be insulated against executive interference: it is cross-party in nature, and there is no government majority. Moreover, the Commission usually meets monthly and membership turnover is uneven (in the Commons, it is less than two years for most members). The result of all these factors is that political will is often lacking, or slow to crystalise. The Commission decides by consensus, if it decides at all. And even where the Commission does agree upon a course of action, it may still require agreement from the House itself. In such a political vacuum, the official-led Administration often cleaves to the status quo. 

There is also a lack of clarity about who is in charge, and therefore, who is accountable. In the debate, peers were quite confused about this. But they are right to be. There are multiple actors with claims to represent institutional interests. Even the titles of key actors suggest conflicting jurisdictional claims: there is a Lord Speaker and a Leader of the House—who is leading or speaking for the House? There is the House of Lords Commission, but as already noted, it is not the most strategic of actors. Nor is it the most visible: meetings are held in private with limited minutes often taking several weeks, if not months, to be published. It has no statutory basis. By contrast, the Clerk of Parliaments does have a statutory basis as Corporate Officer of the House (the Parliamentary Corporate Bodies Act 1992); and in practice is responsible for the day-to-day administration. But as the EMR noted, it is not clear how the Clerk is accountable to the Commission, or indeed, anyone. It is unsurprising there is confusion about who does what in the Lords.

The House of Commons has similar problems. One disgruntled former Clerk of the House gave his book on the House of Commons a harsh subtitle: ‘The Story of an Institution unable to put its own House in order’ (Barnett Cocks Mid-Victorian Masterpiece (1977)). In 2014, an ad hoc committee led by Jack Straw published a review (‘the Straw Review’) on House governance in the Commons. It was the first MP-led review of House governance in over 40 years. The Straw Review found a haphazard set of governance arrangements which lacked clarity; and a Commission which failed to provide adequate direction. 

In a way, the dilemma of governance is the problem of legislatures in condensed form: how can a group of nominally equal members collectively act together when they do not owe each other formal allegiance? With legislation, this problem is usually resolved through party majorities. But where the issue concerns not party, but rather what the institution needs, it is not easy to secure agreement. That is because firstly, it is difficult to turn parliamentarians’ minds to the institution; and secondly, there can be reasonable disagreement about what the institution does need. Without party and a clear set of governance arrangements, inertia and inaction become the obvious default. 

And so the Houses of Parliament are often slow to act on matters outside legislation, because of limited political will and a lack of clarity about who is responsible for what. The 2009 Expenses Scandal was caused in part by a failure of Commons governance to get a grip on the issue. Bullying and harassment of staff by parliamentarians in both the Commons and Lords were also failures of governance. And then there is the ongoing saga of the multibillion Restoration and Renewal (‘R&R’) project of the Palace of Westminster. The Palace is crumbling, and has been for well over a decade. This is in spite of a Joint Committee recommending a full decant from the Palace and sponsor and delivery bodies set up by statute. The Houses continue to dither and delay on timing (on R&R, see the untiring and ongoing work of Dr Alexandra Meakin).

So what? Why should we care? For one thing, the Commissions are primarily responsible for their respective House budgets—which together amounted to just under a billion pounds in 2020-1. This is not small money (although dwarfed by the budgets of the large Whitehall departments: the Home Office budget, for instance, was £16 billion in 2020-1). The governance arrangements can determine what resources are given to parliamentarians and committees. The Houses’ budgets matter, therefore, because they shape the capacity of Parliament to carry out its functions (Colin Lee and I discuss this in a chapter in the forthcoming third edition of Parliament and the Law). 

But more importantly, one reason for executive dominance over the legislature is that Parliament finds it difficult to act coherently: it is hobbled by a lack of clear leadership. Mainstream public lawyers have focused so much on the courts and issues like the location of sovereignty or legislative intent that they neglect the concrete institutional particularities of Parliament. This is not about political versus legal constitutionalism, and prioritising the ‘political’ over the ‘legal’. Rather, this is about recognising that there is more to each branch than its relationship with the others; that each branch has its own internal issues which may impede its effective functioning. Failures of governance can impact on the institution’s performance and ultimately, its legitimacy. ‘Mundane’ issues such as House governance and administration may be ‘constitutional’ matters as much as parliamentary sovereignty or legislative intent. 

