Challenges facing modern parliaments
Posted on | 7 November 2011 | No Comments
In this post, I wrote about a recent report by the UK House of Commons Procedure Committee which reviewed the elections held, for the first time, in most cases, to fill various positions in the House. These elections were part of the reforms adopted by the House of Commons in the spring of 2010, before the May 2010 general election.
Recently, House of Commons Speaker John Bercow addressed the Hansard Society as part of their events marking the 100th anniversary of the Parliament Act 1911. You can find the link to download the entire speech here. In this post, I will focus on second part of Speaker Bercow’s talk: the challenges facing modern parliaments.
Speaker Bercow identifies what he believes are the three core challenges facing all modern parliaments today. These are: the need to strike the right balance between their whole and their parts; the need to be “relentlessly relevant” in terms of the subject matters they address; and finally, the need to embrace every aspect and opportunity afforded by emerging technologies to get parliament’s message across.
Regarding the first point, that parliaments must strive to strike the right balance between their whole and their parts, Bercow explains that by this he means “that there are times when parliamentary scrutiny is best served through the chamber itself and then other moments when the better device is a specialist parliamentary committee”. He provides a brief history of the development of a full-blown structure of departmental select committees, which was not established until 1979. For those readers who are less familiar with the UK select committee system, there is a Commons Select Committee for each government department, examining three aspects: spending, policies and administration.
These departmental committees have a minimum of 11 members, who decide upon the line of inquiry and then gather written and oral evidence. Findings are reported to the Commons, printed, and published on the Parliament website. The government then usually has 60 days to reply to the committee’s recommendations.
Some Select Committees have a role that crosses departmental boundaries such as the Public Accounts or Environmental Audit Committees. Depending on the issue under consideration they can look at any or all of the government departments.
Other Commons Committees are involved in a range of on-going investigations, like administration of the House itself or allegations about the conduct of individual MPs. In total, there are 35 Commons Select Committees.
Bercow notes that while the departmental select committees were established in 1979, the House as a whole did not have true democratic control over them until last year, when elections were held for the first time to allow the House to elect committee chairs, and party caucuses to elect their members to those select committees (which I explain in detail in the earlier post). Bercow explains that a modern parliament needs both a chamber and commitees which are “complementary to one another rather than seen as competitors to each other”. He concludes that “meaningful scrutiny demands strong select committees alongside a strong chamber.”
This is a reform that I would very much like to see the Canadian House of Commons (and provincial legislatures) adopt – letting all MPs elect committee chairs and letting party caucuses elect their own members to committees, rather than the current system where chairs and members are appointed by party whips. I have discussed this in detail in this post, for anyone interested.
Regarding the need for modern parliaments to be “relentlessly relevant”, Speaker Bercow warns that if a parliament is not discussing “matters of real, immediate salience which are part of the day’s national conversation” then they risk “being in a world of our own”. He stresses that he does not mean a parliament should limit itself to discussing only what makes the front page of the daily papers, but that topicality is important. Speaker Bercow has facilitated this by reviving a previously much underused power of the Speaker, permitting Urgent Questions. From the UK Parliament website:
At times Members may want to put an urgent question to a Minister. Besides being subject to the standard rules for questions, Urgent Questions (UQ) are also judged against two additional and special criteria laid down in the rules of the House: they must be urgent and of public importance. A variety of sudden developments or emergencies fulfil these criteria, although these can quite often be covered in the form of a Ministerial Statement. A Member must apply to the Speaker before noon on Monday or Tuesday, 10.30am on Wednesday, 9.30am on Thursday or 10am on a sitting Friday on the day in question, to put forward such a question. The relevant government department would be informed at once. It is up to the Speaker to decide whether or not to allow an Urgent Question, and if it is allowed such questions will be taken immediately after Question Time, or at 11am on a Friday. Prior to the 2002-03 session of Parliament, this procedure was known as a Private Notice Question.
Members are informed that an urgent question will be asked by notices posted in the House and on the in-House annunciator. The information is usually available to the House of Commons Information Office approximately an hour before the House begins sitting. The procedure on Urgent Questions is similar to ordinary oral questions. The main question will be asked, the Member who has put the question down is then allowed to ask a supplementary. Other Members will then be called to ask further questions on the same subject.
As stated, it is up to the Speaker to decide whether or not to allow an Urgent Question. Speaker Bercow’s predecessor, Speaker Martin, allowed only 2 Urgent Questions in the last 12 months of his tenure as Speaker. Since June 2009, Speaker Bercow has allowed (as of this date) 78.
Urgent Questions is another innovation that would be welcomed here in Canada. While Canadian ministers are (in theory at least) questioned daily in the House during Question Period, the format of Question period doesn’t allow for proper scrutiny due to the time limits on both answers and questions, and also because ministers can simply refuse to answer any question. They couldn’t refuse to appear in the House to answer an Urgent Question, nor could they defer the matter to a cabinet colleague as frequently happens during Question Period.
Lastly, Speaker Bercow argues that a modern parliament must embrace all forms of modern technologies and the opportunity they present in order to get its message out to the people and to allow people to participate in parliamentary proceedings. This includes the ability to follow these proceedings at their convenience. The UK Parliament has made great strides in this area, both in terms of its website (which I strongly invite you all to explore given the wealth of information available), and also by engaging on Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and YouTube. There is also a Twitter account for the House of Lords. The UK House of Commons also now accepts e-petitions, while in Canada, only the Quebec National Assembly does so. I have written quite a bit about the e-petitions scheme, and so won’t repeat myself here. There are still some glitches to be worked out, but as Speaker Bercow notes, “[M]odern parliaments need modern communications to reach out to the modern world.”
Speaker Bercow also makes some interesting comments on further reforms he believes would be needed to increase the authority and independence of Select Committees. I encourage you to download the speech in full to learn more.
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Tags: committees > communication > e-petitions > parliamentary reform > technology > UK politics > urgent questions
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On procedure and politics by Radical Centrist is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
