London: Britain’s labour Party officially announced plans to abolish the country’s unelected legislative chamber, the House of Lords, and replace it with an elected chamber, if the party is elected. The announcement is based on 155 pages reports ‘A New Britain: Renewing Our Democracy and Rebuilding Our Economy’, prepared by a Commission led by former U.K. Prime Minister Gordon Brown. The report spread in 3 Sections and 12 Chapters containing 40 proposals.
We are producing the chapters related to Parliamentary reforms:
Chapter 10:
Cleaning Up Westminster
New faces are not enough to clean up politics – new rules and different ways of working are essential to restoring the public’s trust in our political system. The Johnson administration of 2019 to 2022 saw constitutional norms and established expectations of propriety wholly disregarded, and the mechanisms for enforcing them found seriously wanting. The private economic interests of the wealthy were evident at the centre of government, and the rules for enforcing standards in public life collapsed.
This must never be allowed to happen again: we need new, tougher rules and more rigorous enforcement of them if we are to ensure both the absence of corrupt behaviour and the adherence to high standards in public life. If the public are to trust our political system, they must be assured that there are clear standards for those in public office, and swift, effective, and independent processes which deal with those who breach them.
We believe the following recommendations will achieve that:
• Eliminating foreign money from UK politics
• Banning the vast majority of second jobs for MPs
• A new Independent Integrity and Ethics Commission, with the power to investigate breaches of a new, stronger code of conduct
• A powerful new body to ensure all appointments in public life are made on merit
• Juries of ordinary citizens to determine whether rules have been broken
• A new UK wide anti-corruption Commissioner.
Foreign Money
There is too much foreign money in British politics. Quite simply, there should be none. No British political party should accept donations from foreign citizens, foreign businesses or from institutions registered in tax havens outside the United Kingdom, and they should be obliged to make sure that they do not do so. This is already a criminal offence, yet it is concerning that no prosecution has ever been made, despite evidence of inappropriate overseas donations taking place.
We therefore envisage the Electoral Commission playing a more comprehensive role in clamping down on this objectionable practice. To do so it needs more powers: firstly, to obtain information to see whether there is a problem, without necessarily mounting a full formal investigation; secondly, to seek a court order freezing any donation whose status was uncertain while it was being investigated. The law prohibiting foreign donations should also be extended to those donations where the beneficial owner is overseas, even if the person who actually made the donation is not. And political parties should be under stronger obligations to ensure that they have full knowledge of their large donors and their status.
Transparency and freedom of information
Transparency is critical in ensuring central government works in the interests of all the people of this country. Yet in recent years Whitehall, which has responsibility for the Information Commissioner’s Office, has increasingly obstructed freedom of information. Parliament which, unlike Whitehall, is accountable to the people, should take over responsibility for the Information Commissioner’s Office to place central government under more effective scrutiny. FOI should also be expanded to be applied to all new public service contracts delivered by private companies.
Standards in Public Life
Proper behaviour in public life is however more than simply the absence of suspicious money. Since the work of the Nolan committee in 1995 – itself a response to concerns much less blatant than we have seen in recent years – there has been a common understanding of the underlying principles that should govern public life and public service, but the mechanisms for enforcing these have proved seriously wanting. In particular, the rules for the behaviour of ministers, set out in the ministerial code, and the mechanisms for enforcing them have proved wholly inadequate to deal with an administration which has simply disregarded them.
The ministerial code is just a set of rules decided by the Prime Minister of the day on how to run his or her government, as if what is right and wrong in government changes depending on who is in office. Most blatant of all, it is written by, amended by, and enforced by the Prime Minister, and when he or she chooses repeatedly to breach its provisions there is no sanction of any sort available. The Prime Minister’s advisor on ethics is essentially a powerless office, acting only at the behest of the Prime Minister and liable to be overruled or just ignored by the Prime Minister, as we saw Boris Johnson repeatedly do. Individuals of integrity who have sought to discharge that office have found that their positions are impossible, and have resigned. We believe this is wholly unacceptable.
We therefore propose first of all, that the code of conduct for ministers should be separated out from the day today procedures for the operation of government, and set out in a code which is not determined by the Prime Minister of the day, but continuing and proposed to and approved by both Houses of Parliament. It should not change with every change of government.