My thanks to Arabella Lang, Alexandra Meakin and Patrick O’Brien for their comments on an earlier draft.

Dr Ben Yong, Associate Professor of Public Law and Human Rights, Durham Law School

This post was originally published on the UK Constitutional Law Association’s Blog. Thank you to the editors and Dr Ben Yong for allowing us to cross-post.

You can view the original post here: https://ukconstitutionallaw.org/2022/01/10/ben-young-exposing-the-hidden-wiring-of-the-parliament/

The suggested citation: B. Young, ‘Exposing the hidden wiring of the Parliament’, U.K. Const. L. Blog (10th January 2022) (available at https://ukconstitutionallaw.org/))

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Blog

“Tread carefully” – the UK Parliament as a human rights “defender” within the Northern Ireland devolution framework.


Leah Rea examines the role of the UK Parliament in ensuring compliance with the UK’s obligations under international human rights law within the context of devolution, in the absence of legislative intervention from successive UK Governments to address inaction by the Northern Ireland Executive.

Human rights discourse occupies a prominent role in Northern Ireland’s politics, with the issue of rectifying state non-action of protection of human rights arguably as old as the province itself. As evidenced by both historic and contemporary legislative records, the progression of human rights standards in Northern Ireland has always been problematic. The example of the 1960s civil rights movement illustrates both the historic propensity for the politicisation of human rights in the region, and the difficulty of securing legislative change in i) the absence of progression at devolved level, and ii) the absence of intervention by the UK Government, particularly when the Government evades international obligations. In recent years, the discussion has been framed within the context of devolution, focusing on where does legislative competency reside, and specifically, at what political juncture can legislative intervention be sought from the UK Parliament to rectify human rights issues in Northern Ireland? As we wait on the Northern Ireland Office (‘NIO’) to implement the pledge made by the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland to introduce the draft Irish language legislationpublished in conjunction with The New Decade, New Approach Agreement 2020, it is worth recalling the UK Parliament’s role as a human rights “defender” vis-á-vis the operation of the Sewel Convention in the context of Northern Ireland’s abortion law between 2018-2019.

Using parliamentary procedure to highlight human rights

Following an early election in March 2017, agreement to form the Northern Ireland Executive could not be reached and subsequently the devolved institutions did not function in Northern Ireland until January 2020. During this time, there were key developments in the recognition of the human rights violations arising from the then law governing abortion in Northern Ireland. In light of these, parliamentary procedure was utilised within the House of Commons to raise the particular matter of human rights in relation to abortion law in Northern Ireland, the UK Government’s corresponding non-compliance with international human rights law, and the need for legislative intervention in the absence of the devolved institutions.

Emergency Debate and navigating Sewel

Following the referendum result to repeal the Eighth Amendment to the Irish Constitution, the constitutional prohibition on accessing abortion, grassroots movements in Northern Ireland called for urgent legal reform to address widening geographical disparity in abortion access and human rights. With the Abortion Act 1967 limited in territorial application to Great Britain, the then legal framework in Northern Ireland comprised of sections 58 and 59 of the Offences Against the Person Act 1861: abortion was only legal to protect the mother’s life, or cases where her mental and/or physical health was seriously at risk, and could not be accessed in cases of Fatal Fetal Abnormality (FFA), rape and incest. 

The development invoked fresh political impetus: Labour backbencher Stella Creasy MP utilised Standing Orders (No 24) to bring an emergency debate to the House of Commons on 5 June 2018 for the House to consider its role in repealing sections 58 and 59 of the 1861 Act. Creasy aimed to bring the operational impact of the 1861 Act to the attention of the House – and commence the argument that in the absence of a sitting Assembly, it was the responsibility of the UK Government under international human rights law to legislate to address human rights violations in Northern Ireland. 

In the context of Northern Ireland, Creasy referenced the findings of the UN CEDAW Committee inquiry that women and girls had been subjected to “grave and systemic violations of rights”. Conscious there were concerns regarding undermining the constitutional arrangements of devolution, Creasy emphasised the 1861 Act continued to operate across the UK, so Parliament was required to act to remedy the issue on a UK-wide basis. However, she noted the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement 1998 provided for the UK Government “to legislate as necessary” to ensure the UK’s “international obligations” are met in respect of Northern Ireland. Conversely, the then Secretary of State for Northern Ireland upheld the Sewel Convention, stating as abortion was a devolved matter it “would not be appropriate for Westminster” to intervene. Ultimately, the House resolved its affirmation of the motion – and its role as a human rights “defender”.

