How to petition Canadian legislatures
A fair number of people regularly end up on this blog looking for information about petitioning Parliament. Here is an overview of the proper way to petition the House of Commons, as well as the provincial and territorial legislatures. The House of Commons The Canadian House of Commons has a rather extensive Practical Guide to [...]
Parliamentary Privilege and Prayers in the House
Recently, in response to legal action brought by the National Secular Society, Britain’s High Court ruled that Bideford Town Council had acted unlawfully by allowing prayers to be said during meetings. This decision prompted quite a backlash in the UK media, and the Government announced that it would bring in early part of the Localism [...]
How the Backbench Business Committee works
I have written a number of posts about the UK House of Commons Backbench Business Committee, trying to explain to readers what the committee is, what it does, and its role in relation to petition-driven debates. The Committee’s website now includes a very useful “How the Backbench Business Committee Works” page, complete with a video [...]
The Financial Privilege of the House of Commons
A controversial bill overhauling the UK’s social benefits system suffered a number of defeats in the House of Lords as the upper chamber rejected several provisions of the Government’s bill. When the bill was returned to the House of Commons, something happened. A committee of the House of Commons resolved that the bill “engages the [...]
The Primacy of the Commons and Lords Reform
As I have previously written, the UK Government has brought forward a draft bill on reforming the House of Lords. A Joint Select Committee – meaning a committee with membership drawn from both the House of Commons and the Lords – has been holding a series of meetings hearing from constitutional and other experts. I [...]
Parliaments, PMOs and Social Media
On Tuesday, 31 January 2012, Education Secretary Michael Gove appeared before the House of Commons Education Committee. It is the Committee’s mandate to monitor the policy, administration and spending of the Department for Education and its associated arms length bodies, and having the Minister give evidence allows them to scrutinize his work, performance and policies. [...]
Scottish Consultation on Independence Referendum
As mentioned in an earlier post, the Scottish Government launched its own consultation on a referendum on Scottish independence, which you can view here. The consultation runs until 11 May 2012. The Scottish Government is looking to hold said referendum in the fall of 2014. This time frame is to allow for the responses to [...]
Update on e-petitions
The UK House of Commons Procedure Committee recently released its report on the Government’s e-petitions scheme. It is well known that there is significant confusion regarding how many signatures an e-petition requires in order for it to be debated in the House of Commons. Indeed, this blog regularly gets hits from people searching for information [...]
Some interesting links: rebel MPs, e-petitions, hung parliaments, and political disengagement
1. Rebels of the Chamber Isabel Hardman has a fascinating piece looking at some of the most rebellious backbench MPs in the UK House of Commons: Once an MP starts down the route of the serial rebel, it seems easier for the whips to leave them be. Islington North MP Jeremy Corbyn, is one such [...]
Public Perception of Access to Parliament
UK House of Commons Speaker John Bercow established the Speaker’s Advisory Council on Public Engagement (SACPE) which provides informal, independent advice from an external perspective on the programs which the House of Commons has already introduced to improve outreach and to serve as a vehicle for thinking about what Parliament needs to do to convince [...]
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On procedure and politics by Radical Centrist is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
