Category: Blog

Blog

Select Committees Should Leave the Westminster Bubble

Post author By psaparliaments
Post date December 3, 2015

Please note that this piece was originally published on the PSA Insights Blog, available here.

By Leanne-Marie McCarthy-Cotter

Following from yesterday’s launch of the report ‘Building Public Engagement: Options for Developing Select Committee Outreach’, Dr Leanne-Marie McCarthy-Cotter (The Crick Centre, University of Sheffield), discusses the findings from her, Prof. Matthew Flinders and Prof. Ian Marsh’s research. The research was commissioned, and published, by the Liaison Committee. You can access the report in full here.

Tags Crick Centre, House of Commons, Liaison Committee, parliamentary scrutiny, select committees, UK Parliament

Blog

Reforming the Italian Senate

Post author By psaparliaments
Post date November 23, 2015

Please note that this post was originally published on the UCL Constitution Unit‘s blog, and is available here.

By Roberta Damiani

The UK is far from the only country with a long-standing controversy over the composition and powers of its second chamber. In this post Roberta Damiani provides an update on the latest attempt to reform the Italian Senate. Prime Minister Matteo Renzi is proposing to significantly reduce the Senate’s powers, and to move from direct to indirect elections, but it is far from certain that he will be successful.

Tags Italy, political reform, senate, upper chamber

Blog

Parliamentary Researchers: The unsung heroes of Westminster?

Post author By psaparliaments
Post date November 18, 2015

By Robert Dale

‘Much is written about the work of MPs, but comparatively less is written about their staff’ says John Bercow MP, Speaker of the House of Commons, in the forward to my book How to be a Parliamentary Researcher.

Tags digital communications, House of Commons, Members of Parliament, parliamentary researchers, value for money

Blog

The impact of academia on Parliament: 45 percent of Parliament-focused impact case studies were from social sciences

Post author By psaparliaments
Post date October 23, 2015

Please note that this piece was originally published on the LSE Impact Blog on 19 October (available here), and has been re-published with permission from the Impact Blog and the author.

By Caroline Kenny

The impact case studies, submitted as part for the REF, tell an interesting story about how UK academia interacts with policy at a local, national and international level. Over 40 per cent of cases mentioned impact on policy as part of their narrative.

Tags evidence, impact, ref, scrutiny

Blog

Prime Minister’s Questions: Perpetual Pointless Puerile Panto Politics?

Post author By psaparliaments
Post date October 14, 2015

By Mark Shephard

Prime Minister’s Questions (PMQs) attracts a high level of interest because it is the one procedure where the Prime Minister is expected to face questioning in the House of Commons by parliamentarians each week that parliament is sitting. However, it is often derided as an ineffective procedure. For example, in a 2015 radio interview Nick Clegg called it a ‘farce’ that should be ‘scrapped’ and research by the Hansard Society has revealed that large proportions of the public do not like the pantomime point-scoring of PMQs which is perceived to undermine the capacity for effective scrutiny and influence of the government. Even the current PM and the current leader of the largest opposition party don’t like the way it operates. When David Cameron became leader of the Conservative Party in 2005 he called for an end to point-scoring ‘Punch and Judy’ politics. When Jeremy Corbyn became leader of the Labour Party in 2015 he also wanted less theatre and called for more fact during the procedure.

Tags adversarialism, House of Commons, pmqs, prime minister's questions, public perceptions, punch and judy, scrutiny

Blog

No Reform Please we are Canadian: The 2015 Federal Election campaign

Post author By psaparliaments
Post date October 7, 2015

By Gary Levy

The last four Parliaments, three minority and one majority, have convinced most Canadian parliamentary scholars that much damage has been done to the constitution. [1] One would think the 2015 election would be a time for parties to put forth ideas to improve what we still refer to as our Westminster model. So far this has not been the case and one wonders if there will be improvement, as opposed to change, after Canadians cast their ballots on October 19. This post look specifically at how issues of electoral reform, House of Commons reform and Senate reform have been treated in the campaign.

Tags Canada, electoral reform, fixed-term parliaments, proportional representation

Blog

New Politics, No Parties?

Post author By psaparliaments
Post date October 1, 2015

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.

Tags free votes, Jeremy Corbyn, Labour Party, military intervention, trident

Blog

Interpreting Parliament, but how?

Post author By psaparliaments
Post date September 21, 2015

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.

Tags ethnography, House of Commons, interpretive political studies, methodology, parliamentary studies, select committees, Westminster model

Blog

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

Post author By psaparliaments
Post date August 21, 2015

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.

Tags architecture, brutalism, parliament, politics of space, refurbishment, restoration and renewal, spatial politics

Blog

Parliamentary Scrutiny, Evidence and Policy

Post author By psaparliaments
Post date August 12, 2015

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.

Tags academies, evidence, legislation, legislative scrutiny, Lincoln Policy Group, minimum wage, parliamentary scrutiny, post-legislative scrutiny, pre-legislative scrutiny, UK Parliament