The Urgent Question and a change in tactics

Shortly after the emergency debate, on 7 June 2018, the UK Supreme Court delivered its judgment in the judicial review brought by the NIHRC against the Department of Justice under the Human Rights Act 1998 on the basis the existing law violated Articles 3, 8 and 14 ECHR of women and girls by criminalising abortion access for FFA, rape and incest. A majority of the Court determined the law was incompatible with Art 8 ECHR in respect of not providing access to women and girls in these circumstances. Responding to the judgment, Creasy availed of procedure to ask an urgent question. In this instance, Creasy directly challenged the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland on the Government’s position of the incompatibility of the 1861 Act with human rights, further urging for the Government to progress the draft Domestic Abuse Bill and adopt it as a vehicle to repeal sections 58 and 59 on a UK-wide basis. She called upon the House, with “its responsibility” under the 1998 Agreement to uphold human rights in Northern Ireland, to “do our job” and call for legislative action. Again, the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland invoked the Sewel convention, asserting the matter was within the legislative competence of the devolved institutions and so the responsibility of Northern Ireland politicians alone, and would not commit to recognising the UK Government’s obligations under international law.

Westminster intervenes: the Northern Ireland (Executive Formation) Bill

Political negotiations continued in Northern Ireland throughout 2019, and by June 2019 the period outlined within s1 of the Northern Ireland (Executive Formation and Exercise of Functions) Act 2018 for Executive formation had expired. To enable the continuation of negotiations, the Secretary of State introduced The Northern Ireland (Executive Formation) Bill to extend the available timeframe. Illustrating the UK Government’s need for the Bill to come into effect promptly, the Bill was subjected to a fast-track process. Whilst this process usually restricts Parliament’s ability to scrutinise Government Bills, in this instance the accelerated schedule proved feasible for tricky amendments to challenge the Government to uphold its international obligations. Creasy availed of the situation, tabling an amendment (New Clause 10) which obligated the Secretary of State, in the event of continued absence of devolved government in Northern Ireland, to implement the 2018 recommendations of the UN CEDAW Committee. This marked a significant change in Creasy’s tactics: here now was an attempt for direct legislative action from Westminster to rectify human rights issues in Northern Ireland. The Sewel Convention notwithstanding, the amendment was accepted by the Speaker’s Office for consideration.

Proposing her amendment at Committee stage, Creasy acknowledged the House must “tread carefully” in relation to achieving a balance between respecting the devolution arrangement and upholding human rights standards, but affirmed the role of Parliament as a human rights “defender”, emphasising the obligations of the House in accordance with the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement as regards safeguarding human rights in Northern Ireland. She submitted the UK Parliament had failed to adhere to its obligations and had a responsibility to intervene in the continued absence of devolved government. 

Responding for the Government, Minister for the NIO, John Penrose stated devolved issues should be the responsibility of the devolved institutions; Parliament should “tread carefully” within the devolved context. The pattern of affirming Sewel then ceased, as the Minister acknowledged the prolonged absence of devolved government in Northern Ireland, and “the result” of which was the list of human rights related amendments. The Minister further noted amendments on issues of conscience, such as the Creasy amendment, were “traditionally free votes” and confirmed the Government would not “break that important principle”. In the absence of a whipping operation Creasy’s amendment was approved by a parliamentary landslide of 332 votes to 99. The Bill as amended was subsequently carried at Third Reading and came into force on 9 July 2018. 

Whither Sewel?