Instead of the impossible position of the Prime Ministers’ advisor, an Independent Integrity and Ethics Commission should take on the role of investigating alleged breaches of the code – as already advocated by the Labour Party. It should be Commisson on the UK’s Future 130 able to do so whether the Prime Minister of the day agrees or not, and the Cabinet Secretary and other permanent civil servants who work for the government should be under a legal obligation to cooperate with it.
As we have seen, among the many breaches of proper standards by the Johnson administration has been a complete disregard for constitutional proprieties. Our next chapter sets out new constitutional protections involving the reformed second chamber of Parliament, which will guard against the most egregious such breaches. But there must be an expectation on ministers to adhere to the general rules of the UK constitution. We therefore propose that the existing cabinet manual, which sets out in some detail the constitutional expectations on those in government, should itself become part of the ministerial code of conduct. It too should be approved by Parliament, both the House of Commons and the new second chamber, and failure to follow the principles of that Manual should be regarded as a breach of the ministerial code of conduct.
MPs’ conduct and second jobs
The Ethics and Integrity Commission dealing with Ministers should be kept separate from the system which investigates ethical breaches by MPs and members of the second chamber, comprised of the Committee on Standards, the Parliamentary Commissioner on Standards, and the Independent Grievance and Complaints System. However the government should consult on whether these bodies have the resources and powers required to do their job, and also to ensure that those who submit complaints are properly supported throughout this process.
Recent high-profile examples of sitting MPs with outside earnings have shone a light on the significant number that hold second jobs, particularly consultancies and directorships. With the Government abandoning its already lukewarm attempt to address this issue, we believe there is a need for strong and decisive action is needed. The MPs’ Code of Conduct should strengthened with a general prohibition on second jobs by members of Parliament, with few exceptions for employment required to maintain professional memberships, such as medicine.
High Standards in Public Appointments
One of the guiding principles of British public life since the 19th century has been that appointments to government jobs should be made on merit, not political patronage. In recent years, however, this principle has been eroded by Conservative governments. They have been determined to appoint cronies to non-departmental public bodies and similar appointments, and employed as certain well publicised individuals such as Lex Greensill in what ought to be permanent civil service positions. This has undermined the standards which the public is entitled to expect. Commisson on the UK’s Future 131 The existing institutions which are intended to prevent this – the Commissioner for Public Appointments and the Civil Service Commission have been disregarded or bypassed. We therefore recommend that these two bodies should be merged into a single and more powerful appointments regulator which should ensure that all appointments, including appointments to public bodies, are made solely on merit. The members of this new strengthened regulator should be appointed only with the approval of both Houses of Parliament.
Overview of standards
All of these arrangements should be kept under continual review by the Committee on Standards in Public Life, which is not an enforcement body but one whose task it is to ensure that these systems overall are fit for purpose. It too should be protected by having a statutory basis, so that it is not able to work only at the whim of the government of the day.
Recommendation 34: We must clean up our politics with new rules for politicians and civil servants, new powers to clamp down on outside earnings for MPs, new laws to eliminate foreign and corrupt money from UK politics, and powerful new institutions to enforce these to replace current institutions that have failed.
Rebuilding public trust
Clear and rigorous standards, efficient, independent investigation when they appear to have been breached, and then imposing sanction which are and seen to be just are all essential parts of cleaning up our politics. This applies to both MPs and ministers. The public will have to be reassured about each of these stages – the right rules, the independent investigation and the proper punishment – before their trust in our politics can be rebuilt. At the moment, the public, entirely understandably, think that politicians themselves are the judges of their own behaviour and let themselves get away with it. This flaw in the present system must be remedied.
