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We need reform of the legislative process to empower Parliament

Jess Sargeant

Parliamentary sovereignty is the UK’s central constitutional principle; in theory, parliament holds all the power, but in practice, the government wields much of it. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the legislative process; legislation is one of Parliament’s core functions, but government control of the timetable and scrutiny mechanisms in the House of Commons – means that its ability to influence the content of bills is limited. Recent trends towards passing bills on expedited timetables and increased use of secondary legislation – accelerated by the UK’s exit from the EU and the coronavirus pandemic – have curtailed opportunities for parliamentary input still further. This has prompted urgent warnings from two House of Lords committees of the need to rebalance power between Parliament and the Executive.

But redressing this constitutional imbalance requires going beyond asking the government to exercise restraint.  It means empowering parliament and creating new opportunities for parliamentary influence. The recommendations of the Wright Report, published in 2009, led to the election of Commons select committee chairs and the establishment of a backbench business committee. They demonstrated the power of procedural change in giving parliamentarians the tools and opportunities to challenge government policy and influence debate. In this spirit, the Institute for Government and Bennett Institute has undertaken a comprehensive study of the legislative process to identify opportunities for reform. 

One area is pre-legislative scrutiny (PLS). There is wide consensus amongst MPs, ministers and officials that pre-legislative scrutiny can greatly improve the quality of legislation. It gives Parliament the opportunity to influence legislation before it is finalised, allowing for more time and space for the government to make changes to reflect the views of parliamentarians on the quality and content of draft legislation. It can be useful too for the government, allowing ministers to tease out disagreements on knotty policy issues, test arguments and ultimately smooth a bill’s passage through parliament. 

Since 1997 eight parliamentary select committee reports have recommended expanding the use of pre-legislative scrutiny and making it a core part of the legislative process. However, bursts of enthusiasm for the practice amongst governments have been short-lived. Pre-legislative scrutiny remains a rarity; overall just 11.6% of the total government bills receiving royal assent since 2007 were published in draft.

It is clear that the current approach to pre-legislative scrutiny, in which the government has complete discretion as to whether and which bills to publish in draft, is failing to unlock its full potential. So we propose taking inspiration from the Oireachtas (the Irish Parliament) and requiring that the government give parliament an opportunity to conduct pre-legislative scrutiny on all government bills. 

This does not mean that a full PLS inquiry – taking three to four months – should take place on every bill, but that the government should publish all its bills in draft and give parliament the opportunity to select bills for PLS and allow others to progress without delay. They should be able to choose from a menu of options including a full inquiry and report, scrutiny of certain clauses, to a one-off evidence session and letter. This should ensure the level of scrutiny is proportionate and does not introduce undue delay to the bill timetable, or pressure on parliamentary capacity. 

Another area ripe for reform is Commons Committee stage. While public bill committees are intended to allow MPs to scrutinise each clause of the bill in detail, their partisan nature means that they are rarely constructive, and research suggests their impact on the content of bills have diminished over time. Reforms to permit oral evidence-taking has improved the functioning of these forums, but it is still only taken a quarter (27%) of all bills passed in the last five parliamentary sessions. Witnesses are chosen through the usual channels, meaning they are often there to support one political position or the other rather than bring new evidence and perspectives to deliberations. 

One proposal, already adopted by the devolved legislatures, is to abolish public bill committees and give select committees responsibility for scrutiny during this stage of the bill’s progress. This has the potential benefits of bringing more expertise and cross-party working into the process, as well as the ability to utilise the relationships with key experts, interest groups and businesses. But it risks overwhelming these committees’ work, and by making them a forum for key votes it could undermine their independence. 

Nonetheless, we believe there is a middle ground. Building on the informal inquiries they already conduct on bills, we propose that select committees should be able to request a ‘select committee’ stage on all government bills – to allow them to consider the bill, take oral evidence and publish a committee view, including draft amendments. This can inform the debate in public bill committees and beyond, while giving select committees the opportunity to decide which bills to prioritise.

We recognise that many of these recommendations may add time and potential friction to the legislative process. But legislating is a serious business – policy is more likely to succeed where it has been robustly tested and where it has broad support from the people’s representatives. The government’s short-term desire to do things quickly should not overrule the long-term objective of do things well. 

Jess Sargeant is a senior researcher working on devolution. She joined the Institute for Government in May 2019 from the House of Lords Library.

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Procedural Vetos and Parliamentary Sovereignty

Adam Tucker

Parliamentary sovereignty has been characterised as the “central organising principle” and “focal point” of the constitution. But it is a doctrine of striking absolutism with uncompromisingly hard edges:  it asserts that there is nolaw that Parliament cannot make, that no other body can override or set aside Acts of Parliament (and so on).  Yet in practice a range of issues are now considered sufficiently important that ways have been found to soften those hard edges and carve out protections against legislative infringement. 

Important constitutional principles (like the rule of law and access to the courts) are protected by common law principles of interpretation, capable of challenging and even overriding the intention of Parliament.  Human Rights are protected by both a procedural mechanism designed to bring embarrassing attention to legislation compromising them and a statutory principle of interpretation capable even of overriding Parliamentary intention.   The autonomy of the devolved legislatures is protected by a convention constraining Parliament’s legislative authority over devolved matters. And, most famously of all, our membership of and even departure from the European Union involved judicially enforceable statutory limits on Parliament’s legislative power.  These are just the most prominent of a complex array of techniques limiting Parliament’s legislative authority without (overly) trespassing on the core status of parliamentary sovereignty. 

This post argues that we should think of the procedural rules exemplified in the parliamentary processes of King’s Consent and English Votes for English Laws (EVEL) as a further part of this constitutional tradition.

I realise that my two examples are not promising starting points for fruitful analysis.  King’s Consent is a constitutional aberration, which grants the King an inappropriate opportunity to intervene in the legislative process.  It should be abolished.  And EVEL is widely seen as an idiosyncratic failure– it was abolished, without the House of Commons even needing to vote, after a debate which saw it attacked across party lines – “baffling” (Conservative), “completely pointless” (Labour) and a ”absolute and utter disgrace” (SNP).   Nevertheless, I want to suggest that their shared core is worth further attention, as a model for a potentially constructive addition to our repertoire of techniques for limiting parliamentary sovereignty.  In this post I (i) characterise that shared core, (ii) briefly consider its possible features and finally – very tentatively – (iii) suggest two areas where it might be sensibly deployed.  

The shared core of King’s Consent and EVEL

King’s consent is a rule of parliamentary procedure which gives the King a power to intervene in the passage of certain proposed legislation. It is found in Erskine May, which provides (for Bills to which the process applies):

 If the [King’s] consent has not been obtained, the question on the third reading of a bill for which consent is required cannot be proposed

EVEL was a rule of parliamentary procedure which gave English MPs an additional opportunity to scrutinise certain proposed legislation.  It was enacted through a change to the Standing Orders of the House of Commons, which provided (while EVEL was in force, for Bills to which the process applied):   

A Consent Motion which gives consent…must be passed by the legislative grand committee…before a motion may be made for the third reading of the bill.

Each (obviously) have greater depth and breadth than these extracts reveal – in terms of when they apply, the processes they involve etc. But these extracts capture their shared core, and the features of each that I want to focus on here.

The key point is that both have the same structure:  they create a veto process, and if that veto is wielded then the proposed legislation concerned cannot pass through all the stages of the legislative process or, in other words, the proposed legislation cannot become law.  Furthermore, each is a binding rule of parliamentary procedure rather than, say, mere guidance.  A bill which required, but had not yet received, EVEL consent could not proceed.  And a bill which requires, but has not received, King’s consent cannot proceed.  So the Deputy Speaker did not merely chooseor exercise a discretion to refuse Tan Dalyell’s attempt to secure a third reading for his Military Actions Against Iraq (Parliamentary Approval) Bill in 1999 – he was compelled to:

Queen’s consent has not been obtained…As the House knows, and as “Erskine May” … makes plain, without Queen’s consent, I cannot propose the question (emphasis added)

Both, then, are prescriptive elements of the law and custom of Parliament with the capacity to prevent legislation completing its passage through Parliament.  As a result, they engage the first limb of most influential definitions of Parliamentary Sovereignty, which claims that there is no legislation which Parliament cannot pass.  At present that element of parliamentary sovereignty is false to the extent that Parliament cannot pass legislation which requires, but has not received, King’s consent.  And from 2015 until 2021 it was also false to the extent that Parliament could not pass legislation which required, but had not received, consent under EVEL.  Procedural vetos like these soften the hard edges of parliamentary sovereignty.  We should consider the possibility that a better use can be found for this technique than these two examples.

Two characteristics of procedural vetos

As we saw above, there are many other ways to circumvent the less desirable consequences of parliamentary sovereignty.   They are hard to measure against each other because they work in different ways and have virtues (and vices) in different dimensions.  I will mention only two such dimensions of procedural vetos here:  their force, and the place they occupy on the political-legal spectrum.  