It is interesting to chart the developments in this case study as regards navigating the Sewel Convention. Creasy initially sought to uphold Sewel: her original proposal was for the May Government to repeal the relevant sections of the1861 Act via the draft Domestic Abuse Bill and on a UK-wide basis, using the situation of human rights concerns in Northern Ireland as grounds for the necessity of this. However, following the judgment of the Supreme Court just two days later, Creasy emphasised the House’s particular role under the 1998 Agreement as regards human rights in Northern Ireland and urged for the May Government to directly intervene in light of the political vacuum in Northern Ireland. Her successful amendment to the 2019 Act therefore marked a turning point for the Sewel Convention, suggesting that in the event of a human rights violation in the devolved administrations, the UK institutions may intervene on the grounds of their role as final guarantors of human rights obligations in international law. Can we now interpret “will not normally legislate” in the context of upholding international human rights? Equally, we must consider that the requirement of consent under Sewel was a determining factor: in the absence of the devolved institutions, consent could not be acquired.

Moreover, the case study appears to suggest in the situation of a conflict between the convention of free votes upon conscience issues and the Sewel convention affirming devolved legislative competencies, the former takes precedence. Could the role of the UK Parliament as a human rights “defender” depend on individual Parliamentarians according to their own conscience? Or, was relying on the conscience convention an exercise in political expedience for the May Government to navigate the situation Creasy had created with her significant amendment in a tight timeframe? As the NIO recently introduced the The Abortion (Northern Ireland) Regulations 2021 – which empower the Secretary of State to issue direction to comply with the 2018 UN CEDAW Committee recommendations in Northern Ireland – in light of ongoing failure of the Northern Ireland Executive to fully commission abortion services, and so continuing with Westminster intervention in Northern Ireland, the situation on a contentious issue remains complex. The problem of human rights progression in Northern Ireland goes on.

Leah is a PhD Researcher at the Transitional Justice Institute at Ulster University. Her research focuses on examining the relationship between constitutional conventions established by devolution settlements, and the progression (or hindrance) of human rights standards in Northern Ireland. This blog post is based on a paper delivered at the PSA Parliaments Conference 2021.

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December 2021 Newsletter

We hope that you are keeping safe and well. We have some updates for you:

  1. PSA Annual International Conference 2022
  2. PSA Parliaments 2021 Conference: Parliament at a Critical Juncture
  3. Winners announced of our Undergraduate Essay Competition!
  4. New Overview of the Australian Parliament Published
  5. PSA Parliaments Working Papers Series
  6. Call for Applications: Leverhulme PhD studentships at the University of East Anglia
  7. Call for Papers: Recovering Europe’s Parliamentary Culture, 1500-1700: Concepts, Methods, Approaches
  8. Other Events: Study of Parliament Group Annual Conference
  9. Recent Publications that have Caught Our Eye
  10. Recently on the Blog

If you have any notices/messages you would like us to circulate to the group, please let us know.

1. PSA Annual International Conference 2022

Registration has opened for the 2022 PSA Annual Conference being held in York and digitally in April 2022 (early bird prices end on 24 January 2022). Full details of the conference and how to register can be found on the PSA22 website.

As announced last month, we are running five panels, plus a round-table event Exploring Parliament: Looking to the Future. The themes of our panels are:

  • Parliamentary powers, prerogatives, and public engagement
  • How MPs use old and new media and how old and new media affects MPs
  • How to be a parliamentarian: how do Members participate?
  • Comparative and inter-parliamentary analysis
  • How to be a parliamentarian? Representation and roles

Whether in person or online, we hope to see you there!

2. PSA Parliaments 2021 Conference: Parliament at a Critical Juncture

Our annual conference, which was held online last month, was a roaring success, even if we do say so ourselves!

We had an excellent line-up of panels on the themes of:

  1. Representatives and representation;
  2. Accountability and transparency in Parliaments;
  3. Power(lessness), practices and conventions.

If you missed it, you can catch up on all the papers on our YouTube channel.

The five papers on the first panel are already available and the others will be added in the next couple of weeks.

3. Winners of our Undergraduate Essay Competition Announced!

We are delighted to announce the winner and runner-up of the 2021 PSA Parliaments undergraduate essay competition!

The winner, Callum Murphy who studied at Queen Mary University of London, won £100 for his essay on how Parliament engaged with the Universal Credit policy.

The runner-up, Dana Ali who also studied at Queen Mary University of London, won £50 for her essay on parliamentary scrutiny of air quality.

Congratulations to Callum and Dana! And many thanks to Alice Lilly from the Institute for Government for judging the competition.

You can read the prize-winning essays here.

4. New Overview of the Australian Parliament Published

Many thanks to Thomas Dray for writing an overview of the Australian Parliament.

