Tag: House of Commons

Blog

Select Committees Should Leave the Westminster Bubble

Post author By psaparliaments
Post date December 3, 2015

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

By Leanne-Marie McCarthy-Cotter

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

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

Blog

Parliamentary Researchers: The unsung heroes of Westminster?

Post author By psaparliaments
Post date November 18, 2015

By Robert Dale

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

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

Blog

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

Post author By psaparliaments
Post date October 14, 2015

By Mark Shephard

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

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

Blog

Interpreting Parliament, but how?

Post author By psaparliaments
Post date September 21, 2015

By Marc Geddes

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

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

Blog

What is a good ethnography of Parliament?

Post author By psaparliaments
Post date July 29, 2015

By Emma Crewe

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

Tags culture, House of Commons, House of Lords, methodology, parliament, reflexivity, research methods, social networks

Blog

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

Post author By psaparliaments
Post date June 10, 2015

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

By Ben Goldsborough

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

Tags Betty Boothroyd, House of Commons, John Bercow, Michael Martin, parliamentary scrutiny, Private Notice Questions, Speaker, UK Parliament, UQs, Urgent Questions

Blog

Select committees in the 2015 Parliament

Post author By psaparliaments
Post date June 5, 2015

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

By Hannah White

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

Limited structural change

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

Tags House of Commons, Institute for Government, scrutiny, select committees, UK Parliament

Blog

Do select committees deserve ‘universal praise’?

Post author By psaparliaments
Post date May 21, 2015

By Stephen Bates and Mark Goodwin

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

Tags House of Commons, media, parliamentary scrutiny, select committees, UK Parliament

Blog News

How much trouble will the Tory rebels cause David Cameron?

Post author By psaparliaments
Post date May 19, 2015

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

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

Post author By psaparliaments
Post date April 28, 2015

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

By Sarah Childs

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

Tags gender, general election 2015, House of Commons, UK Parliament