The present arrangements certainly fail here. The Prime Minister is rule maker for, and then is judge and jury over, Ministers. The present government s abuses have demonstrated just how deeply unsatisfactory that is. Parliament does have an independent Standards Commissioner, but the ultimate decision on rule breaches and sanctions remains with MPs. We understand why: Parliamentary Privilege ensures that the people s representatives cannot be prevented from pursuing problems or scandals. But with such privilege comes heavy responsibility: holding public office means holding to the most demanding ethical standards. Today it is clear that the public think this isn’t happening, and that privileges are being abused. Commisson on the UK’s Future
So far as investigation is concerned, the new, wholly independent, Integrity and Ethics Commission will be able to look into cases referred to it or which come to its attention. But there is still insufficient independence in how, after investigation, it is decided whether the rules have actually been breached, and what the appropriate sanction is. A recent exception to this, however, is the wholly independent panel which decides whether the rules in relation to bullying and harassment by MPs have been breached, and what the sanction should be. We welcome this, and propose two steps to build up on it.
The first is that in general, decisions about whether the rules have been breached should be made by a wholly independent body of people who are not politicians, after reviewing the case from the Integrity and Ethics Commission and any representations the minister wishes to make. This panel should also recommend the appropriate sanction under the ministerial code. Ultimately it would be then up to the Prime Minister or Parliament itself as appropriate to decide whether to accept that recommendation.
But we do not think this on its own will be enough. We propose therefore that these arrangements, and how they have operated in practice, should be regularly reviewed by a citizens’ jury of ordinary people, chosen at random and representative of the population. They should review the operation of the system and issue an annual report on the standards followed by ministers and MPs and the investigations, judgments and sanctions that have been made and applied, with an assessment of how these arrangements have worked and whether they have secured the public s trust. Given its oversight role, the Committee on Standards in Public Life or Labour’s new Integrity and Ethics Commission should commission this work, and it should be a requirement for the recommendations of this jury to be debated annually in both Houses of Parliament.
Recommendation 35: There should be a greater role for the public in making and enforcing the rules followed by politicians.
A New Anti-corruption Commissioner
The UK is not a corrupt country, but there have in recent years been too many examples of apparently corrupt practices at or close to the centre of government, whether this is in the assumption that Conservative party donors can on the face of it buy Peerages in return for political donations, or in the letting of contracts during the Coronavirus pandemic. Each of these instances must be investigated by the relevant authorities, but we see larger risks here: that the institutions of the UK state might be captured by or subverted to the ends of private, wealthy, interests. Despite what we have seen, this has not as yet happened, but we must take active steps to avoid it. Commisson on the UK’s Future
We therefore welcome Labour’s call for a new Independent Anti-Corruption and AntiCronyism Commissioner, to replace the current toothless and far from independent anti-corruption tsar. We believe this should report to all the UK’s legislatures, to prevent and where appropriate investigate and prosecute corruption in public life.
Such a position should be appointed with the approval of each Parliament at Westminster, the Scottish Parliament, the Welsh Senedd and the Northern Ireland Assembly. Its remit should cover all of local, national and devolved government, as corruption does not respect constitutional boundaries, and it should operate in cooperation with the police and prosecution agencies in the different parts of the UK, but wholly independently of both national and devolved governments. To this effect it will need a sufficiently staffed and well-resourced team to ensure it is suitably empowered and capable of rooting out criminal behavior.
Recommendation 36: There should be a powerful new anti-corruption Commissioner to root out criminal behaviour in British political life where it occurs Commisson on the UK’s Future
Chapter 11:
A New Second Chamber of Parliament for a New Britain
Our recommendations add up to a radical change in the distribution of power in the United Kingdom: bringing political power closer to the people whom it serves, so that their voices are properly heard; rebuilding trust in our political system; and ensuring every part of the country can have the same economic opportunities. But this redistribution of power also requires radical reform at the centre of government, in both Whitehall and Westminster, to bring to an end, once and for all, the hypercentralised system of government which is at the root of so many of our political and economic problems.
The Johnson administration demonstrated beyond all doubt that our system allows the government of the day, if it is heedless of propriety and convention, to act in any way it sees fit and abuse the power with which it has been entrusted. The present legal and constitutional framework has proved inadequate to prevent this, and it demonstrates the need for new standards of propriety and methods of enforcing them, but it also requires new constitutional limits on government, so that no government of whatever party can ever behave like this again.
