Parliament
The Government has been defeated 10 times in the House of Lords since the election: could this be the new parliamentary reality?
At the 2015 General Election in May, the Conservative Party won a majority in the House of Commons. However, they are far from having one in the House of Lords, which has a very different composition. Here, Hannah White considers the significance of recent defeats in the House of Lords at the start of the new […]
Don’t expect the Lord Sewel story to prompt constitutional change
The Labour Peer Lord Sewel was caught on video in highly compromising circumstances by the Sun. But will the inevitable scandal lead to reform of the UK’s bloated and inefficient House of Lords? Alun Wyburn-Powell uses history as a guide, and argues that it would be naive to expect this to trigger much-needed change when […]
David Cameron is invoking a convention that does not exist in justifying his appointment of a tranche of new Lords
Yesterday Prime Minister David Cameron, seemingly undeterred by the already negative media coverage about the Lord Sewel affair, gave strong indications that he intends to make yet more appointments to the Lords. In doing so, he appeared to invoke a convention that does not exist: that of bringing Lords membership into line with Commons seats. […]
Ensuring equal representation in Parliament: who counts?
The UK government announced on July 16 that it had decided to end the transition period to Individual Electoral Registration early. The Electoral Commission had recommended that it did not, and thereby allow some 1.9 million people who would otherwise be removed to remain on the electoral roll for a further year. The Commission’s reasons […]
The delay in appointing a new Intelligence and Security Committee threatens to undermine its work before it has even begun
In February of this year, the then-Chair of the Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) – the body which oversees the UK’s three main intelligence agencies – was caught in a journalistic sting operation. Since then, the ISC seems to have been inactive. It is now two months since the General Election and the Government (who […]
‘English Votes for English Laws’ —a viable answer to the English Question?
Daniel Gover and Michael Kenny outline the government’s detailed proposals for introducing EVEL that were published last Thursday. They argue that, while incremental and modest in some respects, the proposals do raise wider points of constitutional principle which suggest English Votes could be the start rather than the end of a much longer process of […]
Online communities and the law: how e-participation is changing voting rights
Can digital democracy facilitate the creation of a new, computer-oriented direct democracy? Silvia De Conca argues that some kind of of hybrid system might represent the best way of creating such a system, and that new tools such as LiquidFeedback.org are providing a practical example of how to marry the two approaches. It is now […]
The Government’s narrow EVEL proposals are likely to repeat the mistakes of the past
In the wake of the Referendum on Scottish Independence, the Prime Minister announced that he would be reforming the operation of the House of Commons in order to disqualify Scottish Members of Parliament from voting on legislation deemed to be ‘English only’. On July 2nd, the Leader of the House of Commons Chris Grayling announced […]
EVEL intentions, or a necessary solution? Experts respond to the Government’s English Votes for English Laws proposals
The Leader of the House of Commons, Chris Grayling, last week announced the introduction of English Votes for English Laws – a new constitutional settlement to provide an answer to the “West Lothian Questions”. Democratic Audit asked experts Andrew Blick, Louise Thompson, Alan Trench, and Akash Paun to give their take on the proposals. Similar PostsThe […]
Interview: Peter Parycek on artificial intelligence, dystopia, and democracy’s digital future
Does digital have the potential to completely transform our systems of politics and government, and if so to what extent? One of the people at the forefront of answering this question is Peter Parycek, the Chair of the International Conference for E-Democracy and Open Government 2015, and Head of the Centre for E-Governance at Danube University, […]
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