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Select committees in the 2015 Parliament

Please note that this piece has been cross-posted with the permission of the author. It was originally published on the Institute for Government blog, and is available here.

By Hannah White

In the aftermath of the election the shape of the select committee system in the new parliament is now beginning to emerge. Hannah White offers some thoughts about what has changed and where we might see more continuity.

Limited structural change

The Commons select committee system largely mirrors the departmental structure of Whitehall, together with some cross-cutting committees such as the Public Accounts Committee and Environmental Audit. Consequently the government’s decision to forgo the temptation of making unnecessary machinery of government changes to mark the start of the new parliament – showing the sort of restraint that the IfG has argued for – means that the select committee system will also stay broadly the same. Change has been limited to the creation of two new committees, the abolition of one, and a consequent change in remit for another.

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Women, gender and political leadership workshop

On Friday 15 May, the PSA Women and Politics Specialist Group and the Political Leadership Specialist Group – supported by Birkbeck and Canterbury Christ Church University – co-hosted a workshop on ‘Women, Gender and Political Leadership’. The increasing prominence of female leadership and recruitment, ranging from the UK General Election debates to the US Presidential race, has given the study of gender and political leadership a new urgency and importance. This one-day event – organised by Dr. Mark Bennister (Canterbury Christ Church), Dr. Meryl Kenny (Leicester), and Dr. Ben Worthy (Birkbeck) – brought together 40 participants to explore this under-researched area, examining in detail the challenges for women in office and the means by which they can attain it.

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Cameron’s Human Rights Headache?

Please note that this blog piece was originally published on the PSA Insight Blog, and is available here.

By Ben Worthy

As a newly elected Prime Minister, you wait around for one European problem then two come along at once. While David Cameron is trying to deal with his EU referendum promise, another ‘European’ problem has reared its head in the Queen’s Speech. The Conservatives promised to repeal the Human Rights Act 1998 and replace it with a British Bill of Rights – see this full fact analysis for background.

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Clapping, as a cure for impotence

Please note that this blog piece was originally published on the Revolts website, and is available here.

By Philip Cowley

Perhaps the key defining feature of the general election was that almost nothing happened as we had expected. Even in Scotland, where the result was broadly what had been predicted by the polls (though as Andrew Marr wrote, ‘anybody who stepped off the train at Edinburgh Waverley Station and bought a latte would have picked that up’), the consequences were different. The SNP thought that they were going to hold the balance of power at Westminster. They were going to lock out David Cameron and the Conservatives, and demand constant concessions Ed Miliband. Instead, they’ve found themselves on the wrong side of a small, but workable, Conservative majority. Ahead there are five years of heckling the steamroller.

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The Demise of the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee: A cautionary tale of the indulgence of executive power?

By Graham Allen MP, Dave Richards and Martin Smith

Brian Barry suggested that: ‘…there has been a massive rise in the incidence of sanctimony and smugness among the successful that has nothing to do with any change in the underlying reality… It has been stimulated by politicians who have realised that it is possible to win power by recruiting the most … successful forty per cent or so of the population in a crusade to roll back the gains made by their fellow citizens in the previous forty years’. Written fifty years ago, the spirit, if not the empirical accuracy of this sentiment, still holds true. The Conservative Party have returned to power with an outright, yet slim majority. The turnout, though slightly up on previous elections at 66%, saw the Conservatives secure a 36.9% share. Read another way this means that only 24.7% of those eligible to vote did so for the new governing party. The Westminster model was, of course, always designed to deliver out right winners thanks to the machinations of the first-past-the post electoral system. In 2015, it can certainly be said to have done its job. But in an increasingly anti-political age, with a growing sense of cynicism with the ways and means of the Westminster system, it might be argued that a new government with such a precarious majority would be well served by operating with a public show of humility, not hubris.

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Do select committees deserve ‘universal praise’?

By Stephen Bates and Mark Goodwin

Rupert Murdoch being attacked with a custard pie. Michael Gove alleging a ‘Trot conspiracy’ in English schools. The vice president of Google being informed that ‘you do evil’. Three highlights of the last Parliament, all of which took place within hearings of House of Commons select committees. These cross-party groups of MPs have become an important site for the exercise of Parliament’s scrutiny function and have been regarded by some as arguably the most significant and successful recent innovation in the relationship between the UK government and its legislature. While these committees have limited legislative powers when viewed in comparison with committees in other parliaments, they have received ‘universal praise’ – according to the Wright Committee on Reform of the House – from media, academic analyses and from parliamentarians themselves. Since undergoing significant reform in 2010, select committees have gained a higher profile (see research on media coverage by Dunleavy or Kubala (2011)) and, many claim, have become even more assertive and effective. For example, the Speaker of the House of Commons, John Bercow, recently claimed that the 2010 reforms have made Select Committees ‘pivotal players in politics’.

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How much trouble will the Tory rebels cause David Cameron?

With a much reduced majority, what problems will David Cameron face with his backbench critics? Professor Philip Cowley of the University of Nottingham has been researching backbench dissent for 20 years and wrote this article for the Telegraph blog, looking at the problems ahead. As he shows, although the government’s majority is small, it is larger than people realise, and many Conservative MPs will not want to do anything to destabilise the government ahead of the forthcoming EU referendum.

Read more here.

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Election Night 2015: What happens and what to watch for

Please note that this piece was first published on the PSA Blog on 06 May 2015, and is available here.

By Alistair Clark

As the polls close and everyone settles down to watch election night on TV, spare a thought for the many thousands of election administrators who run polling day and the count afterwards. They are in many ways the ‘unsung heroes’ of our elections process; working hard, under considerable scrutiny and pressure to deliver an accurate and reliable result. Election day is long. Polls open at 7am, but the polling station workers are there an hour before to set the polling station up, before working all day until closing time at 10pm. The count won’t finish until well into the morning, and for those 279 councils also running local elections, often not until the following day.

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A ‘Gender Friendly’ Parliament after GE 2015? The Case for a Women and Equality Committee

Please note that this blog piece was originally published on PolicyBristol Hub on 27 April, and is available here.

By Sarah Childs

The 2015 general election portends an era of  ‘dangerous’ women having undue influence on British politics come May the 8th, if the print and social media are to be believed. Nicola Sturgeon – variously depicted as Miley Cyrus’ ‘wrecking ball’, Putinesque, the woman ‘holding all the aces’ and the ‘most dangerous woman of all’ will be pulling Ed Miliband’s strings. The women’s hug at the end of the Opposition leader’s debate epitomises an apparently ‘red sisterhood’ that will leave the Labour leader defenceless in the face of their collective seductive powers. To make matters worse, Ed’s ‘girly laugh’ (as Guido Fawkes put it) renders him insufficiently manly for the Premiership. All of this might be discounted as election banter, colourful to be sure, but nonetheless underpinned by legitimate concerns about post-election governing arrangements. Be that as it may. Such depictions also re-present Westminster politics as male, opposing and privileging the ‘male-politician-norm’ with the ‘female-politician-pretender’.

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Research methods workshop for PhD students

The PSA Specialist Group on Parliaments and Legislatures is planning a one day workshop focusing on research methods in legislative studies for PhD students who are members of the group.

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