If you would like to write an overview of one of the parliaments or legislatures not yet covered on our maps, then please get in touch with Chris.

5. PSA Parliaments Working Papers Series

We are very excited to announce that we are now accepting expressions of interest to contribute to our recently-launched working paper series, which publishes working papers across the sub-discipline of parliamentary and legislative studies.

You can read our first two working papers here and here.

If you are interested in publishing a working paper, please consult our submission guidelines.

6. Call for Applications: Leverhulme PhD studentships at the University of East Anglia

The Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research at the University of East Anglia, UK, is seeking applications for PhD studentships in the Leverhulme Trust’s ‘Critical Decade for Climate Change’ doctoral training programme.

Three of the studentships are focused on the role of parliaments and politicians in climate policy making and implementation:

  1. Climate mitigation through the decision of courts: a critical evaluation
  2. How are publics’ climate change attitudes and behaviours influenced by politicians?
  3. Delivering net zero requires local political action: what will the role of local politicians be in the critical decade?

The studentships start in October 2022 with each scholarship covering: tuition fees (for both home and international students); a maintenance stipend (£15,285 per year in 2022/23); and a generous research and training support grant of up to £8,000 over the course of the 4 year PhD programme.

More information about all the individual projects and the doctoral training programme, can be found here.

7. Call for Papers: Recovering Europe’s Parliamentary Culture, 1500-1700: Concepts, Methods, Approaches

This interdisciplinary international conference will explore the culture of early modern Europe’s political assemblies, and ask how it was expressed in language, writing, images, institutions, and symbolic practices.

It will be held at Jagiellonian University, Krakow, 22-24 June 2022, and is partly supported by The Europaeum.

Deadline for proposals is 31 January 2022. More details about the conference can be found here.

8. Other Events: Study of Parliament Group Annual Conference

The Study of Parliament Group will hold their annual conference at Oxford and online on 7-8 January 2022.

The deadline for booking is Friday 10 December. You must be an SPG member to attend. More details from their website.

9. Recent Publications that have Caught Our Eye

Nokwazi Makanya has published an article entitled Progress with Parliamentary ‘Power over the Purse’: The Case of South Africa in Parliamentary Affairs.

Diana Stirbu has written a report for the Welsh Senedd on committee effectiveness: Power, Influence and Impact of Senedd Committees: Developing a framework for measuring committees’ effectiveness

Netina Tan and Cassandra Preece have published an article entitled Ethnic Quotas, Political Representation and Equity in Asia Pacific in Representation.

Tom Loughran and Sean Haughey have published a report on public opinion and power-sharing in Northern Ireland.

A special issue of The Journal of Legislative Studies on administering representative democracy has been published.

And, finally, new issues of Representation and Legislative Studies Quarterly have also been published.

If you would like your published research to be featured in this section, please email Stephen with details.

10. Recently on the Blog

We have recently published two great blogs:

If you have an idea for a blog on some aspect of parliamentary study, please get in touch with our communications officer, Chris.

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News

November 2021 Newsletter

We hope that you are keeping safe and well. We have some updates for you:

  1. PSA Parliaments 2021 Conference: Parliament at a Critical Juncture
  2. PSA Annual International Conference 2022
  3. New Working Paper on Bibliometric Analysis of Parliamentary Studies Journals
  4. PSA Parliaments at Questions of Accountability Conference
  5. New Project: Recovering Europe’s Parliamentary Culture, 1500-1700
  6. Other Events: EUGenDem Workshop on Research Findings
  7. Recent Publications that have Caught Our Eye
  8. Recently on the Blog

If you have any notices/messages you would like us to circulate to the group, please let us know.

1. PSA Parliaments 2021 Conference

It is nearly time for our online annual conference on Friday 12th November 2021 but there is still time to sign up!

We have an excellent line-up of panels on the themes of:

  1. Representatives and representation;
  2. Accountability and transparency in Parliaments;
  3. Power(lessness), practices and conventions.

In addition to the panels, we will be announcing the results of our 2021 undergraduate essay prize!

To register (for free) and for full details of the conference and each of the panels, please see here.