The Constitutional Challenge at the Centre
Under our recommendations, political and economic power will be spread across the country. Governments will be held responsible for following new constitutional principles to work together and to promote a more balanced, equal economy over the whole UK. New institutions will support these obligations. Individuals will have new social rights, with new minimum standards in public services for England. Devolution to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland will be more powerful, and must be embedded within this new UK constitutional framework. Across England, towns, cities and regions will be able to take increased powers to develop their local economies and respond to the needs and wishes of their citizens.
This reconstruction of the British political system is needed to rebuild the confidence and trust of our population in our politics, and create the conditions for a more economically successful and fairer country, in which the opportunities and benefits of economic growth are seen across the whole UK rather than being concentrated in one corner.
Putting this into effect requires an equally radical change at the centre of government and Parliament.
We must ensure that political power in the UK is, and will remain, shared and distributed, rather than hoarded at the centre; that it is subject to proper constitutional limits, not simply exercised at the whim of government; and that it is properly accountable to Parliament and the courts.
We have recommended above a much tougher new system for enforcing ethical standards in public life. But new constitutional protections are needed as well. Some have argued for a wholly codified constitution to put constitutional limits on the power of government. We can see the force of such arguments. But that would be a very major undertaking, which would have to address many other questions than the obvious problems which have been thrown up by the behaviour of recent Conservative administrations. It might for example have to look at the continued government reliance on the Royal Prerogative for certain executive powers – which we think merits review – and other such issues. There is a case for a UK constitutional convention that would look at issues such as these but we feel we must make recommendations that could be implemented early on in the Labour government.
Changes can be made, consistent with the longstanding British principle of the supremacy of Parliament, to safeguard the constitutional allocation of power. But that requires a new, democratically legitimate, second chamber of Parliament. This is unfinished business for the Labour Party dating back over a century.
Reform of the House of Lords
The House of Lords in its present form is indefensible in principle. It still contains the last vestiges of the mediaeval estates of the realm, notably 92 hereditary peers representing the landowning classes. No justification can be made for their role in making the laws of the land.
That is not however the most serious concern about the Lords. It has also become excessively large, having swollen in recent years to around 800 Peers – and now ranks as the second biggest parliamentary chamber in the world, after the National Peoples’ Congress in China.
This is largely because there is no constraint on the prime minister’s power of patronage, which has been exercised in a wholly unacceptable way by recent Conservative governments, shameless in appointing party donors and overruling the independent Appointments Commission. The abuse of the appointments process has been gross. Since the Conservatives came to power in 2010, successive prime ministers have elevated nine of the party’s former treasurers to the Lords. A former Conservative Party chairman told The Sunday Times: “Once you pay your £3m, you get your peerage”. In the past seven years, every former party treasurer has given at least this amount, and all but one have been offered a seat in the House of Lords. That includes former Conservative treasurer Peter Cruddas, against the advice of the Appointments Commission. In total, 22 of the party’s biggest donors have been made Lords since 2010. Together they have donated some £54m to the Tories.
The Lords is also geographically unrepresentative, with the majority of members based in London and the South East. And the political balance of the House of Lords is also indefensible. There are as many Conservative peers as Labour and Liberal Democrat combined.
Unsurprisingly, therefore, a substantial majority of the public do not regard the House of Lords as a democratic institution in which they have confidence. This opinion is widely shared across the country, irrespective of political affiliation or views. 71% of Britons back overhauling the House of Lords, with support cutting across parties, the Remain and Leave divide, North and South.112 Nearly half of the British public think the Lords does not work well.113 Support for the current composition of the second chamber lies at just 12%.
But the House of Lords does nevertheless discharge an important constitutional function. Its scrutiny of legislation can be more thorough and effective than the Commons, leading to changes of approach or amendments, sometimes against the will of the government. The work of its committees is often of a very high quality, largely because of the experience and expertise of their members (for example the work of the Constitution Committee, established after the recommendations of the Wakeham Report of 2001). This is because many Peers demonstrate a highly commendable and often lifelong commitment to public service.
We wish to record our gratitude to the group of Labour Peers who consistently work to improve legislation, despite the difficulty of doing so. Additionally, the appointment of crossbench peers brings a level of expertise and knowledge that might otherwise be lacking (something which the public, if asked, values). Whatever changes are made should not lose the benefits which House of Lords scrutiny of legislation and government action brings.