First, their force, by which I mean the degree to which they can be suspended or overridden (when this is very difficult it even begins to make sense to use the language of entrenchment).  In this dimension, procedural vetos are extremely flexible.  At one end of the spectrum, a procedural rule could be vulnerable to easy circumvention or abolition.  For example, when the government decided to abolish EVEL this was very straightforward to achieve with a simple motion in the Commons.  But a procedural veto could be designed to be slightly more entrenched – for example the EVEL procedures could have been drafted so that, say, any motion proposing their abolition or suspension was itself subject to the consent procedure, making them more problematic to circumvent.  A procedural veto could even be fully entrenched, that is protected by its own provisions against even legislative override.  Indeed, the prevailing opinion amongst parliamentary lawyers seems to be that King’s consent is entrenched in this way – that a statute abolishing King’s consent would itself require King’s consent. Whilst in my view this position is extremely problematic with regard to that specific example, it would clearly be possible to craft a veto which more clearly functioned in that way.  The upshot is that procedural vetos, as a technique, are very flexible in terms of their force – and therefore in terms of the scale of the obstacle that they present to a government which intend to promote legislation which would violate whatever value or principle they protect.  They can be used to impose very soft or very hard limits on Parliament’s capacity to legislate.

Secondly, procedural vetos are more a political than a legal mechanism.  Admittedly they seem mildly legalistic:  they are part of the law and custom of parliament, they are authoritative rules which depend on tying categorisation to consequence (and so on) – to the extent that legal advice is involved in their application and operation. Nevertheless, the existence, continuation and negotiation of the limitation they impose on Parliament remain firmly in the political arena.   The respect of and survival of EVEL were political questions, and its fate rested on politics.  The respect of and survival of King’s Consent are political questions, and its fate rests on politics.

These are promising characteristics.  Carefully crafted and appropriately deployed (King’s Consent is, and EVEL was, neither) procedural vetos have the potential to be a valuable addition to the constitution’s set of techniques to soften parliamentary sovereignty. 

Two possible uses of the mechanism

I want to close by suggesting, very tentatively, two contexts in the contemporary constitution where it might be appropriate to deploy procedural vetos to restrict parliament’s capacity to make law.

First, as a replacement for the Sewel convention, which is designed to protect the legislative autonomy of the devolved legislatures against infringement by Parliament.  It is (despite being put on a statutory footing) a purely political constraint, but it is also weak and easily circumvented.    Yet it would be relatively straightforward to craft a procedural rule obstructing, say, the passage of legislation certified to trespass on devolved competencies without a statement that the necessary consent had been obtained.  This form of procedural veto would maintain the content and political nature of Sewel, whilst buttressing its force.  It need not be entrenched at all – even as a simple veto it would have greater force than the present Sewel Convention because it would at least impose a procedural hurdle (say, passing a circumvention motion) on a government promoting legislation in breach of Sewel.  This approach has been referred to before (in different contexts by Alistair Carmichael MP and by Ian Loveland) although not in detail. It is a proposal which merits being taken more seriously.  

Secondly, as an alternative to the rule in Anisminic and Privacy International, which constitutes a wide and judicially-imposed limitation on parliament’s legislative authority, preventing it – almost entirely – from successfully enacting provisions ousting the jurisdiction of the courts over executive action. This rule achieves a justifiable aim, but it also moves into the legal arena an issue – the appropriate scope of Parliament’s power to enact ousters – that might more appropriately be tackled in the political domain.  A procedural veto could be crafted so as to maintain the existing strength of this rule (especially in core cases) but with the additional virtue of returning to the political domain the broader question of the appropriate limits of legislated ousters.

To summarise:  Parliamentary sovereignty is not always desirable, in fact a whole variety of ways are often used to circumvent its requirements.  Whilst King’s Consent and EVEL are not, in themselves, successful examples of this kind of process they are nevertheless instances of an approach which might be harnessed more successfully in other contexts including, perhaps, as an alternative approach to the Sewel convention and to the rule in Anisminic and Privacy International.

Dr Adam Tucker is Senior Lecturer in Law at the University of Liverpool.

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Together and Apart: Innovations in Prime Ministerial questioning the Canadian House of Commons

Historically, the questioning model of Question Period in the Canadian House of Commons was collective: the Prime Minister was questioned together with ministers. Question Period takes place every sitting day, and by convention the Prime Minister is expected to attend. In this collective questioning model, MPs addressed questions to the Prime Minister or to ministers. Conventionally, the Prime Minister received questions at the start of Question Period, usually from the Leader of the Opposition and from other opposition party leaders. The remaining questions went to ministers.

During the 2015 federal election, the Liberal Party promised to introduce a Prime Minister’s Question Period in order to make the Prime Minister more accountable. Following a long tradition of collective questioning, in April 2017, halfway through the 42ndparliament, the Liberal government introduced a questioning slot for the Prime Minister. Similar to the procedure for PMQs in the UK, the Canadian Prime Minister would be questioned on their own once a week on Wednesday. 

What can we learn about prime ministerial questioning from this reform?

Given its introduction halfway through a parliament, this reform offers a unique methodological opportunity to study whether, and in what ways questioning the Prime Minister is different in collective procedures compared to individualised procedures. 

Previous studies have explored this question through cross-case comparisons: for example, by comparing how prime ministers are questioned in legislatures that use individualised procedures (UK) versus similar legislatures that use collective procedures (Canada and Australia). A within-case comparison before and after a reform in the same legislature may offer insights into whether questioning the Prime Minister alone is conducive to more or better accountability.

Previous work has also shown that a key variable is whether or not the procedure allows spontaneous questioning (i.e. topics are not known in advance), or whether questions are submitted in advance. For example, in Ireland, questions for Oral Questions to the Taoiseach are submitted in writing in advance, whilst in the UK questions are asked spontaneously on the day at PMQs. The Irish procedure displays far higher levels of questions targeted at the Prime Minister’s responsibilities compared to the UK’s PMQs, where questions to the Prime Minister span a wide range of topics; the Prime Minister is seen as responsible for everything. Given that the Canadian Question Period also involves spontaneous questioning, we would expect that moving to an individualised procedure would lead to a similar pattern: a wide range of questions addressed to the Prime Minister.

Importantly, Question Period is to a large extent party controlled. For every Question Period, political parties hand over a list of questioners to the Speaker, who uses the list as a guide in calling MPs to ask questions. This means that access to questioning is largely determined by internal party strategy.

Research design

This paper asks an exploratory research question: How are prime ministers questioned in collective and individualised procedures? Did the introduction of an individualised procedure in the Canadian House of Commons lead to the Prime Minister being more accountable, as the Liberals intended?

Leveraging the introduction of the reform halfway through the 42nd Parliament, I use a before-and-after evaluation design. The first stage of this study involves a quantitative analysis of questions addressed to the Prime Minister in collective sessions before the reform, and in individualised sessions after the reform. I randomly sampled 30 questioning sessions: 15 on each side of the reform. Questions were coded on several variables based on validated coding protocols and analysed in R. The topic of each question and the political party of each questioner were sourced from the labels given in Hansard. I coded whether the topic falls within the Prime Minister’s direct remit, as that remit is understood within the Canadian political system, whether it is shared with a minister, or whether the topic is in the competence of a minister. I also coded whether the question included a conflictual remark. 

This first stage aims to explore patterns in questions to the Prime Minister before and after the reform. The next stage of the project will involve interviews with Canadian MPs active during the 42nd parliament, to gain a deeper understanding of their experience of Question Period and of the reform. This paper presents preliminary results from the first stage.

Results

  1. Widening access to questioning

The move to an individualised procedure increased access to questioning: MPs from a wider range of roles and political parties are able to ask the Prime Minister a question (Figures 1 and 2). Although the pre-reform collective procedure meant that the Prime Minister appeared in parliament more often during the week, he was only asked around eight questions at the start of each Question Period session. This means he was always questioned by the Leader of the Opposition, the leader of the second opposition party, and other frontbench actors who conventionally ask questions at the start of Question Period. More junior frontbenchers and backbenchers did not get to question the head of government. The individualised procedure, by contrast, dedicates a full session to the Prime Minister, with questioners including a wider range of frontbench roles, and backbenchers also getting a chance to question the Prime Minister.

Figure 1. Number of questions by party
Figure 2. Number of questions by type of actor

2. Less focus on matters within the Prime Minister’s remit.

As Figure 3 shows, the introduction of an individualised slot for the Prime Minister did not result in more questions targeted at Prime Ministerial responsibilities. In the collective procedure around 70% of questions were targeted at topics that were either the Prime Minister’s own remit, or topics that the Prime Minister shares with a minister. After the introduction of an individualised slot, more than half of questions were on topics not within the Prime Minister’s remit. Within the sample included in this study, the range of topics in questions to the Prime Minister increased from 29 during the pre-reform procedure to 59 topics over the course of the individualised sessions included.