2. PSA Annual International Conference 2022

We are delighted to confirm our panels for the Political Studies Association annual conference (PSA22), taking place in York and digitally in April 2022. We have five excellent panels, plus a round-table event Exploring Parliament: Looking to the Future. The themes of our panels are:

  • Parliamentary powers, prerogatives, and public engagement
  • How MPs use old and new media and how old and new media affects MPs
  • How to be a parliamentarian: how do Members participate?
  • Comparative and inter-parliamentary analysis
  • How to be a parliamentarian? Representation and roles

Full details of each of the panels can be found here.

Registration will open on 15 November, with early bird prices ending on 24 January 2022. The details of registration fees can be found on the PSA22 website.

Thank you to everyone who submitted a paper proposal – we were very impressed with the high standard and look forward to seeing you in York!

3. New Working Paper on Bibliometric Analysis of Parliamentary Studies Journals

To accompany our recent survey of the sub-discipline, the PSA Parliaments team, led by Caroline Bhattacharya, has produced a bibliometric analysis of three parliamentary studies journals: Legislative Studies Quarterly, The Journal of Legislative Studies and Parliamentary Affairs.

Covering the last 25 years, we present findings on authorship and citation patterns, as well as the topics of articles and key publications.

You can read the working paper (and find out whether you and/or your favourite scholars make the most-cited and key publications lists) here.

4. PSA Parliaments at Questions of Accountability Conference

PSA Parliaments are hosting a panel on parliamentary committees and accountability at the Questions of Accountability conference, co-organised by our very own, Chris Monaghan.

The panel is at 10am on Tuesday 2nd November. Full details of the panel and the conference can be found here. You can sign up (for free) here.

5. New Project: Recovering Europe’s Parliamentary Culture, 1500-1700

A team led by Professor Paulina Kewes at the University of Oxford has launched a new project, Recovering Europe’s Parliamentary Culture, 1500-1700. As part of the project, the team are hosting a blog series on their theme – but ranging more widely in methodology and period coverage – in collaboration with the History of Parliament Trust.

You can follow the project on Twitter here.

6. Other Events: EUGenDem Workshop on Research Findings

Our good friends at EUGenDem are holding an online workshop on 19th November 2021 at 10:00-12:00 EET (9:00-11:00 CET) to present research findings from their project Gender, party politics, and democracy in Europe: Studying European Parliament’s political groups.

Full details of the workshop and how to sign up can be found here.

7. Recent Publications that have Caught Our Eye

Sarah Dingler and Lena Ramstetter have a FirstView article in Government & Opposition entitled When Does She Rebel? How Gender Affects Deviating Legislative Behaviour

Andrés Dockendorff, Ricardo Gamboa and Marcel Aubry have published a research note in Representation entitled Substantive Representation of Women’s Interests: Chile, 1990–2020

If you would like your published research to be featured in this section, please email Stephen with details.

8. Recently on the Blog

We have recently published one great blog:

If you have an idea for a blog on some aspect of parliamentary study, please get in touch with our communications officer, Chris.

Categories
Blog

The Owen Patterson Scandal: Standards, Trust and Democratic Norms

By Chris Monaghan, Caroline Bhattacharya and Alexandra Meakin

NB The views expressed in this blog post do not reflect the view of PSA Parliaments

The resignation of Owen Paterson as Member of Parliament for North Shropshire, following revelations that he had been paid half a million pounds to lobby ministers has highlighted  what may be an uncomfortable truth, that many MPs supplement their parliamentary salary with taking on second or indeed third jobs. The extent of this practice has been forced into the open, with newspaper reports highlighting that the former Attorney-General Sir Geoffrey Cox had spent substantial time undertaking paid work (earning £700,000) for the British Virgin Islands. 

The focus on this blog will be the Paterson scandal. The blog will outline the events that gave rise to the controversial attempt by the government to protect Paterson from sanction, and in doing so revealed the problems with regulating the conduct of Members of Parliament and holding them to account for engaging in lobbying. The blog will then place the scandal within a broader context. 

Factual background

In response to the revelation in The Guardian that Paterson had been paid £500,000 to lobby ministers, an investigation was commenced by the Parliamentary Standards Commissioner, Kathryn Stone, who found that Paterson had  breached the rules relating to paid advocacy, declaration of interests, and the use of parliamentary facilities. Her findings were considered by the House of Commons Standards Committee—comprising four Conservative MPs, two Labour MPs, one Scottish National Party MP and seven lay members—who concluded:

“This is an egregious case of paid advocacy. Previous instances have led to suspensions of 18 days, 30 days and six months. Each of Mr Paterson’s several instances of paid advocacy would merit a suspension of several days, but the fact that he has repeatedly failed to perceive his conflict of interest and used his privileged position as a Member of Parliament to secure benefits for two companies for whom he was a paid consultant, is even more concerning. He has brought the House into disrepute. We therefore recommend that Mr Paterson be suspended from the service of the House for 30 sitting days”.

It is customary for the recommendations of the Standards Committee to be approved by MPs without a vote. Ahead of the vote on the suspension of Paterson, however, the former Leader of the House of Commons, Dame Andrea Leadsom, tabled an amendment, signed by 59 MPs, to the motion, declining to endorse the suspension until and if by a specially-formed select committee reviewed the “clearly flawed” standards system for MPs. The Government enforced a three-line whip on the vote and Dame Andrea’s amendment was passed by 250 to 232 Members of Parliament, with only two non-Conservative MPs voting in favour (one of whom was Rob Roberts MP, who had been elected as a Conservative prior to losing the Whip when he was suspended for a separate breach of standards rules). (It is important to note, however, that from the Conservative backbenches, 98 MPs did not vote and thirteen voted against the government). 

Any celebrations for ministers were short-lived, however, as the Government was forced into a U-turn almost immediately when the opposition parties made clear that they would not serve on the proposed new select committee. Just hours after the Leader of the Commons, Jacob Rees-Mogg, pledged to work on a “cross-party basis to achieve improvements in our system for future cases”, Paterson resigned as a Member of Parliament, triggering a by-election for December 2021. The Government’s initial approach was heavily criticised and it was seen by opponents and many commentators as shielding one of its own supporters and undermining the accountability of members for breaches of parliamentary rules. Ministers have acknowledged the Government’s mistake and described the U-Turn as the ‘grown-up thing’ to do (Nadhim Zahawi MP, BBC News). The Government has formally asked the Commons to rescind the motion establishing the new Committee, and Paterson’s resignation has meant that he will avoid any suspension. 

Analysis 

Paterson has resigned, the government has apologised and conceded its mistake. However, this does not negate the sense of double standards and the concern that the Johnson administration is further tarred with the taint of corruption. It has further reignited debate over the number of Members of Parliament who have second jobs. While MPs are barred from acting as “a paid advocate in any proceeding of the House”, there is no universal restriction on second jobs.  Just under a third of all Members of Parliament have additional income to their official parliamentary salary, and although this does not just affect one party (the Leader of the Official Opposition, Sir Keir Starmer reportedly received £70,000 for legal advice from private companies), the party with the highest proportion of MPs with second jobs is the Conservative Party (It should be noted that neither Sir Geoffrey Cox nor Sir Keir Starmer are accused of engaging in lobbying on behalf of their clients). A study by Weschle shows that Conservative MPs with a second job ask more parliamentary questions, and that these questions are targeted at larger ministries with more procurement spending and often concern internal policies (such as the state or planning of projects). 

There have been some defences of outside interests: Cabinet Office Minister Steve Barclay argued that there is “value in MPs having a continued connection with the world outside of politics”. Legal commentator Joshua Rozenberg has defended Sir Geoffrey Cox, partly due to the need to attract practicing lawyers to serve both in Parliament and as law officers—the ministerial roles of attorney general, solicitor general and advocate general for Scotland. Such arguments have often caused past efforts to bar MPs from holding certain outside interests to fail to gather sufficient support (e.g. the Private Members’ Bills tabled by Peter Bradley in 2002 and Martin Salter in 2007 and the Committee on Standards in Public Life’s recommendations in 2018). Following the Paterson scandal, however, Sir Keir Starmer’s intention to table a motion to ban MPs from paid consultancies or directorships may prove more successful.

The broader decline of trust in parliamentarians and Parliament itself is a matter of concern. New polling by the Committee on Standards of Public Life found that 44% of people rated the standards of conduct of MPs as quite or very low, compared to only 20% taking a positive view, and noted the progressively lower scores reported since 2002. The Hansard Society’s latest Audit of Political Engagement found that 72% of the public believe that our system of parliamentary government needs ‘quite a lot’ or ‘a great deal’ of improvement. 

In their book How democracies die: What history tells us about our future, Levitsky and Ziblatt remind us that “[d]emocratic backsliding today begins at the ballot box” (p. 5). In other words, nowadays it is more often elected governments than men with arms who seek to undermine democracy, and often “democracies erode slowly, in barely visible steps” (p. 3). Democracy is safeguarded by institutions such as parliament and written laws and rules upheld by independent courts, but, Levitsky and Ziblatt argue, at least as important are unwritten democratic norms:

Norms are […] shared codes of conduct that become common knowledge within a particular community or society – accepted, respected, and enforced by its members. Because they are unwritten, they are often hard to see, especially when they’re functioning well. […] Like oxygen or clean water, a norm’s importance is quickly revealed by its absence. When norms are strong, violations trigger expressions of disapproval, ranging from head-shaking and ridicule to public criticism and outright ostracism. And politicians who violate them can expect to pay a price. (p. 102)

When applying these arguments to the parliamentary setting, we can make a strong case that parliament as a democratic institution and the norms that underpin parliamentary democracy need to be defended first and foremost from within. And this task does not fall merely on the shoulders of the Speaker of the House of Commons as the highest representative of parliament and ‘conductor’ of parliamentary proceedings, but is a responsibility that should be shared by all parliamentary actors.

The main problem was not Owen Paterson. (There will always be some bad apples among the bunch.) The key issue was that the government – with the help of their Commons majority and key parliamentary figures such as the current and former Leaders of the House – (a) denied the legitimacy of the outcome of the parliamentary procedure to investigate and sanction MPs’ rule-breaching behaviour and (b) proposed to overhaul the institutional system for evaluating parliamentary standards, also retrospectively for the Paterson case.

Lord Evans, Chair of the Committee on Standards in Public Life, said on 4 November:

[I]t cannot be right to propose that the standards system in the House of Commons should be reviewed by a Select Committee chaired by a member of the ruling party, and with a majority of members from that same party. This extraordinary proposal is deeply at odds with the best traditions of British democracy. The political system in this country […] is a common good that we have all inherited from our forebears and that we all have a responsibility to preserve and to improve.

The two important norms at play here are the acceptance of outcomes of democratic processes (in this case the standards inquiry system) and what Levitsky and Ziblatt call ‘institutional forbearance’, that is the exercise of self-restraint and acting not only in the letters of the law but also in its spirit. The government’s actions in parliament undermined both these values. By imposing a three-line whip on its MPs, the government did not only interfere in what is generally seen as parliamentary business but also signalled that defiance would be considered a serious breach of party loyalty with potential consequences. (Angela Richardson, who abstained, lost her job as a Parliamentary private secretary – before being reappointed after the government’s U-turn.)

High levels of party unity are a key feature of a well-functioning parliamentary system. But a parliamentary party group cannot always be perfectly cohesive in their viewpoints, and when divergence emerges, party leaders usually have an array of institutional tools at their disposal to impose discipline. During every MP’s time in office, occasions will arise when their constituency interests and/or personal views and convictions will stand at odds with the official party line. Those are the moments when an MP needs to decide whether to stay silent for the sake of party loyalty or publicly communicate and act on their dissent, in full awareness that a roll-call vote stays in the historical records. When the issue at stake is not a specific policy but essential democratic norms and procedures, the option to stay silent is a particularly serious one, as MPs fail to fulfil their role as guardians of parliamentary democracy.

On 3 November, 248 Conservative MPs voted in favour of the Leadsom amendment, 13 voted against and a few more abstained and publicly voiced their objection such as the ‘Father of the House’, Sir Peter Bottomley. The government’s U-turn indicates that the broad public outrage and presumably conversations among members of the Conservative Party behind closed doors (and sometimes apparently in semi-public view) have succeeded in safeguarding parliamentary democracy in this instance. But this was not the first time and is unlikely to be the last time that the Johnson government seeks to tighten the executive grip on parliament, and that Conservative MPs must decide when the defence of the role of parliament, democratic norms and ethical principles is more important than party-political goals and personal ambitions.

This post was originally published on the Political Studies Association Blog.