Simply abolishing the House of Lords would therefore leave a significant gap in our constitution. But reforming it has proved very difficult. The Parliament Act 1911, supported by Labour and the Liberal Party of the time after the House of Lords refused to pass the “people’s budget” of 1909, was avowedly a temporary measure. It begins by saying:
“Whereas it is intended to substitute for the House of Lords as it at present exists a Second Chamber constituted on a popular instead of hereditary basis, but such substitution cannot be immediately brought into operation…”
But nothing much happened for decades. The Lords’ power of delay was restricted to one year by the Labour government in 1949. Life Peers were introduced (by the Conservatives) as a modernisation in 1958. It was not until the Labour government of 1997 that most hereditary peers were removed, creating what the Labour minister Baroness Jay described at the time as a “transitional house”. It is long past time that transition to end and for the country to have a new, reformed and more legitimate second chamber.
Recommendation 37: The House of Lords should be replaced with a new second chamber of Parliament –An Assembly of the Nations and Regions
Second Chambers Worldwide
Almost all large developed countries have two chambers in their legislatures, though a few do manage with only one – such as New Zealand or Israel.
The role of second chamber in most countries is to act as an alternative source of opinion or advice, a check or balance on the more powerful part of the legislature. There is, however, no standard form for a second chamber. Two contrasting examples will suffice.
The US Senate is unusually powerful, directly elected state by state, with the smaller states having proportionately a stronger voice; it can veto almost any legislation, including over spending and taxation. The US arrangements therefore carry the risk of “gridlock”, if each house insists in its mandate and neither backs down. Canada, by contrast, still retains a wholly appointed Senate, whose members represent different provinces (again with the smaller ones proportionately overrepresented) but are by convention subordinate to the will of the elected chamber.
There are however some common threads. Second chambers tend to be differently constituted (some, but by no means all, directly elected) and usually have weaker powers than the main elected chamber. In larger countries they typically have an explicitly geographic role, with representation structured by states or provinces in a federation, rather than the population directly. Most second chambers are smaller than the main legislative body, and markedly smaller than the present House of Lords, as shown below.
Table: Size of selected second chambers world wide :
US 100
CANADA 102
AUSTRALIA 76
FRANCE 349
SPAIN 208
NETHERLANDS 75
BELGIUM 60
INDIA 250
SWITZERLAND 46
A New Second Chamber for a New Britain
Today there is no danger that the Lords as now constituted could challenge the Commons’ authority; indeed being unelected the convention is that it goes out of its way not to do so, even when it considers there might be good arguments against what the Commons propose. But it is clear to us that one of the blockages to Lords reform is a fear that an elected second chamber, more legitimate than the present Lords, would challenge the authority of the House of Commons and carry the risk of “gridlock”, and of making the government of the country impossible.
The most important question therefore to be determined is the purpose and function of a second chamber, and so what powers it should therefore have, and how in consequence it should best be constituted.
There are things which the second chamber should not do:
• It should have no role in the forming or sustaining governments. That, as today, must fall to the House of Commons.
• Similarly, it should have no responsibility for decisions about public spending or taxation, including National Insurance
• It should not in general be able to reject legislation but should be able to propose amendments
• These limitations on its powers must be set out clearly in the statute which creates the new chamber, so that there is no ambiguity about the relationship between it and the House of Commons.
But it can have a new role, complementary to, and not in competition with, the House of Commons. It should discharge four broad functions:
- Constructive scrutiny of legislation and government policy, as the House of Lords at its best does today.
- Bringing together the voices of the different nations and regions of the UK at the centre of government.
- Monitoring adherence to standards in public life.
- Most significant of all, exercising new but precisely drawn powers to safeguard the constitution of the United Kingdom and the distribution of power within it.
A role reflecting the Nations and Regions
The present House of Lords is not geographically representative, and, despite the efforts of some members, does not look at issues from the perspective of the nations and regions of the UK. The new second chamber should be different. It should oversee the effective working of the new intergovernmental Councils, on the basis of regular hearings of a suitably constituted committee and reports from the new independent intergovernmental secretariat.