Figure 3. Questions within the Prime Minister’s remit

Previous studies have shown that the UK’s PMQs, the most well-known opportunity for individualised prime ministerial questioning, displays a wide range of topics in questions; the Prime Minister is held to account for everything. A similar pattern appears in Canada after the introduction of a weekly individualised procedure: when the Prime Minister appears on their own, the range of topics of questions broadens. Far from offering an opportunity for more targeted questioning, a weekly individualised slot results in more questions addressed to the Prime Minister on a wider range of issues.

An individualised plenary questioning procedure creates an opportunity for regular dialogue with the Prime Minister, and a focus point during the parliamentary week, but not an opportunity for holding the Prime Minister to account in a targeted way. This finding has important procedural implications for designing questioning mechanisms. 

3. No difference in how adversarial questions are

The change from a collective to an individualised procedure did not generate different patterns in terms of conflictual questions (defined as questions containing at least one conflictual remark). In fact, although in both types of procedure over 75% of questions include a conflictual remark, the proportion of conflictual questions decreases slightly in the individualised procedure (Figure 4). However, as Figure 2 shows, a wider range of actors get to criticise the Prime Minister in the individualised procedure. Whilst the collective procedure primarily involved a duel between the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition, in the individualised procedure a wider range of frontbench and backbench actors intervene to ask critical questions. The high levels of conflict suggest that the Canadian Question Period is inherently an adversarial procedure, at least when it comes to questions addressed to the Prime Minister, and that changing whether the Prime Minister is questioned alone or alongside the cabinet does not have any visible effect on that.

Figure 4. Conflictual questions

Conclusions: what difference did the reform make?

The move to an individualised procedure led to a new model of Prime Ministerial questioning and accountability in the Canadian House of Commons.

Firstly, the reform widened access to questioning the Prime Minister: MPs from more political parties and from a wider range of parliamentary roles (including backbenchers) can now question the Prime Minister. However, Question Period remains very party controlled, and access to questioning is not open on the floor of the House. The Question Period strategy and who gets to be added to the list of questioners are determined internally by parties.

The reform also made the Canadian Question Period more similar to PMQs: the Prime Minister is tested on many aspects across government policy. But evidence from other legislatures suggests that this is not always the case for all individualised questioning procedures. For example, comparative evidence from Ireland and the UK showed that open individualised procedures, where the topics of questions are not known in advance, are more conducive to a wide range of topics in questions. If questions are submitted in writing before the session, they tend to be on topics that are within the Prime Minister’s remit. It is hence the combination of the open, spontaneous nature of Question Period, and its new individualised version, that makes it more similar to PMQs.

Finally, the reform did not affect how conflictual questions to the Prime Minister are, suggesting that the underlying culture of Question Period is adversarial, and the individualised/collective character does not affect levels of adversarialism in questions. 

Dr Ruxandra Serban is an LSE Fellow in Qualitative Methodology at the London School of Economics and Political Science.

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MPs, Outside Interests, and Corporate Boards – Too Busy to Serve? 

Jack Newman and Matthew Smith

The first scandal that really shook the Johnson government, and which started something of a cascade that eventually led to his downfall, was the ‘Owen Patterson scandal’ of late 2021. The scandal initially arose because Conservative MP Owen Patterson used his parliamentary position to lobby for two companies from which he’d received over £10k as a consultant. Although the real scandal erupted because the government attempted to change the rules to protect him, the question of MPs’ ‘second jobs’ rose to the top of the news agenda. Across the media, debates raged about the circumstances in which it was right for MPs to hold second jobs, with some arguing second jobs brought diverse experience into parliament, and others arguing that they were detrimental to the integrity of democracy. On both sides, it was an oft-repeated refrain that MPs are usually “far too busy” to be holding any other employment. An Ipsos-Mori poll at the time found almost two-thirds of people agree with the statement that “MPs are paid to work full time for their constituents and to serve the country and they therefore should not have time to do other jobs as well” (Ipsos-Mori, 2021).

Questions about elected representatives holding outside interests have been addressed in various ways in the academic literature. Often referred to as ‘moonlighting’, this practice has been scrutinised by academics, who investigate whether it leads to decreased parliamentary activity. In Italy, Gagliarducci et al (2010: 689) show that “politicians with higher outside income are less committed to parliamentary activity in terms of voting attendance”, and Arnold et al (2014) find similar results in Germany. In Ireland, Baturo and Arlow (2018) show that, after leaving office, one in ten Irish TDs (MPs) “engage in consulting, lobbying or board membership”, suggesting that MPs’ second jobs may be stepping stones to future employment. These studies tend to ‘follow the money’, looking at payments that MPs have formally received, and compare these to their parliamentary activity.

In our forthcoming paper, which we presented to the PSA Parliaments Conference 2022, we look at this phenomenon in the UK parliament, asking whether outside interests potentially make MPs ‘too busy to serve’. Rather than focus on the money officially declared in the register of interests, we focus instead on the position of MPs within ‘corporate networks’. To gather our data, we located all 650 MPs within the Companies House database, identifying all the firms on which they sit as company directors. We then look at all the other directors of these companies, and all the other roles held by those directors, and then all the directors of those companies. This gives us a vast network of interconnected companies, what Mizruchi (1996) calls ‘director interlocks’ and what is widely described as ‘the corporate network’.

There is a lot of existing research that seeks to understand this corporate network. Some research suggests that when companies are linked through shared directors, there are significant benefits in terms of access to knowledge, information, and advice (Pfeffer and Salancik, 1978; Sarabi et al., 2021). This backs up those who, during the Owen Patterson debate, argued that MPs’ second jobs are beneficial to parliament because they bring in diverse experience. However, other research raises concerns about a ‘corporate elite’ or ‘inner circle’ (Useem 1986) within which there is actually very little diversity (Heemskerk and Fennema 2009). There is also a very important strand of research showing that directors who hold lots of directorships, known as ‘busy directors’, are actually associated with weak corporate governance and have a negative impact on firm performance (Sarabi and Smith, 2021; Kaczmarek, Kimino and Pye, 2014; Ferris, Liao and Tamm, 2018; Fich and Shivdasani, 2012; Cooper and Uzun, 2012; Méndez, Pathan and García, 2015).

So, when MPs act as company directors, all this existing literature on the corporate network can help us understand the implications for parliament. The question is whether the positions that MPs hold in these corporate networks make them ‘too busy to serve’, as was argued by commentators during last year’s second jobs debate, and as implied by the existing literature on busy directors. In order to answer this question, we measure the position of MPs within the corporate network and compare this to their parliamentary activity. Given the challenges of measuring parliamentary activity, we look at parliamentary questions as a proxy for this activity, basically assuming that MPs who ask more questions are more active in Parliament. We did also control for a range of other independent variables including age, gender, tenure in parliament, political party etc.

We then compared the parliamentary activity of each MP to their position within the corporate network. We found that MPs who hold a ‘brokerage’ role in the network, linking together otherwise unconnected companies and sub-networks, were more likely to ask questions in parliament. Because brokerage roles are usually associated with higher corporate opportunity and more important contributions to knowledge flows, we can suggest that MPs with higher levels of opportunity in the corporate network are more active in parliament. In contrast, we found that MPs who were deeply embedded in the corporate network, being connected to lots of other well-connected actors, were less likely to ask questions in Parliament. This suggests that MPs who are deeply embedded in highly networked groupings of ‘busy directors’ are less active in parliament, which could be because they are ‘too busy’ to serve effectively.

In order to develop a fuller understanding of the reasons behind these trends, further research will be needed. Our next step will be to expand the research in various ways, especially looking at the trends over a longer period of time and looking at larger corporate networks. We are also keen to try to draw a link between the sector of the companies where MPs sit as directors and the nature of their parliamentary contributions. We are particularly interested in the extent to which MPs are asking questions on topics that link to the work of those companies. All of this will require further data collection.

Overall, it is clear that an MPs outside interests do affect their parliamentary activity, and potentially in ways that limit the time they give to their parliamentary duties. In the public discourse, the debate will continue to rage about whether outside interests have a positive impact on parliament, and our forthcoming paper is only one contribution to that debate. But, given that the findings of our paper align with existing literature on the corporate network and with existing literature on political second jobs, it is increasingly clear that MPs’ outside interests are not unconnected from their parliamentary activity. The MPs’ code of conduct states that an MP “should not place themselves under any financial or other obligation to outside individuals or organisations that might influence them in the performance of their official duties”. The word ‘influence’ here leaves a lot of room for interpretation, but it is quite clear that patterns of behaviour in corporate networks do correlate with patterns of behaviour in parliament. At what point this constitutes an infringement of the ministerial code is a debate that will no doubt continue to run.

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Post-Johnson, constitutional combustion continues. But the fire can be extinguished.

Our recent book, The Bonfire of the Decencies: Repairing and Restoring the British Constitution, analysed the turbulent 2019-2022 Boris Johnson administration from a constitutional perspective. It noted a worrying tendency. Johnson himself, and various ministers and officials in his government, were prone to disregarding norms. In pursuit of partisan advantage or personal gratification, they were often willing to bypass non-binding constraints to which those in their position should willingly subject themselves. Self-regulation is essential to the proper functioning of any political system; but is perhaps even more important in the case of the United Kingdom (UK), given its lack of a ‘written’ or ‘codified’ constitution. Its absence is therefore a serious concern.

We considered a wide range of trends and incidents. Among them were the so-called ‘partygate’ scandal; the UK approach to the Northern Ireland Protocol; efforts to intimidate and demean legal professionals; the dissemination of misleading information to Parliament and public; departures from good practice in the award of Covid-related contracts; the high turnover of senior civil servants; changes to the status of the Electoral Commission; and the troubling treatment of refugees. Taking these factors into account we identified a series of problematic categories of behaviour on the part of the Johnson governments. They were:

  • Poor conduct that did not necessarily violate any specific rule;
  • Departure from rules without clear legal basis such as conventions;
  • Unlawful activities of a constitutionally challenging nature;
  • Violations of criminal law by senior officials and ministers;
  • Willingness to break with treaty obligations and international law; and
  • The compromising of public institutions and the values associated with them.

Furthermore, as well as being prone to departing from and undermining norms, the Johnson administration also displayed a tendency to evade, belittle, or erode any mechanisms that might serve to limit it (such as Parliament, the courts, and other oversight bodies), particularly in its efforts to perpetrate constitutional violations.

We judged, moreover, that the transgressions that occurred under Johnson were part of a wider and longer continuum. Any relief that the ending of his term as Prime Minister might (understandably) arouse should not distract from a realisation that urgent and substantial corrective action is required. His mere departure has not reversed the damage caused during his premiership. Many changes brought about will remain in force until actively reversed, and initiatives instigated will continue to come into being unless halted. Forces, groups, and people that drove, sustained, and were harnessed by him in his anxiety-inducing conduct during this tenure can be expected to continue to exert themselves, potentially leading to further such harm.

We noted in our work that the post-Johnson UK government would inevitably include within it numerous individuals who variously tolerated, facilitated, defended, and took a prominent role in the patterns of behaviour that made his term of office so objectionable. Ultimately, his party turned on him. But the fact that it installed him as leader at all, and that it took so long to remove him, is not encouraging. The decisive revolt of July 2022 came only after the emergence of clear evidence that he had morphed politically from asset to liability, and growing resentment among colleagues who found themselves personally compromised by some of the dubious characteristics of his administration.

Events since the displacement of Johnson have served to reenforce these points. During the brief and remarkable tenure of Liz Truss, constitutionally dubious occurrences included the removal from post of the Permanent Secretary to the Treasury, Tom Scholar; and the attempt to evade proper scrutiny of fiscal policy. Collective Cabinet responsibility – a central component of the UK system of government – rapidly deteriorated to the point of becoming unviable. Under Rishi Sunak, we have already seen the reemployment of an individual as Home Secretary within days of their resignation from the same post, having breached the Ministerial Code. Furthermore, falling within the Home Office policy brief, the pursuit of questionable policies with regard to the treatment of refugees, inherited from previous governments, has continued and possibly magnified.

These developments are far from encouraging. But we do not wish to encourage despondency. There are a series of steps that can be taken that we hope will help restore, reenforce and reinvigorate our constitution. Some firm proposals are already on the agenda. They include recent recommendations from the Committee on Standards in Public Life that would serve to strengthen mechanisms for upholding the principles according to which government is supposed to operate, such as those set out in the Ministerial Code.

Other measures have yet to receive the same degree of advocacy, but in our view merit consideration. Among them is the idea of an oath of office for incoming prime ministers, to be made publicly in the House of Commons, in the presence of its Speaker. While it would not directly compel better behaviour, this practice might contribute to an improved culture of constitutional compliance. We suggest the following wording:

THE PRIME MINISTER’S OATH.

To uphold the principle and practices of collective Cabinet government

To uphold and respect the conventions and expectations contained in THE MINISTERIAL CODE, THE CABINET MANUAL, AND THE SEVEN NOLAN PRINCIPLES OF PUBLIC LIFE.

To sustain the impartiality of the Civil and Diplomatic Services, the Intelligence and Security Services, and the Armed Forces.

and to have constant regard for THE CIVIL SERVICE CODE AND THE SPECIAL ADVISERS’ CODE.

To account personally to Parliament and its select committees for all the above.

To uphold the rule of law in all circumstances.

Beyond this possible measure, consideration should be given to harder and more entrenched regulation through the establishment of a ‘written’ or ‘codified’ constitution. Such a document would become the ultimate source of legal authority within the UK polity, taking precedence even over the UK Parliament and primary legislation it issued. Establishing an instrument of this type would be a major undertaking, and need to rest on an inclusive and considered process. But it could, we hope, help correct the weaknesses in the system that have lately become apparent, and avoid repetition of some of the excesses of the Johnson era, and that of his successors. It might, moreover, be a means of extracting a lasting, beneficial outcome from recent negative experiences.

Andrew Blick is Professor of Politics and Contemporary History and Head of the Department of Political Economy at King’s College London and Senior Adviser to The Constitution Society.

Peter Hennessy, FBA, is Attlee Professor of Contemporary British History, Queen Mary, University of London.

The Constitution Society is committed to the promotion of informed debate and is politically impartial. Any views expressed in this article are the personal views of the author and not those of The Constitution Society.

This post was originally published by the Constitution Society and can be accessed here: https://consoc.org.uk/constitutional-combustion-continues/. We are grateful for being given permission to republish the post.

Follow the the society on Twitter at @con_soc

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Restoration and Renewal: Intimidation as a necessary evil?

Can buildings threaten democracy?

In May 2022, the Restoration and Renewal Sponsor Body and Delivery Authority released a report on Understanding the public’s view. Collecting views from over 20,000 people, the report discussed how citizens feel about the Palace of Westminster and its prospective renovation. Much of this input can be summed up by the following quote: “It’s lovely, but it’s quite intimidating”.

It is not just citizens who feel this way. As shown in a History of Parliament article on First Impressions of the Palace of Westminster, parliamentary buildings also appear to intimidate MPs, “reinforc[ing] a feeling of not being welcome”. Jenny Tonge spoke of “a crumbling old Dracula’s castle”, while Robert Cecil felt like “a rather small ant in front of this great institution”.

A report from the Committee on Standards in Public Life described intimidation of office-holders as “a threat to the very nature of representative democracy in the UK”. Intimidation impacts diversity, engagement, and freedom of discussion. Moreover, intimidating buildings are detrimental to the ‘openness’ that modern representative democracies seek to communicate:

Modern parliaments themselves are intimidating buildings that are hard to access for the majority of citizens. They are typically gated and guarded. It also feels to many as if only certain types of people – those with the right suit, the right accent, bank account, connections, or even last names – are welcome to enter them. (Landemore 2022, p.2)

Do intimidating buildings therefore present a threat to democracy? Or do certain audiences consider intimidation necessary, even desirable? Can parliamentary buildings be lovely because they’re quite intimidating?

Walking interviews

Myself, Samuel Johnson-Schlee, and Ryan Swift have been conducting ‘walking interviews’ with MPs, Peers, and parliamentary staff. As we walk a route of their choice, interviewees tell us their views and memories of Parliament. This method allows us to explore key themes at the same time as the buildings they pertain to, since:

“interviewees are prompted by meanings and connections to the surrounding environment and are less likely to try and give the ‘right’ answer. Indeed, it seems intuitively sensible for researchers to ask interviewees to talk about the places that they are interested in while they are in that place.” (Evans & Jones 2011, p.849)

We have discussed interviewees’ earliest memories of this place. We have discussed how they feel inside the Palace, and whether these feelings change over time. Naturally, Restoration and Renewal has also been a frequent topic of conversation: what should change, and what shouldn’t.

The interviewees frequently described the Palace as intimidating, not only in terms of appearance but also layout. Even highly experienced staff members noted that “the Palace does feel imposing…it’s such a labyrinth, and I’m always worried I’m going to get lost.” This reflects the existing literature about parliamentary buildings in general. Such spaces can “reinforce the self-perceptions of those government officials and bureaucrats who identify this exalted territory as their own”, reinforcing “existing hierarchies” (Vale 2014, p.8).

Interviewees also recalled interactions with citizens in Parliament. They shared the key takeaways from these interactions, some of which were rather surprising. For example, it was suggested that for many citizens, the idea of Parliament as an intimidating place is not only expected but desired:

“some people almost want it to be intimidating. I think they’d be disappointed if they see it from the outside (and it’s very impressive) but they came inside and it didn’t match that…they would feel let down.”

This raises an immediate and obvious question: why would anyone want parliamentary buildings to be intimidating?

Meeting expectations, or getting things done?

There are many possible explanations as to why people may want parliamentary buildings to be intimidating. Two seem especially convincing to us.

First: meeting expectations. Walking into Parliament and being intimidated is consistent with what most citizens would expect. This could manifest as feelings of awe, even powerlessness. In any case, it seems plausible that some citizens would be surprised, even disappointed, if their expectations were not met.

Secondly: getting things done. Visitors often come to Parliament with a specific purpose and goal. An intimidating building may seem conducive to that. Citizens may want an environment exuding power and purpose, as an implicit reassurance that their concerns will be addressed. This is reflected in an interviewee’s observation that:

“coming into places like Portcullis House where it’s quite informal…less impressive, intimidating, it doesn’t quite feel as important…Sometimes it is good for [publics] to come through this way and to see all the stone and statues…they feel like something’s going to be done about what they say.”

This alludes to a perception that MPs cannot be productive without an intimidating workplace. This is highly relevant to ongoing questions of trust in institutions, and those who work in them. It is also relevant to debates around ‘virtual’ or ‘hybrid parliaments, and working from home, in which parliamentarians such as Jacob Rees-Mogg have been vocal.

What do we want from our buildings?

At this point we should recall that we are citing perspectives and recollections – not direct observations – of what citizens want. ‘Users’ of this space (parliamentarians and staff) think that citizens might want intimidating buildings. Perhaps this perception reflected interviewees’ own desires for parliamentary buildings to remain intimidating? 

Our findings suggest not; there was broad consensus that changes in this respect would be a positive step, at least in theory. For example, a Conservative Peer commented that:

“Change is not a bad thing…We protect many of our traditions and it’s right that we should…at the same time…we should be in a position of saying ‘actually, doing it [another] way might work’.”

An SNP MP commented that when:

“you find yourself here as an elected Member…you’re absolutely going to go along with what this building is telling you to be, which is absolutely rooted in the establishment…this ancient place basically says…‘here’s a path for you to follow’, as opposed to people coming to this place and thinking ‘how I make a change here?’.”

However, in practice, our findings still suggest a mixed picture. A staff member ventured that “even people who structurally are alienated by parliament also wouldn’t want to change it. Because it’s kind of part of the specialness…And if you are in a very neutral, modern space, you might lose that romance and charm, that for some reason gets to a lot of people”. This appears to validate Kim Dovey’s observation that architecture:

“shape[s] a representational world wherein certain forms of identity and place are stabilized and authorized through built form. Architecture engages in imaginative play with our dreams of status, sexuality, security and immortality; our fears of violence, death and difference…architecture has great inertia – it inevitably ‘fixes’ a great deal of economic capital into built form…architecture is ‘society’s superego’ in the sense that it enforces a social order.” (2010, p.39)

We see such inertia (representation and embedding of a social order) at play here; it is even seen to apply to those who are marginalised and alienated as a result(!). This shows us just how pervasive the embedded power dynamics in parliamentary buildings can be, and how reluctant people can be – even those who would most clearly benefit – to change them.

What we talk about when we talk about intimidation

We can safely assume that a desire for intimidation is not universal. As Sabina Siebert points out, “[d]eriving a sense of power and entitlement from the buildings is interpreted by some

people as positive, but others are critical of it”. Our initial findings suggest considerable variance and complexity in what citizens want from their own parliament. 

Our interviews also demonstrate how important it is to fit the space to the audience. Citizens want a space that reflects their expectations. Sometimes they expect to be awed, sometimes they expect to have their concerns addressed, and sometimes they want to explore a welcoming and inclusive space.

There are forms of intimidation that must always be condemned and avoided.  For example, we would recall a staff member’s observation that those with experience of elite universities may feel much more at ease in the Palace. As a result, “maybe it’s more intimidating to people who don’t feel like they’re part of the groups that tend to go to those sort of places”. 

Moreover, citizens don’t just want their representatives to be responsive to their desires and expectations. They expect representative spaces – and the use of them – to be responsive. This provides an additional impetus for greater engagement. Moreover, as Matthew Flinders has pointed out, Restoration and Renewal involves a public building and public money. Citizens should therefore be part of this process. 

Staff and MPs need to be part of a dialogue about their workspace. Our interviews with MPs, in particular, revealed how much the buildings affect the work going on inside them. It is important to find out what different publics want to change about Parliament, and what they want to keep. Ideally, this should involve walking interviews, to discuss and experience the space at the same time. We may be surprised by the answers we get. What seems clear is that people can respond very positively to being overwhelmed by history, if it is their history.

Alex Prior is a Lecturer in Politics with International Relations at London South Bank University

Disclosure statement – LSBU Centre for Social Justice & Global Responsibility provided funding

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How Sunak can restore integrity, professionalism and accountability

Meg Russell, Alan Renwick, Sophie Andrews-McCarroll and Lisa James argue that for Rishi Sunak to keep his promise to put integrity, professionalism and accountability at the heart of his government, he must strengthen the standards system, enhance parliamentary scrutiny, defend the rule of law, abide by constitutional norms and defend checks and balances.

In his first speech as Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak promised to put integrity, professionalism and accountability in government at the heart of his premiership. This promise is to be warmly welcomed – commentators and experts have raised consistent alarms about slipping constitutional standards in recent years, and research shows that the public care deeply about honesty and integrity in their politicians.

But what might such a pledge look like in reality? Against the backdrop of Boris Johnson’s resignation this summer, precipitated by concerns about his approach to standards, integrity and accountability, an earlier post on this blog issued five questions for the then leadership candidates to address on rebuilding constitutional standards and restoring integrity. The subsequent premiership of Liz Truss aptly demonstrated these questions’ continuing relevance. This new post returns to the five core tasks, links them to Sunak’s stated goals, and suggests what his government might do to meet them. It demonstrates close agreement with proposals by respected experts from other bodies in response to Sunak’s pledge.

  1. Strengthening the standards system

The system for maintaining government and parliamentary standards was placed under great stress during the Johnson premiership. Successive Independent Advisers on Ministers’ Interests resigned, ministers unwisely attempted to derail a House of Commons Committee on Standards investigation, and a Privileges Committee inquiry into whether Johnson himself misled parliament is ongoing. Truss’s subsequent claim that her personal integrity was a sufficient bulwark against standards breaches fell far short of the serious commitment to institutional arrangements needed to safeguard integrity.

Rishi Sunak’s commitment to appointing a new Independent Adviser on Ministers’ Interests, expressed during the summer leadership contest, and repeated by the Minister for the Cabinet Office, Jeremy Quin, yesterday in the House of Commons (albeit following the somewhat problematic reappointment of Suella Braverman), is therefore welcome and important. Sunak should also move to strengthen the existing system. The independent Committee on Standards in Public Life (CSPL) made recommendations last year to increase the effectiveness of the Independent Adviser, including by giving them the power to initiate investigations into alleged breaches of the Ministerial Code. This proposal, along with various others made by CSPL – such as placing more regulatory codes and roles on a statutory footing – is currently before parliament, via a private members’ bill introduced by Lord (David) Anderson of Ipswich. Providing government backing for the Anderson bill would be one clear and simple way for Sunak to demonstrate his commitment to integrity.

  • Rebuilding the scrutiny role of parliament

A further crucial mechanism for both professionalism and accountability lies in the scrutiny role played by parliamentarians. Recent years have seen increasing concerns raised about rushed legislation, the heavy use of delegated powers, evasion of select committee scrutiny, and the problems that these cause: both in terms of democratic principles and the increased risk of poorly thought-through policy. The Truss mini-budget was given only two hours for debate in the Commons, compared to the usual five or so days for a budget, despite the scale of its content.

Some of these problems can be addressed by setting clear expectations of ministers – for example, that they will prioritise select committee attendance. Others will require Sunak to address the mechanisms by which his predecessors limited parliamentary oversight of their policy-making. The Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill, which is currently in the early stages of its parliamentary passage, offers an early opportunity to do this. Various experts have criticised the scale of the delegated powers that the bill would give to ministers, allowing thousands of pieces of law to be amended or scrapped with only minimal parliamentary oversight. The extent of the ministerial powers in the Northern Ireland Protocol Bill, currently before the House of Lords, has likewise caused alarm. It is probable that the House of Lords will seek to increase the parliamentary controls on the delegated powers contained in both bills; government openness to such amendments would be a further indication that the Sunak administration is serious about getting democratic accountability back on track.

  • Defending the rule of law

Integrity and accountability in government both demand a renewed commitment to the rule of law, and to respecting both domestic and international legal obligations.

Domestically, there have been attacks on the courts, as further outlined below. And ministers have too often resorted to using ‘ouster clauses’ to remove certain areas of decision-making from legal challenge.

Significant concerns have also been raised about the willingness of both the Johnson and Truss governments to risk breaching international law. The most high-profile instances of this have concerned their approach to the Northern Ireland Protocol. Sunak now inherits the Northern Ireland Protocol Bill, which began its life under Johnson and was championed by Truss. The bill, which is currently before the House of Lords, has been described as ‘not constitutional’ by the (Conservative) chair of the Commons Northern Ireland Affairs Committee, and as a departure from the UK’s international obligations by the chair (again Conservative) of the Commons Justice Committee. The Lords is expected to amend the bill significantly, at a minimum to raise the bar which ministers must meet if they wish to breach international law. Sunak should think carefully before whipping his MPs to vote against such amendments when they return to the Commons, and should put significant efforts in the meantime into finding a negotiated solution to the Protocol controversy.

