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New Politics, No Parties?

Please note that this piece was originally published on the Revolts blog (available here) and has been re-published with permission from the author.

By Philip Cowley

It now looks very likely that the Labour Party will give free votes to its MPs in the upcoming Commons votes on Trident renewal and possible air strikes in Syria.

The party is split on both issues, and in particular its new leadership is at odds with large numbers of MPs. Free votes are often granted when there are divisions like this within parties; splits are never as newsworthy when they take place on free votes. So the tactical reasons for having free votes are pretty obvious.

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Interpreting Parliament, but how?

By Marc Geddes

What interests me in the study of Parliament is the way in which everyday life is so unpredictable, chaotic, reactive and consistently beset by challenges. Yet simultaneously, to the outside world at least, Parliament looks stable and ordered, static and unchanging.

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Gothic glory and pop-up parliaments: could past visions help rescue the crumbling Palace of Westminster?

Please note that this blog piece was originally published on The Conversation on Wednesday, 29 July 2015, and is available here.

By Stephen Thornton

The Palace of Westminster – home to the British parliament – is rapidly heading towards an advanced stage of decrepitude. Unless “not inconsequential” sums of public money are used to refurbish the largely 19th century edifice, it has been warned, the MPs and Lords will shortly have to find a new place to work.

A debate is growing about whether the unfortunate state of the building has provided an opportunity to consider whether Parliament should be modernised for the 21st century. Ideas include moving the institution outside the capital – Hull in the north of England being one imaginative suggestion.

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Parliamentary Scrutiny, Evidence and Policy

By the Lincoln Policy Group

The Lincoln Policy Group established a research project in 2014 that aims to develop understanding of how the parliamentary scrutiny process affects and is affected by the use of evidence and expertise. We considered the roles of contested values alongside evidence in influencing the quality of parliamentary scrutiny as well as legislative and policy outcomes. We have recently published a project report and this blog piece summarises our key preliminary findings.

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What is a good ethnography of Parliament?

By Emma Crewe

Ethnography is a methodological and theoretical approach to studying social worlds. Doing ethnography does not require particular research techniques but is a process of prolonged engagement with a group of people to find out how they act, think, talk and relate to each other. Ethnographers’ understanding of subjectivity is distinct from positivistic approaches; rather than attempting to remove their influence on the research findings, they make this part of their research. Such reflexivity entails turning back on oneself, reflecting on how you are thinking and on how the social interaction between ethnographer and informant impacts on perception and interpretation.

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EVEL: ‘A major moment in the constitutional history of these islands’

This post was originally posted on the Centre for Constitutional Change website on 03 July, which is available here, and has been re-posted with permission.

By Michael Kenny

The government’s announcement of its much anticipated proposals for the introduction of ‘English votes for English laws’ in the House of Commons, involves changes to the rules for scrutinising individual Bills, or clauses within them, that affect England, or England and Wales only. The reforms are proposed as an answer to the West Lothian question – the situation whereby MPs from the devolved territories can vote on matters that affect England only, such as Education, but English MPs cannot reciprocate on issues that are devolved.

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EVEL and Democratic Reform

This post was originally posted on the Centre for Constitutional Change website on 03 July, which is available here, and has been re-posted with permission.

By Michael Keating

The introduction of English Votes for English Laws (EVEL) faces a problem, says Michael Keating, in that only a minority of English voters will ever have supported the laws in question.

The government has now come up with its answer to the West Lothian Question, that Scottish MPs can vote on English matters but not the other way around. Unfortunately, it is not the type of question that has an answer, but rather a conundrum. English Votes for English Laws (EVEL) is therefore not going to satisfy everyone or resolve the issue. It may address some immediate grievances but is a very partial response to a much bigger issue.

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Post-Legislative scrutiny in the UK Parliament: Identifying a research agenda

By Thomas Caygill

All too often, once legislation has entered the statute book, Parliament assumes that is the end of the matter and the end of its role. However it has been noted by the House of Lords Constitution Committee that Parliament’s responsibility for legislation should not end once legislation has entered the statute book. This is where post-legislative scrutiny enters the picture.

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UQ if you want to: John Bercow’s impact on Urgent Questions

The following piece presents the research findings of a final year undergraduate dissertation based at the University of Hull.

By Ben Goldsborough

Speaker John Bercow has repeatedly reaffirmed his belief that increased use of Urgent Questions (UQs) in the chamber of the House of Commons has made ‘ministers…become much more willing to volunteer statements to the House than had become the habit for many years previously’. But until now this statement was based on anecdotal evidence and not solid data. This research aims to understand if UQs are an effective scrutiny tool in order to hold the executive to account. To do so, it has looked at the role of the last three Speakers’ use of UQs (and previously Private Notice Questions). The following analysis is split into three sections: first, how many and what types of question were granted; second, who answered the questions; and third, who asked the questions in the first place.

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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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