It should also receive reports on the extent to which the other important constitutional obligations on governments which we propose are being followed. The Equality and Human Rights Commission should report at least annually on how effectively key social rights are being delivered across the UK, and on the guaranteed levels of social provision across England. The Office for Budget Responsibility should also report on the extent to which government action to ensure greater economic equality and opportunity across the different parts of the UK has been successful.
The chamber should take the lead in considering, scrutinising and promoting Special Local Legislation, which we envisage to be the main vehicle for transferring new powers from the centre to different localities, authorities and partnerships in England. The precise procedures which should be followed for such legislation will be a matter for the chamber itself and for the House of Commons in due course.
We therefore propose that the new second chamber should be called the Assembly of the Nations and Regions.
Adherence to Standards in Public Life
We have already recommended new safeguards for standards and propriety in public life. We envisage that the new second chamber would be responsible for approving the appointments of the new Integrity and Ethics Commission, the replacement for the Prime Minister’s advisor on standards, and for considering its reports, approving the ministerial code, and where necessary action under it.
Protecting the Constitution
The critical new role for the second chamber however relates to the upholding the British constitution. This will include protecting the constitutional distribution of power between Parliament at Westminster and the three devolved legislatures, where convention, even though recognised in statute, has failed to offer sufficient protection.
The mechanism which we recommend is based on the existing, seldom acknowledged, protection built into the Parliament Act 1911. That Act removed the House of Lords’ power to reject legislation, and replaced it by a power to delay, but was subject to one exception. The House of Lords can still reject a bill to extend the term of a Parliament, so that a government cannot simply keep voting itself into office by postponing a general election. (The House of Lords can of course agree, as it did during the Second World War.) Paradoxically enough, therefore, the unelected House of Lords acts as a safeguard for democracy in the United Kingdom. We recommend that the new chamber retains this power, and that the power should be extended in one area only – to legislation relating to certain other constitutional statutes, which we refer to here as protected constitutional statutes.
The second chamber would have an explicit power to reject legislation which related to a narrow list of defined constitutional statutes. The effect of this would be a form of what is called “entrenchment”, that is to say making a particular statutory provision more difficult to amend the ordinary law. Giving this power to the second chamber of Parliament sustains the principle, at the core of much of the UK constitution, of Parliamentary Supremacy. In the end, it must be Parliament which decides which laws can be passed or not passed. For certain laws, however, the second chamber of Parliament will have a special role. But this must be carefully defined and hedged round to ensure that it does not simply become a political battleground with the second chamber seeking to usurp the role of the Commons.
First of all it is necessary to be clear about the limited range of proposed legislation this will apply to. It will in many cases be perfectly plain whether a bill being considered makes a material amendment to a protected statute. Most will not. But, for example, if the protected statutes include the Sewel convention, as we propose, a bill to override it and alter devolved powers without consent clearly would. But in other cases there may be argument about the effect. This could simply be left to the parliamentary authorities and political resolution, but whether the new powers do in fact apply will be, rather than political choice or judgement, a matter of law (which carries the risk that the matter might somehow end up in court). We propose that the second chamber, through its presiding officer, if it contemplates using its safeguarding power, first be required to refer the question to court, most likely directly to the Supreme Court, for an authoritative judgement on whether the constitutional protection powers are engaged. The question would be whether the legislation “related to” one of the constitutional statutes, where “related to” means more than simply has a passing reference or connection to, and something closer to “is mainly about”.
The Supreme Court is already well able to make such judgments; for example it has a well-developed jurisprudence on whether devolved legislation “relates to” a reserved matter. Involving the courts in this way before the new power could be exercised would be a safeguard against the second chamber adopting an improperly political approach to powers which are constitutional in nature.
The Primacy of the House of Commons
There may nevertheless still be concern that giving such a power to the new second chamber undermines the pre-eminent position of the House of Commons, and we have therefore considered how that pre-eminence itself might be safeguarded.
First of all, we propose that the new second chamber should not inherit the present Lords power of delaying all legislation, emphasising that the second chamber is in general a revising chamber which cannot overrule the Commons. Its special powers should apply only to a very limited range of constitutional issues, and should only be exercised if the Supreme Court agrees the legal basis for it exists.
