There has for some time been an apparent consensus in parliament and government that the House of Lords has too many members, yet recent efforts to effect reform have made little progress. David Beamish explains how an apparent change of government position and the parliamentary tactics of a determined minority have slowed the pace of change.
Category: Blog
Franklin De Vrieze discusses a recent expert seminar on post-legislative scrutiny, organised by the University of Hull and the Westminster Foundation for Democracy.
It is two years since the Intelligence and Security Committee published its report into UK lethal drone strikes in Syria. Despite a commitment to ‘respond substantively to any report by the ISC within 60 days’ the government has yet to produce a detailed reply to this report. Andrew Defty examines the government’s record in responding to ISC reports and the changing nature of its commitment to doing so. This blog was originally posted on Democratic Audit and is reposted with permission.
Professor Sarah Childs discusses the implications of the parliamentary politics of Brexit, and prospects for future reforms at Westminster.
Alexandra Anderson and Alexandra Meakin discuss the flood in the Commons and the need for public engagement with the Restoration and Renewal of the Palace of Westminster, in a blog originally posted on The Conversation.
The link between the Expenses Scandal and Brexit suggested by a new BBC documentary is not so convincing, writes Nick Dickinson, but the desire to connect the two reveals a lot about the tendency of sophisticated political observers to refuse to take certain events at face value.
As the Brexit chaos continues, Professor Margaret Arnott discusses the constitutional issues it has posed for inter-parliamentary relations in the UK.
This week marks forty years since Conservative MP Airey Neave was killed as he left the Palace of Westminster. Emmeline Ledgerwood explores his little-known work to promote science in Parliament.
Categories
Trust, parliaments, and stability
In a new post based on a paper from our Making Sense of Parliaments conference, Aileen Walker, Associate at Global Partners Governance, discusses how to build public trust in parliaments.
The official, substantially verbatim report of what is said in both houses of Parliament is an essential tool for ensuring democratic accountability. This record, Hansard, contains a wealth of data, but it is not always fully accessible and easy to search. Lesley Jeffries and Fransina de Jager explain how a new project, Hansard at Huddersfield, aims to improve access to the Hansard records and contribute new ways of searching the data.