  • Abiding by long-established constitutional norms

Also essential to integrity, professionalism and accountability is adherence to the conventions and traditions which underpin the UK’s political constitution. One important step would be a pledge to abide by the recommendations of the House of Lords Appointments Commission, which vets peerage nominees for propriety – which Johnson didn’t do. Sunak should also take care over the number of members appointed to the Lords – Johnson’s appointments (87 while in officeplus another 26 handed on to Truss, and others possibly to follow) flouted the recommendations of the committee established by the Lord Speaker to manage down the size of the chamber. Excessive prime ministerial patronage is deeply unpopular with the public, and Sunak should return to the standards of restraint established by Theresa May.

The Johnson government was also notable for its willingness to risk drawing the monarchy into political controversy – whether through the unlawful prorogation, suggestions in 2019 that he might ‘dare the Queen to sack him’, or his reluctance earlier this year to rule out requesting a dissolution of parliament in order to circumvent his removal from office by his own MPs. This indicated a willingness to push constitutional arrangements to their limits, and undermine the non-political status of the monarch. The Sunak government should resolutely avoid taking such risks.

  • Defending political institutions and checks and balances

Finally, a critical aspect of restoring professionalism to public life is repairing the relationships between government and the various constitutional actors which provide institutional checks and balances in policy-making. In addition to parliament, these include the courts, regulators and the civil service. One simple way of demonstrating respect for these institutions would be to avoid the kind of rhetorical attacks on the judiciary, legal professionals, and civil servants which appeared to be sanctioned by both Johnson and Truss. Sunak should also refuse to tolerate the scapegoating of senior civil servants – seen most recently through the unorthodox sacking of Tom Scholar.

The Johnson and Truss governments sought in particular to sideline institutions which they saw as defenders of ‘orthodoxy’. While policy disagreements are legitimate, attempts to shut down or circumvent potential critics are incompatible with professionalism in government. Such efforts were most recently evident in the Truss government’s attempt to bypass the usual independent economic assessments for its mini-budget, and strained relationship with the Bank of England – with very damaging effect. Sunak has promised a different approach, and this welcome recognition of the value of checks and balances should extend to other areas.

Conclusion

For Rishi Sunak to emphasise integrity, professionalism and accountability as central to his leadership is not only constitutionally sound, but also politically astute. Recent Constitution Unit research has shown that members of the public care deeply about honesty and integrity in their politicians. They support an independent and professional civil service, a stronger role for regulators, an ongoing, powerful role for the courts in preventing abuses, and deeper parliamentary scrutiny and accountability. There will be ample opportunities for Rishi Sunak to demonstrate his commitment to these principles in the coming weeks and months.

About the authors

Meg Russell FBA is Professor of British and Comparative Politics at UCL and Director of the Constitution Unit.

Alan Renwick is Professor of Democratic Politics at UCL and Deputy Director of the Constitution Unit.

Sophie Andrews-McCarroll is Impact Research Fellow at the Constitution Unit.

Lisa James is a Research Fellow in the Constitution Unit.

This blog post was originally published on the Constitution Unit’s Blog. We are grateful to the Constitution Unit for allowing us to republish the post. You can see the original post here: https://constitution-unit.com/2022/10/27/how-sunak-can-restore-integrity-professionalism-and-accountability/

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There’s a time and place for prorogation — and this is it

As I sit and watch the turmoil at Westminster on the morning (afternoon in London) that Liz Truss announced her resignation; the morning that the 1922 Committee of Conservative backbenchers scramble to find a leader in a week’s time; a seemingly firm date of October 31 for a budget statement from a recently appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer; and cries for an election, there seems to be no way forward that does not continue the chaos.  But there just may be a way to calm the waters somewhat.  A proper and timely use of prorogation.

Prorogation, where one session of Parliament ends and a new session is prepared for, has received much negative press and commentary in the last few years, in the UK and in Canada.   It has been seen as a way for a Prime Minister and a government to avoid facing Parliament when there was an imminent need for a decision of Parliament.   But there are times when prorogation is appropriate.  In most cases it is used when a parliamentary session has effectively exhausted the government’s agenda and there is a belief that the government needs to set out the next stages of its “new” agenda for the following session.  In some countries this is effectively set as an annual or biannual process, in others it is discretionary.  In either case, there is also room for the Prime Minister to ask for the King to prorogue Parliament as a necessary re-set button, either when a new King’s Speech is required to address an emergency, or to set out a new way forward for the government in light of changed circumstances.  Sometimes, such pauses are just necessary to stop, rethink, plan and explain a way forward.  The present circumstances would, I suggest, be such a cas, although some consideration would have to be given to ensuring that legislation that meets the revised agenda, or to meet urgent needs is carried forward in the next session.   

The way forward would be for the Conservative party to choose a leader, have the King appoint them as Prime Minster, then have that person request that Parliament be prorogued for a couple of weeks to allow them to put a cabinet together, prepare an agenda, and then to have that agenda presented to Parliament through a King’s Speech. There would then follow debate and a vote of the House of Commons in support of the Speech or else defeat and an election.  This process would allow the new Prime Minister to gather their thoughts, form a cabinet with appropriate deliberation, and present a coherent plan to Parliament to be aired and discussed before specific actions are taken.  It would also result in the constitutional legitimacy that the House of Commons can provide by voting on the King’s Speech.  

No doubt there will be those who will argue that this is merely a political tactic and an attempt to govern without facing Parliament. Or else they will claim it is a way to avoid addressing the urgent needs of the country in difficult economic and international times.  Surely, a short pause for a new Prime Minister and their cabinet to work their way through the issues, consult with the cabinet, the caucus, the public service, experts and concerned parties, is better than trying to address the issues piecemeal and in short soundbites amid the clamouring from all directions.

For those who argue that there has been a promise to deliver a much need economic update or mini-budget on or before October 31, otherwise the country and the economy will lose the confidence of the international community and the public, one need only look at the rushed and ill considered economic policies made by Liz Truss without fully thinking them through.  By setting a timeline that would result in a Prime Minister being chosen by next Friday and expecting such a major economic statement the following Monday, the scene is set for history to repeat itself.  While the country and the economic world need an indication of how the UK proposes to address the serious issues of inflation, income security and energy sustainability, the new Prime Minister and Chancellor will undoubtedly be granted the time necessary to put together a considered and responsive budget.  It is also more likely that the public and international markets will accept and understand the position of the budget if it is set within the context of an overall government agenda laid out in a King’s Speech.  Calm and measured is often what is needed, not bold and reckless – just to meet an artificial deadline set by predecessors.

There are, and will continue to be, those who argue that an election is needed and that whoever is chosen as Prime Minister will lack any mandate to govern.  While it may be true that the Prime Minister and their government will not have faced the electorate as such, the Westminster system of government is not one that works in such a straight line.  The question of legitimacy and capacity to govern is one that is based on parliamentary support and confidence, with the public having the ability to judge what has occurred in the previous Parliament, as much as looking forward to the next.  The Prime Minister and cabinet emerge from the various members of the House of Commons.  It is the Commons, as a collection of elected representatives, that determines who is best able to govern.  The Commons, by its votes on major proposals and legislation demonstrates confidence in the government and continually tests the government as it delivers on its proposed agenda and faces events that arise during the life of the Parliament. Although the most visible test of confidence comes in the form of a straight-up motion of non-confidence, votes on major government initiatives can also demonstrate confidence.  The Commons is given the opportunity to discuss the proposed agenda through votes on, among other matters, the King’s Speech and budgetary matters   It is the Commons, as representatives, not the public, that decides these issues during the life of a Parliament.  We elect Parliaments (members of the House of Commons) not governments.  

Immediately following an election, we look to the make-up of Parliament to determine who is likely to be called on as Prime Minister to form a government.  It may be the existing Prime Minister, who had the confidence of the previous House of Commons, or it may be a new Prime Minister.  If a new Prime Minister, they may be given a slightly longer period of time to form a government and prepare a King’s Speech to open the new Parliament.  It is in that Parliament that the new Prime Minister is tested and secures the legitimacy to govern.   It is at this time, and through this mechanism, that the new Prime Minister sets out their agenda and seeks support of the government’s mandate.  Although a bit more traumatic, and possibly chaotic, sometimes it is necessary to choose a new Prime Minister during the course of a sitting Parliament.  In such circumstances, it is arguably only right that they have the same opportunity as a Prime Minister appointed following an election to choose their cabinet from members of the House of Commons, set their own course of action in the circumstances, and to present them to and have them tested in Parliament, in the same manner.

For comparison, when dissolution occurs, Parliament ends for the length of the election and the time to put a government together and prepare a King’s Speech and for the Prime Minister to meet Parliament.  This can take longer when there is a change of Prime Minister and there is a question of who should be called on to take on that role.  There is no parliamentary business, budget or focussed parliamentary debate during this time.   Although Parliament ceases to exist during this time, the previous Prime Minister and government continue to govern, albeit in a reduced capacity.   In the present circumstances, if the Prime Minister has resigned, another person would still need to be called on to be Prime Minister, thus leading to a different type of constitutional “crisis”.   It is also noted that a dissolution is considerably longer than a prorogation, which suspends Parliament for a shorter, defined period, and allows Parliament to be recalled to consider a new Agenda, or at least to address enough of the issues required to provide the degree of stability that might be required to cover the dissolution and election period.  

Elections are not the only safety valve in a Westminster democracy.  Prorogation as a reset can provide a similar respite when necessary.  

Many events occur during the life of a Parliament which the public looks to the Parliament and the government to resolve.  Economic challenges, wars, international crises, natural disasters and political change.  Over the course of five years, the economic, international and political landscapes change.  Political fortunes, membership and leadership of the various parties and caucus also change.   When such changes occur the Parliament that was elected is required to change with them.   In some such cases, the government through the testing of Parliament requires a reset.   In the present circumstances, a new Prime Minister taking a short pause, preparing an agenda and seeking a new mandate through the elected House of Commons, could provide the stability, even if temporary, that the UK needs. Whether Parliament supports the new Prime Minister, the government and the direction proposed in the King’s Speech, or whether Parliament believes it is time for the electorate to decide, is a decision for the House of Commons.   Whether they have made the right decision will ultimately be decided by the electorate.

The present situation is like the driver who tries to fix the engine of a moving car while keeping the car on the road at the same time.  It’s just better to pull the car to the side of the road, fix the car, read the map, and then get back on the road.

Steven Chaplin, Adjunct Professor Common Law and Fellow uOttawa Public Law Centre

This blog post was originally published on the UK Constitutional Law Blog. The original post is available here:

S. Chaplin, ‘There’s a Time and Place for Prorogation—and this is it’, U.K. Const. L. Blog (25th October 2022) https://ukconstitutionallaw.org/2022/10/25/steven-chaplin-theres-a-time-and-place-for-prorogation-and-this-is-it/

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Multilevel blame and credit games: How is the European Union held responsible for economic crises?

Agni Poullikka* examines the factors affecting how Members of Parliament (MPs) in Member States (MS) of the European Union (EU) engage in responsibility management for recent economic crises, focusing on the Eurozone crisis and the economic consequences of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. Drawing on the theoretical framework of blame and credit strategies, the author combines quantitative text analysis tools with hand coding to derive insights about attribution of responsibility to the EU.

Why should we care about this?

As a result of policy responses to recent crises, the scope and depth of policymaking at the EU level is increasing. Given the EU’s multilevel governance structure, responsibility for significant policy areas is fractured across different levels of governance and multiple institutions, with some of them being unelected. For instance, both national governments and the European Central Bank (ECB) are responsible for economic policymaking for Eurozone member countries. This can be problematic for the representative model of democracy, which posits that voters should be able to discern who are the decision-makers and then hold them accountable at the ballot box. Instead, the EU’s institutional complexity blurs the clarity of responsibility and creates incentives for elected actors, such as MPs, to obfuscate responsibility in relation to adverse situations. This is the research focus of this paper, which explores the factors affecting how MPs attribute responsibility to the EU for two recent economic crises; the Eurozone crisis (2008-2016) and the COVID-19 pandemic (2020-2022). 

What is responsibility management?

To address this question, this paper focuses on a specific type of political communication, namely strategic communication to engage in responsibility management. The umbrella term ‘responsibility management’ captures presentational behaviours that correspond to either a blame or a credit strategy. A blame strategy is the act of attributing responsibility for something considered bad to some person or entity, whilst a credit strategy is the act of accepting responsibility for something bad and attempting to present it in a positive light by turning blame into credit (Hood, 2011). 

I use this framework to inform my theoretical model, with the aim of deriving hypotheses about how institutional and preference-based factors affect the responsibility management of MPs and I aggregate the analysis to the party level. The underlying assumption is that when communicating about a negative situation, such as an economic crisis, MPs have a strategic motivation to maximise their gains at the next election. In other words, the way in which they attribute responsibility for the crisis is fuelled by their electoral incentives. These incentives can vary depending on a number of factors. This paper focuses on two. On the one hand, there are institutional factors such as Eurozone membership and whether there is a coalition or single-party government. 

On the other hand, preference-based factors include a party’s political ideology, its predisposition towards the EU and whether it is in government or in opposition. Considering a preference-based factor, the paper expects that government parties engage in more credit strategies compared to opposition parties, regardless of their predisposition towards the EU. One explanation for this could be that even if a government party were Eurosceptic, it would still be interested in portraying the EU in a positive light because the government is involved in decision-making at the EU level through its role at the European Council. 

How can we analyse responsibility management?

Given the theoretical focus on the political communication of MPs, the paper analyses textual data. The textual data consist of plenary session minutes of national parliaments in EU MS. For the Eurozone crisis, the countries covered are the following: Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Netherlands, Portugal, Sweden, Spain and the United Kingdom (UK). Given that the UK was an EU MS during the Eurozone crisis, it is included in the analysis. For the COVID-19 crisis, the countries are Belgium, Czech Republic, Spain, Denmark and Netherlands. This country selection allows for cross-national as well as cross-temporal comparisons between the two crises.

The methodological approach combines quantitative text analysis tools with hand coding. First, a subset of the data is created for one country, which includes only the time period of each crisis. Second, a dictionary of crisis-related terms is created and applied in order to select only the speeches that discuss the economic crisis. Third, the application of a regular expression dictionary of EU related terms selects sentences that refer to the EU (Rauh, 2015; Rauh and de Wilde, 2014; Hunter 2021). These sentences are more likely to include a responsibility attribution towards the EU. Fourth, a sentiment analysis is run, which can identify whether a sentence includes a blame (negative sentiment), or a credit strategy (positive sentiment). Fifth, hand coding is deployed to understand towards whom the negative or positive sentiment is directed. If that actor is EU-related, then the sentence is coded as an instance of blame or credit depending on the sentiment. This analysis is completed for all the countries in the dataset. Considered in tandem, the findings will explain how MPs assign responsibility to the EU and how institutional and preference-based factors affect this.

What are some findings about responsibility management?

To bring the discussion to life, Figures 1-3 present descriptive analyses about the responsibility management of the three main UK parties. The proportions correspond to the proportion of statements that were either a blame or a credit strategy directed towards the EU or towards the EU and other actors, out of the total statements that correspond to responsibility management. Whilst Labour was in government before 2010, the Conservatives were elected in power in 2010 and formed a coalition with the Liberal Democrats until 2015. After winning the 2015 elections, the Conservatives formed a single-party government.

Figure1 reveals the findings for Labour, a left-wing party with favourable predisposition towards the EU. When the Labour party was in government, their communication strategies were characterised by credit, whereas when they were in opposition they switched to more blame strategies. This could indicate that the government-opposition dynamic supersedes their affinity towards the EU. In other words, parties that support the EU might still opt for blame strategies in an attempt to scapegoat the EU and the incumbent government, thereby increasing their chances at the ballot box in the next election. 

Figure 1: Labour responsibility management (2008-2016)

Figure 2 demonstrates that overall the Conservatives, a right-wing party with Eurosceptic tendencies gave more blame rather than credit to the EU. Nevertheless, after coming to power in 2010, they increased their credit towards the EU compared to earlier years. This could confirm the expectation that when parties are in government they are more likely to credit the EU, regardless of their predisposition towards it. Lastly, Figure 3 looks at the Liberal Democrats, a liberal Europhile party. After becoming part of the governing coalition in 2010, they adopted an approach of neither blaming nor crediting the EU, as evidenced by the low values in Figure 3. This could be interpreted as an attempt of blame avoidance as they distance themselves from the topic and avoid discussing it in an emotive way. This strategy would enable them to neither compromise their preference towards the EU nor disappoint their coalition partners. 

Figure 2: Conservatives responsibility management (2008-2016)
Figure 3: Liberal Democrats responsibility management (2008-2016)

Concluding remarks 

This paper seeks to examine responsibility management for economic crises in the EU. The preliminary findings from the UK lend some support to the argument that parties blame and credit the EU with strategic considerations derived from institutional and preference-based factors in mind. The paper will proceed to explore these trends for other EU MS, with the aim of forming a comprehensive understanding of how MPs attribute responsibility to the EU for economic crises. In so doing, it can contribute to debates on the EU’s democratic accountability in policymaking and academic circles.

*Agni is a PhD Researcher at the Department of International Politics at City, University of London. Her research spans several topics in European political economy, focusing on economic crises and political communication. This blog post is based on a paper delivered at the PSA Parliaments Conference 2022.

References

Hood, C. (2011). The Blame Game: Spin, Bureaucracy and Self-preservation in Government. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Hunter, T. (2021). Home Style: Governments, Parties, and the Domestic Presentation of European Integration. PhD Dissertation for the London School of Economics European Institute.

Rauh, C. and De Wilde, P. (2018). The Opposition Deficit in EU Accountability: Evidence from over 20 Years of Plenary Debate in Four Member States. European Journal of Political Research, 57(01), 194-216.

Rauh, C. (2015). Communicating Supranational Governance? The Salience of EU Affairs in the German Bundestag, 1991–2013. European Union Politics, 16(01), 116–138.

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How did the Prime Minister win a vote in Parliament and lose her authority?

It is remarkable that after a series of U-turns on key policy announcements and the resignation of two senior members of her Cabinet, the event which may well have precipitated the Prime Minister’s resignation was a parliamentary vote on an opposition motion which the Government actually won.

To be sure, many would argue that the Prime Minister’s position was already untenable before Wednesday evening but any hopes of retaining office went downhill quickly following the chaotic mismanagement of a vote on a Labour motion on fracking. While the Labour Party may take some pleasure in contributing to PM’s downfall, much of the damage was self-inflicted.

What is an opposition day debate?

Wednesday was one of twenty afternoons set aside in each parliamentary session to debate issues raised by opposition parties. Although so-called opposition days allow the opposition to set the agenda, they rarely cause serious difficulties for a government which can command a majority in the House of Commons. A government with a majority can usually be assured of defeating an opposition motion. Moreover, even if the government loses a vote on an opposition day motion, in most cases these are not considered to be binding and the government is not obliged to make any changes in response. Consequently, government’s may even choose to ignore an opposition motion entirely and not bother voting at all. Opposition days do provide an important opportunity for opposition parties to raise issues of concern and possibly to embarrass the government by forcing its MPs to vote against something which may be popular, such as extending free school meals, but can’t generally be used to force the government to take action.

Labour’s motion on fracking was slightly different in that it included a clause which would set aside the standing orders of the House of Commons, which state that the government has control over parliamentary business. The motion then allowed for the opposition to take control of the parliamentary order paper at a later date (29th November) in order to bring forward a bill which would ban the use of fracking in the UK. This was an unusual tactic but reflects a similar episode during the Brexit debates in 2019, when a group of MPs took control of the parliamentary agenda in order to bring forward a bill to prevent a no-deal Brexit.

This was an interesting tactic by Labour, facilitating a parliamentary vote on the standing orders which can be changed by a vote in the House, rather than seeking to press the government to take action without any real power to compel it to do so. As a result, the opposition sought to turn a non-binding opposition motion into a resolution with real effects. This meant the government could not afford simply to ignore the opposition motion and cede control of the legislative agenda to Labour.

Moreover, Labour’s decision to focus on fracking was also key. The Prime Minister had proposed lifting the ban on fracking, but this is an issue on which Conservative MPs are divided. Not only was a moratorium on fracking included in the party’s 2019 manifesto, but several Conservative MPs  represent constituencies where plans for fracking have been subject to considerable local opposition. In short Labour sought to force Conservative MPs to vote against a key manifesto pledge and in favour of something which many of them oppose. By combining this with an attempt to take control of the parliamentary agenda, Labour effectively forced the government into a position in which it felt the need to whip its MPs to vote against the motion.

Three-line whips and confidence motions

While Labour might be seen to have laid a trap for the government, the chaos which followed was largely self-inflicted. The Conservative response was to issue a three-line whip, effectively compelling Conservative MPs to vote against the opposition motion or be subject to disciplinary action. Given the size of the government’s majority this should have been enough to defeat the motion. It is possible that several Conservative MPs would have abstained, some may even have decided to vote for the Labour motion, although this seems unlikely. Although this is a serious disciplinary matter, as several commentators have since observed, the penalty for abstaining on a three-line whip is unlikely to have extended to having the whip withdrawn and, if the MPs in question had particular constituency concerns, the government would usually have been sympathetic to their predicament.

However, at some point on Wednesday, the Government decided to make this a confidence motion, implying that if the government was defeated it would be forced to resign and call a general election. Although set piece votes, such as those on the Queen’s speech or the budget are generally considered to be confidence issues which the government must win, the government can declare any vote a matter of confidence. It was, however, a considerable escalation of the stakes to make a vote on an opposition motion on such a divisive issue a confidence vote.

Ironically opposition days can be used to table motions of no confidence in the government and unlike most opposition day motions these are considered binding. Given the difficulties facing the Truss government Labour may well have considered this, but perhaps dismissed the idea on the grounds that a confidence motion was more likely to unite Conservative MPs around their leader. By choosing to turn a vote on which its MPs are divided into a confidence vote, the Conservative leadership, however, managed to create a level of disruption which the Labour opposition could not hope to have achieved simply by tabling a confidence motion. MPs who might reasonably be allowed to quietly abstain on an issue which was particularly sensitive in their constituencies, were now being asked to put their own re-election chances on the line to prop up the Prime Minister.

It is not clear why the government chose to do this. One must assume that Conservative whips felt that a three-line whip was not enough to ensure victory and there was a real danger that Labour would win the vote. It is also worth considering the wider implications of a Labour victory. If Labour had been successful in seizing the agenda and bringing forward its own legislation on this issue, it might well have repeated the trick on subsequent opposition days, significantly disrupting the government’s own legislative agenda.

It’s hard to know what intelligence Conservative whips had about the scale of the potential backbench rebellion on the Labour motion but there is very little evidence that a sizeable and damaging rebellion was impending. On Wednesday afternoon less than a handful of Conservative MPs publicly stated that they could not vote with the government on this motion, and most of the dismay on Conservative benches revolved around the fact that the government had chosen to make this a confidence issue.

Confusion in the chamber and in scuffles in the lobby

The government’s problems were compounded by the handling of the issue as the day progressed. Having decided to make this already divisive issue the one on which the Truss government would survive or fall, someone in number 10 got cold feet and decided not to risk it. The minister closing the debate at the despatch box, Graham Stuart, dismayed the House by stating that ‘quite clearly, this is not a confidence vote’, repeating ‘obviously this is not a confidence vote’. Stuart was asked to clarify this by the Conservative MP, Ruth Edwards, who stated ‘many of us have been told today by our Whips that if we vote for, or abstain from voting against, this motion, we will lose the Whip.’ His response, ‘that is a matter for party managers, and I am not a party manager’ was hardly a lesson in clarity.

The effect of this was twofold. There was clearly some confusion as to whether this was a confidence issue. Stuart’s initial statement that it was not a confidence issue was arguably clear, but his follow up did little to settle the matter, particularly for MPs who had been told all day by the whips, presumably in the most robust terms, that they must vote with the government to prevent a general election. Secondly, it is apparent that this last-minute change had not been communicated to the whips, effectively undermining their authority. As Conservative MPs made their way into the division lobbies there were reports that the chief whip and the deputy chief whip had both resigned, and for several hours afterwards the government was unable to confirm if either were still in place.

There were also reports of an unseemly row between Conservative MPs in the division lobby. A groups of Conservative MPs, including cabinet members, were accused of physically manhandling at least one reluctant Conservative MP into the lobby in support of the government, prompting the speaker to launch an investigation into bullying.

To compound the confusion, in the commotion in the division lobbies it is apparent that several MPs failed to record their vote using the electronic card readers when entering the lobbies. For a time it appeared that the Conservative rebellion was even greater than it eventually proved to be, and perhaps most remarkably, that the Prime Minister had not voted.

In the end the Conservatives won the vote with some ease. The Labour motion was defeated, it was later announced that the whips had not resigned, and the record was corrected to show that the Prime Minister had voted with most of the rest of her party. Thirty-two Conservative MPs abstained, although some of these will have had permission to miss the vote and will presumably have been paired with an opposition MP who was also missing.  In a bizarre coda at 1.30 in the morning Downing Street issued a statement that although the vote had not been a confidence issue, it had still been a three-line whip and those who did not have a reasonable excuse for their absence would face ‘proportionate disciplinary action.’ It is not clear if this process had begun by the time the Prime Minister resigned twelve hours later.

With its fracking motion Labour presented the government with a knotty problem, which certainly required careful handling. Instead, the government contrived to alienate its own embattled backbenchers by selecting the nuclear option and making it a confidence vote. It then further alienated them by changing its position only minutes before the vote took place. The melee in the division lobby only added to the sense of confusion and lack of control at the heart of government. That the government won the vote is largely irrelevant, as in the process it lost what remaining credibility it had amongst its own MPs. The episode is a remarkable example of the importance of party management in the House of Commons and that opposition parties do not necessarily need to win a parliamentary vote in order to undermine the government.

Dr Andrew Defty, Associate Professor of Politics at the University of Lincoln 

This post was originally published on the Who Runs Britain Blog and can be found here: https://whorunsbritain.blogs.lincoln.ac.uk/2022/10/21/how-did-the-prime-minister-win-a-vote-in-parliament-and-lose-her-authority/