Tag: House of Commons

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Parliamentary Select Committees: Are elected chairs the key to their success?

Post author By psaparliaments
Post date July 5, 2016

By Mark Goodwin, Stephen Bates and Steve McKay

In the past two months, two of Britain’s richest men have been forced by Parliament to admit to, and apologise for, serious failings in their business practices that could end up costing them millions in compensation. Sports Direct owner Mike Ashley admitted to the Business, Innovation and Skills Select Committee that, despite being Britain’s 22nd richest person with an estimated fortune of £3.5bn, he had not been paying staff in the company’s main warehouse the minimum wage. A few weeks later, the same committee witnessed what many saw as a bizarre performance from another British billionaire, Sir Philip Green, as his failings in the sale of British Home Stores were exposed in between complaints about excessive staring from the committee members. These are just the latest in a string of high profile inquiries by parliamentary select committees over the past six years that have also seen Rupert Murdoch attacked with a custard pie, Michael Gove alleging a ‘Trot conspiracy’ in English schools and a vice president of Google being informed that “you do evil”.

Tags committee chairs, executive-legislative relations, House of Commons, leadership, Mike Ashley, parliamentary scrutiny, select committees, Sir Philip Green

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Parliamentary sovereignty and the Human Rights Act 1998

Post author By psaparliaments
Post date June 20, 2016

By Matthew Burton

In a recent post on this blog, Chris Kirkland highlights the problematic nature of the concept of sovereignty in relation to the Brexit debate and the forthcoming referendum on the UK’s membership of the European Union. On the one hand, Brexit campaigners argue that the UK has already lost its sovereignty to the European Union. A legally precise argument in this vein would point to the EU doctrines of supremacy and direct effect, which allow nationals of Member States of the EU to enforce EU law within the courts of the Member States, and requires EU law to take priority whenever it conflicts with a principle of domestic law. On the other hand, as the referendum demonstrates, the Westminster Parliament is free to legislate to withdraw from the EU whenever it wishes, and from a legal perspective at least, could do so without the need for any kind of referendum or national vote.

Tags European Court of Human Rights, House of Commons, human rights, Human Rights Act 1998, parliamentary scrutiny, parliamentary sovereignty, scrutiny

Blog

How Twitter conversations highlight the different purposes of petitioning

Post author By psaparliaments
Post date June 15, 2016

By Cristina Leston-Bandeira and Viktoria Spaiser

Hashtag conversations over Twitter are common place. They are used to comment on TV programmes, conferences, general themes and now petitions. The new Petitions Committee of the House of Commons has been using hashtags to support the development of discussions associated with the themes of the petitions being debated in parliament. Are these discussions on Twitter just a lot of hot air, come and gone, or can they help us understand the different purposes of petitioning? In this blog piece, we find that, instead of just noise, these Twitter discussions help to identify themes linked to petitions, different levels of sentiment associated to petitions, varying levels of polarisation, but also those petitions that despite achieving very high numbers of signatures, actually have little traction.

Tags House of Commons, petitions, Petitions Committee, public engagement, Twitter, UK Parliament

Blog

The Petitions Committee’s first six months – paving the way for a new style of public engagement

Post author By psaparliaments
Post date December 14, 2015

Please note that this piece was originally published on the Constitution Unit blog, and is available here.

The 2015 parliament has seen the establishment of a new Petitions Committee and e-petitions system. Cristina Leston-Bandeira discusses the committee’s initial activity, arguing that it has achieved much in the space of six months and has the potential to pave the way towards a new kind of public engagement with parliament.

Tags digital democracy, House of Commons, petitions

Blog

The Art of Oratory in the House of Commons

Post author By psaparliaments
Post date December 7, 2015

By Andrew Crines

The House of Commons represents one of the main arenas where our politicians seek to make a name for themselves. Be that in the feisty engagements at PMQs, or more generally through the normal deliberative debates, noteworthy MPs have used the Chamber to orate effectively when pursuing a particular line.

Tags Enoch Powell, Geoffrey Howe, Hilary Benn, House of Commons, Margaret Thatcher, Michael Foot, oratory, rhetoric, SyriaVote, UK Parliament

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

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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