But there remains the possibility that the House of Commons may not accept the view of the second chamber. How is such a disagreement to be managed? We have considered a number of options. One would be to provide that a Commons ‘supermajority’, of say 2/3, could overrule the decision of the second chamber. Another might be to require a similar majority in the second chamber itself in a case where the Commons insisted. Another would be to allow a Bill which had been rejected in the second chamber to be passed against its wishes if it was reintroduced after a General Election in which the issue has been put before the electorate in an election manifesto.
We therefore propose that in the event that the new second chamber exercises the power to reject changes relating only to constitutionally protected legislation, this must be subject to the additional safeguards we propose to ensure the primacy of the House of Commons. Which of the options above, or some other, it might be should be matter for consultation. The important thing is to preserve the key purpose of the recommendation – to ensure that the government of the day cannot have a wholly free hand over protected constitutional matters, while making it clear that the Commons remains the primary legislative body. This should clearly not however apply to legislation to extend the term of a Parliament.
Constitutionally protected statutes
The list of statutes which should have this constitutional protection must be carefully, and narrowly, drawn up. It should include legislation which is of genuine constitutional significance for the long term, and it will be important to resist the temptation to include issues which attract a great deal of public attention or high political priority at any given moment.
Obviously the Parliament Acts themselves, including the legislation setting up the new chamber and giving it its powers, must be included in the list, and so should the Constitutional Reform Act 2005, which creates the Supreme Court and guarantees continued judicial independence. The Representation of the People Acts, which give substance to political rights, and some older constitutional legislation such as the Acts of Succession and the treaty and Acts of Union might also be included.
The most obvious lesson from recent Conservative government disregard for constitutional convention is of course in relation to devolution, and devolution and the Sewel Convention in its strengthened statutory form must receive this form of constitutional protection. Amongst our own recommendations, we would envisage that the purposes of the UK, the duty to promote economic equality across the UK, the ‘solidarity clause’ obliging cooperation between governments and the principle of subsidiarity would merit such protection. The individual rights we discuss above will be sustained by a balance of direct enforceability with constitutional protection.
These are proposed for consultation, and others may wish to suggest different candidates; there might even be constitutional rules which, if codified in a statute, might also benefit from this protection. (For example, the very well understood convention in the United Kingdom that the Prime Minister must command a majority in the House of Commons is nowhere set down in law.) Any future changes would require the agreement of both the House of Commons and the new second chamber. We see this approach as a way of gaining for the UK many of the benefits of a written constitution while continuing to uphold the principle of the supremacy of Parliament, as there is still no law which Parliament cannot change.
Recommendation 38: The new second chamber should complement the House of Commons with a new role of safeguarding the UK constitution, subject to an agreed procedure that sustains the primacy of the House of Commons.
The Composition of a New Second Chamber It is in the light of these proposed functions and new powers and responsibilities that we consider the composition of the new second chamber. As long ago as 1911, the Labour Party when it supported the Liberal Government’s Lords reform said clearly that it was democratic election which brought political legitimacy to legislators.
The new second chamber will exercise important functions for which such legitimacy is required, and we therefore propose that it should be elected a regional basis across the United Kingdom. We a envisage chamber three quarters smaller than the present Lords, at around 200, and more in line with second chambers elsewhere.
The second chamber should certainly be elected on a different electoral cycle from the House of Commons, so that elections for the Commons and new second chamber do not coincide. The precise method of election to be used is a matter for further consideration. The proposed post publication consultation should also address the issue of transition.
If the new second chamber is to function as an Assembly of the Nations and Regions, there is a case for elected national and regional leaders to be able to participate in the second chamber to raise issues of pressing concern on which the voices of the nations of the UK, or of its different localities, should be directly heard.
Members of the new second chamber should of course be able to serve as Ministers. We leave for consultation the question of whether, as now with the House of Lords, individuals who are not in Parliament but appointed to Ministerial posts should account for themselves to the second chamber.
Recommendation 39: The new second chamber must have electoral legitimacy, and should be markedly smaller than the present Lords, chosen on a different electoral cycle – with the precise composition and method of election matters for consultation.
Link for full report:
