Election Watch 2013

There will be some noteworthy elections coming up in 2013.

AUSTRALIA

Unlike most parliaments in the UK and Canada, which normally last 4 to 5 years, the Australian House of Representatives sits for a three-year term.The next election will be held on 14 September 2013. The 2010 election resulted in a hung parliament, with both Labor the the Coalition tied with 72 seats each. Labor ended up forming a minority government, with the support of Green and Independent MPs.

Recent polls (12 December 2012) have Labor trailing the Liberal-National Coalition in terms of overall popular support, 36% to 54%, and in terms of first preference votes among committed voters, the Coalition leads there as well, 46% to 32% for Labor. However, when asked who would make the better PM, Liberal Party leader Toby Abbott trails incumbent PM Julia Gillard 34% to 43%.

For all things pertaining to elections in Australia, both at the federal and state level, I strongly recommend following Antony Green’s blog. For a general overview, you might find this article interesting.

CANADA

There won’t be another federal election until October 2015, but there are a few provinces which may be heading to the polls this year (one definitely will be).

British Columbia

British Columbia will be electing a new parliament in May of this year. The incumbent Liberals are not doing well at the polls, and Premier Christy Clarke’s decision not to hold a fall sitting probably won’t help matters.

Ontario and Quebec

Ontario’s last election was in October 2011 while Quebec’s was in September 2012 but both resulted in hung parliaments. Ontario ended up with a minority Liberal government, but Premier Dalton McGuinty unexpectedly prorogued the Legislature in October and simultaneously announced his resignation as party leader. The Liberals chose a new leader on 26 January 2013. The House will return on 19 February 2013. While the new leader has stated she is determined to make the minority parliament work, one can never rule out an election.

Quebec ended up with a minority Parti québécois government. The government’s budget passed by one vote in late November. Polls show a close three-way race between the PQ, Liberals and Coaliation Avenir Quebec. Minority parliaments rarely last much more than a year, so the situation in Quebec bears watching.

Nova Scotia

Nova Scotia’s last election was in 2009. It is one of the few provinces which does not have fixed election dates, but since the government is coming into its fourth year in office, an election is likely in 2013. An election must occur by June 2014.

Nunavut

The last election in Nunavut occurred in October 2008, and so the current parliament is entering its 5th year. Nunavut does not have fixed election dates, so an election will be held some time this year, no later than October 2013.

UNITED KINGDOM

UK local elections

The 2013 United Kingdom local elections are due to take place on Thursday 2 May 2013. Elections will be held in 35 English councils, including all 27 non-metropolitan county councils, the 5 unitary authorities covering ceremonial counties, and 3 other unitary authorities, and to a single Welsh unitary authority. What will be interesting to watch for is how the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) performs. The party has surged in recent polls, often polling ahead of the Liberal Democrats, and recently finished 2nd in two by-elections for parliamentary seats. In the 2011 local elections, UKIP took control of Ramsey town council, and maintained its seven councillors across England, and one in Northern Ireland.

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The situation of Parliament during a prolonged period of political crisis

I have previously written about the convention of caretaker government here, and here. That convention holds that during an election campaign, the ministry continues to hold office until a new ministry is sworn in. There are, however, limitations on what a minister can do during both the election campaign and the period of government formation following a general election.

For Canadians (as well as people in the UK, Australia and other countries), there normally isn’t much of a delay in forming a new government following a general election. Usually, it is known on election night which party will form the government. This isn’t always the case, however. In 2010, in the UK, it took five days of intense negotiations between the three main parties before a new government emerged, the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government. During that time, the Labour party under Gordon Brown, which had been the incumbent party, acted as the caretaker government.

In countries which use some form of proportional representation rather than First-Past-the-Post, because of the need to form coalition governments, it isn’t unusual for several weeks to go by before a new government emerges. Generally, however, this caretaker period is still of a fairly short duration. However, following the 2010 parliamentary elections in Belgium, the caretaker period lasted over 500 days.

I came across a very interesting paper by Mr. H. Hondequin, the Secretary General of the Belgian Senate, prepared for a conference of the Association of Secretaries General of Parliaments, wherein he discusses the situation of the Belgian parliament during a prolonged period of political crisis. You can download his paper (it’s a docx) here, but I will summarise the main points below.

Belgium, like Canada and the UK and other countries, is a parliamentary democracy. That means that there are no elections separate from the parliamentary elections to elect a president who then appoints the government. As is the case in Canada and the UK and other countries, the prime minister emerges from the parties which end up forming the government.

As Mr. Hondequin explains, there are normally twelve parties represented in the parliament, and it generally requires six parties to agree to work together to obtain a simple majority. If a governing coalition wants to amend the constitution, this requires the cooperation of an even larger number of parties since constitutional change requires a two-thirds majority to pass. As Hondequin explains:

All these elements – the large number of parties, the search for an agreement on the institutional development of the country, and therefore, in practice, the search for a qualified majority – combined with the difficult economic situation and therefore with the importance of the socio-economic choices that had to be made, explain why the formation of the government after the 2010 elections was a real Echternach procession, or for the benefit of those who are unfamiliar with that event, a journey of two steps forward followed by one or even several steps back.  However, where the Echternach procession manages to cover its route in one day, the “Belgian” procession took a year and a half.  The government in power since 2007, resigned on 22nd April 2010 and that resignation was accepted 26th April 2010.  Parliament was dissolved on 7th May 2010 .  The elections were held on 13th June 2010.  The new government was finally sworn in on 6th December 2011, and obtained the confidence of Parliament on 7th December 2011, or 540 days after the elections and almost 600 days after the resignation of the previous government.

This does not mean that there was no government during that time. Parliament convened in accordance with the Constitution on 6 July 2010. The departing government continued on as a caretaker government. Hondequin explains that in Belgium, the concept of a caretaker administration was developed by the courts. A caretaker government is limited to covering “urgent matters where decisions cannot reasonably be postponed, acts of day-to-day management and acts which form the continuation or completion of procedures which had been started in a legitimate manner before the regime of caretaking administration took effect.” As well, minus a few very specific exceptions, the caretaker government does not take any legislative initiatives, and nor does Parliament.

A government in Belgium, as in Canada and other parliamentary democracies, stays in power because it has the confidence of the House and is subject to oversight by parliament. However, in the case of a caretaker administration, while parliament’s power to exercise oversight remains, the confidence convention does not. As Hondequin explains: “Withdrawing confidence from a government that has already resigned has no meaning or effect. You cannot kill a dead person!”

It has long been argued in Belgium that a caretaker government does not have sufficient legitimacy to introduce bills, to take position on private members’ bills, to propose amendments to these bills, or even to enact or promulgate  bills that would nevertheless have been adopted by parliament.  It was inferred that one of the branches of the legislature was unable to act and that the legislative process therefore should stop altogether.

It is true that until recently, there was no real in-depth legal reflection about this issue.  However, as the negotiations on the formation of a new government lasted longer and longer, the reflection deepened, first in academic circles, then with some reluctance, in the political world.

The newly elected members of parliament, if they had followed long-established tradition, would have been forced to face a long period of inactivity. However, as the political crisis dragged on, and this in a climate of economic crisis requiring problems to be addressed, they gave the matter serious consideration.  Both in the House of Representatives and the Senate, they consulted their legal services.

These services, basing their opinion on old and recent legal doctrine, pointed out that the figure of a caretaker government limits the scope of government action as executive power, when it cannot be politically sanctioned by parliament and that it therefore protects the prerogatives of parliament in the exercise of political oversight over the executive.

On the contrary, in the exercise of the legislative function, Parliament holds the key role.  It is parliament that votes the laws. Parliament always has the last word, whether the law emanates from a parliamentary or a government initiative.  In legislative matters, the fact that the government is a caretaker administration in no way affects the powers and means of action of the parliament, or the balance of the system of division of powers.

It is ultimately this view that prevailed.  Both during the caretaker regime of 2007 and the very long one in 2010, the House of Representatives and the Senate passed a number of laws on the most diverse subjects, resulting from both governmental or parliamentary initiatives.

Hondequin goes on to say that the laws adopted during this period were “technical” – in other words, laws which did not involve fundamental choices or major political debate, and that they were usually adopted without much debate and with more or less the unanimous support of both houses. Also, whenever the caretaker government wanted to bring forward a bill, it took great pains to justify to parliament why the bill was necessary and to consult with parliament beforehand.

He adds that another change which occurred due to the prolonged period of caretaker government was the implementation of various forms of questioning the government via oral and written questions, debates and hearings. In the past, parliament did not question the caretaker government, but as the crisis went on and on, parliament felt it was necessary to change this practice.

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Procedure Committee Review of the Backbench Business Committee

Back in March, I wrote about a motion adopted by the UK House of Commons which changed how members of the Backbench Business Committee (BBCom) are elected:

The current members of the Backbench Business Committee were elected by the entire membership of the House of Commons. Members of most of the other Select Committees were elected only by their own caucuses, meaning Labour MPs serving on a committee were elected only by Labour MPs, Conservative members of committees elected only by their fellow Conservative MPs, and the same for the Liberal Democrats (there are no members of smaller parties on any committees).

Backbenchers argued strenuously that the BBBCom was different, and that it was right that its members be elected by the entire House. Changing that so that the elections were controlled by the parties risked making the BBBCom more partisan.

What also upset many at the time that the motion was debated and voted on was that the Procedure Committee had only just undertook a review into the operation of backbench business, and many felt the Government should have waited for that report to be presented to the House before moving forward with any changes to the Committee.

That report was published on 22 November 2012. Overall, the report notes that there is widespread satisfaction with the work and functioning of the BBCom, and concludes that while there is “no need for major substantial change to the practices or procedures which have developed around backbench business and the work of the Committee, a number of proposals could improve and refine the framework within which it operates.” (link)

The report does address the matter of the election of members to the Committee and the changes to that process brought forward and adopted in March. I found that section to be particularly interesting. The Backbench Business Committee is one of the many reforms proposed by the the Wright Committee in its report, Rebuilding the House. The Wright Committee explicitly recommended that the BBCom:

should be comprised of between seven and nine members elected by secret ballot of the House as a whole, with safeguards to ensure a due reflection of party proportionality in the House as a whole. (p. 8 – italics added)

In October 2011, the Procedure Committee released a report reviewing the process of electing the Speaker, committee chairs and members, which had been tried for the first time at the start of the new Parliament following the May 2010 election. The Government responded to that report and in its response stated:

It would be appropriate for the House to address the anomaly whereby members of the Backbench Business Committee other than the Chair (unlike those of other select committees) are elected by the House as a whole rather than by Members of the political party to which they belong. (p. 10)

In this report, the Procedure Committee rightly notes that the earlier report “had noted no such anomaly, nor had the Government sought to draw our attention to it in the course of our inquiry.”

In oral evidence to the Committee, Tony Wright did not agree with the Leader’s use of the term “anomaly” to describe the system of whole House elections for membership of the Backbench Business Committee. He said:

Whatever else it was, it wasn’t an anomaly. It was there by design. The intention was that there should be a collective House mechanism: something that wasn’t the usual kind of party business that dominates most of what goes on here.

He went on to describe the changes brought forward by the Government as “a retrograde step.” Dr Meg Russell, who was specialist adviser to the Wright Committee, described the changes as “very much contrary to the spirit of what the Wright Committee proposed.” (pp. 8-9)

The committee was “disappointed” that the Government had proceeded to change how BBCom members are elected without waiting for the Procedure Committee to conclude its review and remains unconvinced by the arguments put forward by the Government justifying the need for the change:

We are not persuaded that it was necessary to change the method of electing members of the Backbench Business Committee. In our report on 2010 elections to positions in the House, we noted that we had “received no adverse comments on the arrangements for the elections to the Backbench Business Committee”.  Apart from the comments from the Leader and the Shadow Leader, nor did we receive any such comments in this inquiry. Backbenchers who submitted evidence to this inquiry were content with the method of election as originally proposed by Wright and as enshrined in the relevant Standing Order when the Backbench Business Committee was established. Nevertheless, the House made its decision in March this year and we do not consider it appropriate to recommend further changes so soon afterwards. We will return to these matters in a future inquiry. (p. 9)

One of the interesting (to me) recommendations in the report concerns select committee statements. The BBCom had begun the practice of scheduling short debates on select committee reports. While in many parliaments, debate on committee reports is fairly straightforward, in the UK House of Commons, it is a rather cumbersome process: “the Chair of the Committee in question must move a motion that the House takes note of the report, and Members who wish to ask questions must make interventions.”(p. 21) The matter was studied by the Liaison Committee:

In its report on select committee powers, resources and effectiveness, that Committee proposes that a statement on a select committee report should be able to be made “within a reasonable period of the publication of the report: say, within 10 sitting days”. It further proposes that it should be for the Speaker (in consultation with the Chair of the Liaison Committee), rather than the Backbench Business Committee, to decide whether a select committee report is sufficiently topical and significant to merit a statement on the floor of the House on any sitting day. (p. 22)

The Procedure Committee endorses this proposal adding the suggestion that such statements could also be taken in Westminster Hall.

Another interesting recommendation is the proposal to limit how much speaking time can be taken up by the frontbenches during BBCom debates. There aren’t proscribed time limits on speeches in the UK House of Commons as there are in the Canadian House of Commons, for example, but the Speaker can impose time limits when there is a lot of interest among MPs in participating in a particular debate. However, the Speaker’s ability to limit frontbench speaking time is circumscribed by the Standing Orders:

Under Standing Order No. 47, he may do so in respect of both backbench speeches (under paragraph (2)) and frontbench speeches (paragraphs (3) and (4)). The limit in respect of frontbench speeches is, however, subject to paragraph (5)(b), which requires the Speaker to add to the twenty minutes (or ten, in the case of a topical debate) to which frontbench speeches may be limited up to a further fifteen minutes for interventions. The power to impose a time limit on frontbench speeches is thus not used, because a limit of thirty-five minutes would not be worth imposing. Jane Ellison described the lack of any effective power to limit frontbench speeches as “a pressing problem”, saying that “to see backbenchers in a backbench debate being reduced to a four-minute time limit almost immediately when you have had two 25-minute Front-Bench speeches is not the right way round.” (p. 27)

The report recommends amending SO 47 to allow the Speaker greater discretion in applying limits to frontbench speeches.

Other recommendations found in the report include increasing the number of days available to Backbench business from the current 27 to 35; that the Government allow the Backbench Business Committee a legitimate expectation of a backbench business slot, in the Chamber or in Westminster Hall, in every sitting week, with exceptions at certain times of the parliamentary year (for example, the debate on the Queen’s Speech and the Budget); that the Committee be given the power to table business motions to regulate the time for which it is responsible; and finally, that responsibility for scheduling one of the four 90-minute adjournment debates that occur each week in Westminster Hall be transferred from the Speaker to the Backbench Business Committee, on a one-year trial basis.

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Apologies for the sporadic posting of late

Just a quick note to those who follow this blog.

I apologize for the rather sporadic blogging of late. This year has been a difficult one. It started with a physical health issue which severely limited my ability to do anything at a computer, and has ended with a unexpected (and unwanted) need to move house, which proved to be quite distressing and time consuming.

Both matters are settled now, more or less, so I hope to return to more active blogging – assuming life doesn’t get in the way again!

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The Politics of Coalition: the video

In support of their book, The Politics of Coalition: How the Conservative-Liberal Democrat Government Works, which was published in June 2012, Dr. Robert Hazell and Dr. Ben Yong of UCL’s Constitution Unit delivered a talk in October highlighting some of their main findings. That talk was recorded, and is now available for general viewing online.

I strongly encourage anyone interested in coalition government and minority parliaments to watch the video (and buy the book). Drs. Hazell and Yong were given wide access to everyone who mattered – including Prime Minister David Cameron and Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, as well as ministers, MPs, Lords, civil servants and others. While they focus primarily on the coalition’s first 15 months in office, the authors also look down the road, raising important lessons political parties in the UK would do well to consider since hung parliaments are likely to be increasingly regular occurrences.

From a Canadian perspective, despite the more recent difficulties the coalition parties have encountered, it’s still very refreshing to know that elsewhere in the world, political parties are both capable of and willing to work together and that the very idea of coalition government isn’t considered something evil or unconstitutional. Canadian political parties, both federal and provincial, would do well to take note.

Where to buy The Politics of Coalition: in the UK, from Amazon.co.uk, in Canada, from Amazon.ca, in the US, from Amazon.com.

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The length of two swords

Recently, the brilliant UK actor Philip Glenister (Life on Mars, Ashes to Ashes, State of Play, Mad Dogs, Hidden, etc.) was interviewed on the Andrew Marr show in connection with his latest role, that of Chief Government Whip in the play “This House“, which is set in 1974, when Labour had a shaky minority government.The discussion turned to the innately adversarial nature of politics in the UK House of Commons, with Marr noting that the play was in some ways an attack on the British parliamentary tradition, that of two sides against each other, and that underneath, there was a dream of a better way of doing things, a call for politics to be more consensual. Glenister noted that UK was “one of the few democracies, just by the layout of our parliament… it’s in a rectangular shape as opposed to in the round. It’s only one of two in the world.”

If Glenister is correct, and there are only two democracies in the world with rectangular Chambers which force government and opposition to face off against each other on opposing sides, then the Canada is the other one. The Canadian House of Commons, the Senate and most of the Canadian provincial and territorial legislatures are also rectangular, the exceptions being the Legislative Assembly of Manitoba, the Legislative Assembly of Nunavut and the Legislative Assembly of the Northwest Territories.

What is being implied here is that layout of the Chamber, government on one side, opposition parties on the other, makes our politics more adversarial because it imposes an “Us vs Them” feel from the outset. This is the same argument put forward by architects in this very interesting article, “The Shape of Debate to Come“.

However, it is debatable to what extent the shape of the chamber might influence how adversarial or consensual debate will be. As Professor White notes in the above article, countries which end up with a more consensual approach to politics also tend to use some form of proportional representation rather than First-Past-the-Post:

But, in an email, he said there was “pretty much zero” chance of more co-operative behaviour in Canadian legislatures. And he put the differences in approach in legislatures such as Wales and Scotland more down to mixed electoral systems, not just first-past-the-post.

He said: ”Unquestionably the opposing rows of benches in standard Westminster parliaments reinforces the adversarial nature of the place; for my students I liken it to opposing armies or sports teams squaring off. At the same time, I see seating arrangements as very much secondary to underlying political culture and prevailing political norms.

“The Manitoba [legislature], which is semi-circular, has exceedingly nasty, adversarial partisan politics, and the US Congress these days is hardly a paragon of non-partisanship.”

Because PR makes it very difficult for any one party to form a majority government on its own, this means that coalition government tends to be the norm in countries which use some form of PR, and that reality alone will require parties to work harder to find some sort of consensus. As Prof. White points out, despite sitting in the round, politics in both Manitoba and the US Congress are very partisan and adversarial, and both jurisdictions use FPTP. The Australian House of Representatives is horseshoe-shaped, and politics Down Under is every bit as partisan as it is up here, particularly in the current minority parliament. Australia uses the Alternative Vote to elect its MPs, a voting system which requires voters to rank the candidates on the ballot in order of preference, and to win the seat, a candidate must gain over 50% of the vote, either outright, or through transferred preferences. AV, like FPTP, is not at all proportional, which may explain why political debate in the House of Representatives is partisan and adversarial.

This summer, it was reported that the UK Parliament could be closed for five years for extensive refurbishment, with MPs and Lords “convened in a replica chamber or a conference centre for the duration of the repair work, which could start in 2015.” This immediately alarmed some. The Spectator’s Fraser Nelson raised the threat of some advocating that a new, refurbished chamber would be “a chance to move the MPs to a lifeless, European style semi-circular chamber that supposedly encourages them to co-operate.” Fraser comments on how deathly boring debate is in the Scottish Parliament, which is circular. He does not mention that Scottish Members of Parliament (MSPs) are elected using Mixed-Member Proportional representation (MMP).

But is the electoral system alone enough to determine how consensual or adversarial politics will be in a given jurisdiction? Thomas Carl Lundberg, in his paper “Politics is Still an Adversarial Business: Minority Government and Mixed-Member Proportional Representation in Scotland and New Zealand“, concluded that while both nations introduced MMP in part to bring about a “new politics”, in the end, “the impact of institutional engineering upon the behaviour of politicians has been limited.” New Zealand adopted MMP in 1996, Scotland in 1999. New Zealand has seen the formation of mostly minority governments under MMP (albeit minority coalition government rather than single-party minority government) supported by other smaller parties through confidence and supply agreements, while Scotland has experienced two terms of majority coalition government, one term of single-party  minority government, and most recently, to the surprise of most, a single-party majority government.

The reasons why MMP has had limited success in curbing adversarial politics in Scotland and New Zealand, according to Lundberg are varied. Long before New Zealand adopted MMP, it had a very strong two-party system (Labour on the left and the National Party on the right) and a long history of single-party majority government. With the introduction of MMP in 1996, that didn’t really change. Politics remained quite adversarial between Labour and the National Party, but both of the main parties learned to work with the much smaller parties in order to form governments.

Scotland on the surface may appear more consensual, but there are other tensions at work. Scotland has a true multiparty system, that is one in which “there are three to five relevant parties which are not separated (polarised) by a large or intense ideological distance” (which isn’t the case in New Zealand). Rather, Scotland’s party system “is characterised by two significant cleavages” – class divisions and “the process of building the UK (with England at the centre dominating the periphery composed of Scotland, Wales and Ireland) in the latter.” The two largest parties in Scotland are Labour and the Scottish National Party – both are centre-left, and they have a long, adversarial relationship dating back before devolution, or to quote the former leader of the Scottish Liberal Democrats: “there is a level of visceral hatred between the Nationalists and Labour to this day. So, it just transferred from London to Edinburgh … we just so massively underestimated how important it is for people to have good, personal relationships across all parties.”

Simply put, how adversarial or consensual politics might be in a given democracy will depend on many factors. While the shape of the debating chamber and the voting system used to elect members undoubtedly play a part, changing one or both will not necessarily bring about more polite politics.

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On the decline of Statements by Members

From the Canadian House of Commons Standing Orders:

31.  A Member may be recognized, under the provisions of Standing Order 30(5), to make a statement for not more than one minute. The Speaker may order a Member to resume his or her seat if, in the opinion of the Speaker, improper use is made of this Standing Order.

The Standing Orders of the Canadian House of Commons allow Members who are not ministers to address the House for up to one minute on virtually any matter of local, provincial, national or international concern. These Statements by Members take place in the 15 minutes before the daily Question Period, at 2:00 p.m. on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, and at 11:00 a.m. on Friday.

As Standing Order 31 states, the Speaker will order a Member to resume his or her seat if they make improper use of this Standing Order. The guidelines are fairly clear:

  • Members may speak on any matter of concern and not necessarily on urgent matters.
  • Personal attacks are not permitted.
  • The Speaker may interrupt an individual statement and ask the Member to resume his or her seat when:
    • offensive language has been used;
    • a Senator or the actions of the Senate have been criticized;
    • a ruling of a court of law has been denounced; or
    • the character of a judge has been attacked.
  • Speakers have also cautioned Members not to:
    • use this period to make defamatory comments about non-Members;
    • use the verbatim remarks of a private citizen as a statement; or
    • make statements of a commercial nature.

Most Members follow the guidelines and use their minute to raise an issue that is of interest or concern to their constituents, to bring attention to the accomplishments of a local sports team or individual, etc. However, increasingly, these Members’ Statements have become far more partisan and personal attacks against other Members or other parties’ policies are daily occurrences.

Evan Sotiropoulos provided a detailed study of Statements by Members during the 38th and 39th Parliaments in the Canadian Parliamentary Review. As Sotiropoulos notes:

The 38th Parliament and the 39th Parliament present fertile ground for comparative research. Both were minority governments with the same Speaker (Peter Milliken) following the same Standing Orders. Stated otherwise, a number of key independent variables used to explain the dependent variable, that is to say, the level of unparliamentary/partisan language in the daily Statements by Members – were constant. The crucial difference was that the 38th Parliament was a Liberal-led government, whereas the 39th Parliament was Conservative-led. Therefore, the idea that the official Opposition, regardless of party affiliation, would use its time in a more partisan manner could be analyzed against two similar, yet distinct Parliaments.

What Sotiropoulos found, however, was that the Conservative Party, whether in opposition or in government, was more likely to use Members’ Statements to make partisan attacks than were the Liberals:

The Conservative Party, both in opposition and in government, regularly was more partisan in its use of Members’ Statements than its main adversary, the Liberal Party.

According to this research in the 38th Parliament, a Conservative MP was three times more likely than his Liberal counterpart to stand up during Members’ Statements and deliver a political/partisan statement. In the 39th Parliament, the opposition Liberals became more unparliamentary/partisan in their Members’ Statements – confirming, to some extent, the initial theory that the official Opposition would use its time in a more partisan manner. Although Liberal MPs contributed to the increase of partisanship during the 39th Parliament (doubling their partisan statements from 13.5% to 24.9%) Conservative MPs were still twice as likely to deliver a political punch.

Similarly, a more recent analysis of Statements by Members from 1994 to 2012 by Eric Grenier produced similar findings:

An analysis of almost 1,000 speeches made during the Statements by Members period between 1994 and 2012 over the first three normal sitting days after the summer indicates that the number of partisan statements have almost doubled since the Conservatives were first elected. (…)

About 24 per cent of Statements by Members on the sampled days since 2006 were of a partisan nature, compared to 14 per cent in the period between 1994 and 2005 when the Liberals were in power. Four of the five years where more than 1 in 5 statements were partisan took place under the Conservatives. The lone exception is 1995, when the debate over the then-upcoming Quebec referendum was especially nasty.

In response to Grenier’s piece, a former senior adviser to Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Keith Beardsley wrote a very telling blog post explaining how the Conservatives started using Members’ Statements more strategically. Beardsley explains:

While in opposition from 2003 to 2006, we found that quite often our very last MP’s statement (the one just before Question Period started) was quoted in the media the next day.  Simply put the media had arrived in the House for Question Period and they were paying attention to comments from the MPs.  SO 31s delivered earlier in the sequence were largely ignored by the press.

Opposition parties are always looking for ways to get into the media and this became one way to do it. The added bonus was that the then Liberal Prime Minister had no way to respond to what was said. By putting a slight edge to the attack in the SO 31, you could unsettle the PM and distract him just before the Leader of the Opposition stood to ask the first of a series of 3 to 5 questions. Over time we began to use the last of our SO 31s as the equivalent to a question in Question Period especially when it was delivered by one of our attack dogs. The SO 31 allowed one minute of time to stand, while a question only allowed 34 seconds. That one minute statement also allowed more time to drive home our message than any question could. The added advantage for us was the Prime Minister had no way to reply but had to sit and take it.

There have been repeated calls – from MPs and from political observers – for something to be done about this misuse of Statements by Members. MPs have called on the Speaker to clamp down on these ultra-partisan attacks. Former Speaker Milliken attempted to do so – cutting off any MP who started in attacking another MP, but MPs simply changed their tactics by making virulent attacks on an unidentified politician, and identifying the individual in question (usually the Leader of the Opposition) only at the very end of their statement. By then it was too late for the Speaker to do anything about it.

Many political columnists have called for Members’ Statements to be done away with; however, as Mr. Beardsley points out in his blog piece, backbench MPs have few opportunities to speak about matters of concern to them and their constituents. The UK House of Commons has addressed this with the introduction of Backbench Business debates which allow backbenchers to bring forward issues of interest to them for debate in the main Chamber or in Westminster Hall. It has to be said that these debates are much more interesting and even useful than are Members’ Statements. Others have suggested moving them to a different part of the day. Members’ Statements currently garner attention because they precede Question Period, which is really the only part of sitting day to which the media and the general public pay any attention. If Statements by Members were moved to later in the day, the unfortunate reality is that no one would be around to hear them and there would be little motivation for MPs to use them to carry out attacks on their opponents.

Of course, if MPs are as distressed by the tone of these Statements as they claim to be, they could simply choose to stop misusing them.

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E-petitions with 10,000 signatures will now get a response

In a written ministerial statement, Leader of the House, the Rt. Hon. Andrew Lansley announced that any e-petition which received 10,000 or more signatures would receive a response from the Government:

Once an e-petition has passed 10 000 signatures, departments will provide a  response  that will appear on the website and  be e-mailed to all signatories who opted-in to receive updates on that petition.  Responses will include a statement of the Government’s policy on the issue, and details of any relevant Parliamentary processes that are ongoing.

All e-petitions currently open for signature on the site, which  have more than 10 000 signatures, will receive a response from departments; we expect most of these to be published before the House returns from the Conference recess. Responses to e-petitions that subsequently pass the 10 000 signature threshold will  be published on a rolling basis on the relevant page of http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk

Until now, there has been no formal obligation on government departments to respond directly to e-petitions (or paper petitions for that matter). Petitions which garnered 100,000 or more signatures were referred to the Backbench Business Committee for consideration for debate, but they represented a fraction of the e-petitions on the site.

In the House of Commons, during questions on House Business, the chair of the Backbench Business Committee, Natascha Engel, asked Mr. Lansley if he would work with the Committee to ensure that eventually, every single petition receives some sort of feedback. Lansley replied:

I intend to work with the hon. Lady and Members across the House, including my colleagues in the Government, to ensure that those who give their time and energy to bringing issues before the House feel that they are responded to properly and timeously.

To summarize then, any petition (digital or otherwise) which receives 100,000 signatures or more will be automatically referred to the Backbench Business Committee and eligible for consideration for debate, either in the House of Commons or in Westminster Hall. This does not mean that said petition is guaranteed a debate. The Committee itself cannot schedule such a debate unless the petition is brought forward by an MP as a topic for a Backbench Business debate. Even if this happens, the proposal must meet the criteria for debate, and there is still no guarantee that such a debate will occur. Similarly, an MP can propose having a debate on any petition – regardless of the number of signatures the petition may have received, if he or she believes the subject of the petition is an issue which merits a debate.

As well, any petition which receives 10,000 or more signatures is now guaranteed to receive a response from the relevant government department.

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Why Maher is wrong on Senate Reform

A recent column by Postmedia’s Stephen Maher argues that recent scandals involving senators might spur forward attempts to reform the Upper Chamber. Unfortunately, the arguments he makes rather miss the point.

Maher acknowledges that the Senate does good and important work, and that their committee work in particular is often better than the work of the House of Commons’ committees. He then goes on to say that this doesn’t change the fact that the Senate is an anachronism, unrepresentative and lacks legitimacy “to fulfill their proper functions, as a check on the government of the day” because they are appointed.

The Senate and senators do not lack legitimacy because they are appointed – their legitimacy stems from the Constitution. Judges are also appointed and act as checks on the government of the day, and no one questions their legitimacy. One might prefer that senators (and perhaps even judges) be elected, but that won’t make them more legitimate. It is the Constitution that establishes the legitimacy of the Upper House.

Maher points out that there are no NDP or Bloc Quebecois senators, and therefore that isn’t democratic. True – but that reality is largely because both the NDP and BQ would like to see the Senate abolished and have no interest in having senators appointed from their ranks. Because they oppose the very existence of the Senate, one would have to ask if they’d even bother running candidates if we ever moved to an elected Senate. If the NDP opted to not run candidates in Senate elections because it would rather see the Upper House abolished, wouldn’t that make an elected Senate equally undemocratic?

Maher then writes:

Electing senators to a single nine-year term — as the government has proposed — would give them democratic legitimacy and some degree of independence from the party machine.

I have written previously about my objections to limiting senators (and in the UK, Lords) to serving a single term in office if elected. This may perhaps make them more “legitimate” in the eyes of some, but it certainly does not make them more accountable, which is a big part of democratic legitimacy. It is one thing to elect someone to office, but without the possibility of judging how that person performed by having the opportunity to either re-elect them or kick them out, how is that any better than having them appointed? I think Maher confuses the concepts of “accountability” and “legitimacy” – as I’ve stated at the outset, the Senate’s legitimacy stems from the Constitution. Electing senators doesn’t make them more legitimate. It could, however, make them more accountable – but only if they are allowed to seek re-election. Limiting them to a single term in office fails on that front.

I also don’t understand how Maher can think that elected senators would somehow be more independent of the party machine. They would be running as representatives of a given political party. They, like MPs, would depend on the party for their nomination. They would be, if anything, more beholden to toeing the party line.

Maher then suggests that:

And the prospect of elections might prevent embarrassments, in part because only professional politicians would get elected.

Conservative Patrick Brazeau, who called a reporter a bitch on Twitter, would never get elected.

Neither would Liberal Rod Zimmer, and his odd marriage would have remained a private matter.

Again, these arguments are somewhat baffling. Is Maher suggesting that no embarrassing MP has ever been elected? I certainly can think of a few. And do we really need more professional politicians? Maher suggests that Senator Brazeau would never get elected – I think there are very good chances that Senator Brazeau would indeed do quite well at the polls. He’s young, attractive, and the party could always stick him in a very safe riding, which would guarantee his election. Maher then uses the example of Senator Zimmer and his much younger wife, suggesting that voters would never elect a man married to a much younger woman. My reply to that is: Pierre Elliot Trudeau.

All of the problems Maher mentions could be eliminated simply by changing how senators are appointed. The logical solution is simply to remove the power to appoint senators from the hands of the Prime Minister and turn that over to an independent Selection Commission. Criteria could be drawn up as to what background and characteristics senators should have. Anyone could submit names of persons they would like to nominate as a potential senator. This would have the added benefit of ensuring that people from specific professional backgrounds which are currently under-represented in the House of Commons – such as experts in certain fields such as finance, all things digital, medicine, etc., were appointed.

A Senate filled with persons appointed by an independent commission would also avoid the other problem Maher identifies – that of the regional imbalance. Maher is right to note that this would be far more problematic if we moved to electing Senators. He is also right to point out that it would be virtually impossible to get the Constitutional change necessary to remedy that imbalance. In short, we are pretty much stuck with that regional representation, which only strengthens the argument for the creation of an independent selection committee to deal with appointments to the Senate.

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E-petitions prove to be popular in their first year

A year after the launch of its e-petition site, the UK Government has released some interesting data which gives some idea of the popularity of e-petitions.

Over the past twelve months, 36,000 petitions have been launched, attracting 6.4 million signatures. This of course doesn’t meant that 6.4 million different people have signed them – some people have probably signed multiple petitions. According to the Government, that averages out to 12 people signing a petition every minute. The e-petitions website averages 46,500 visits a day, for a total of over 17 million visits over the course of its first year.

While those numbers are impressive, they are also a bit misleading. It seems that the popularity (or at least, the novelty) of e-petitions is wearing off. The site was at its most popular immediately after it launched, with the highest number of people visiting the site occurring last August. Indeed, a petition on the London riots reached the fabled 100,000 signature threshold within days. Since then, visitation to the site has varied, and visits reached a low in May of this year. Ten petitions surpassed the 100,000 signature mark, and six of these managed that in the site’s first 100 days.

Earlier this year, the Hansard Society released a briefing paper, What’s Next for E-Petitions, which identified four key problems with the Government’s e-petitions:

  1. Ownership and responsibility: The system is controlled by government but the onus to respond is largely placed on the House of Commons.
  2. There is no agreement about the purpose of e-petitions: Are they ‘an easy way to influence government policy’, a ‘fire alarm’ about issues of national concern, a ‘finger in the wind’ to determine the depth of public feeling on a range of issues? Or should they be used to empower the public through greater engagement in the political and parliamentary process, providing for deliberation on the issues of concern?
  3. Public and media expectations of the system are consequently confused: People expect an automatic debate once the signature threshold is passed and react negatively when this does not happen.
  4. There is minimal public engagement with Parliament or government: Beyond the possibility of a debate for those e-petitions that pass the 100,000 signature threshold, little or nothing currently happens with them. And if an e-petition does not achieve the signature threshold but still attracts considerable support (e.g. 99,999 signatures) there is no guarantee of any kind of response at all.

I agree with most of the concerns the Hansard Society has identified. One of the main problems with the e-petitions system as it currently exists is that these are petitions to Government, whereas traditionally, one petitions Parliament. Because they are petitions to a Government department, there is no easy way to link them to an MP, who would normally be the person to bring the matter before Parliament. Yet, as the Hansard Society points out, the onus is on the House of Commons to respond to the petitions.

Points two and three are also spot on. I have in fact previously blogged many times about the degree of confusion which exists over how the e-petitions scheme works and the expectations that a debate is guaranteed to happen if a petition surpasses the 100,000 signature threshold. This is in large part due to very sloppy reporting in the media when the scheme was launched, and unfortunately, has not improved.

I quibble a bit with regards to point 4. First of all, just as attaining 100,000 signatures will not necessarily guarantee that an e-petition will be debated, it is entirely possible for a petition which has received fewer than 100,000 signatures to be debated if an MP presents such a request to the Backbench Business Committee. The BBBCom has made this very clear on their website. As for the issue of responses, it is true that there is no guarantee of a response, but some petitions do indeed receive responses, even though they have fallen short of the mystical 100,000 signature mark. The main problem is that there doesn’t seem to be any coherent or consistent policy across government departments which would oblige them to respond to all petitions – regardless of the number of signatures received.

I do fully agree with the key recommendations put forward by the Hansard Society, however:

  • Ownership of and responsibility for the e-petitions system should rest with the House of Commons and not the executive.
  • The House of Commons should create a Petitions Committee, supported by staff in a Petitions Office, to engage with petitioners, moderate the process and provide a single route for consideration of both paper and online petitions.
  • Members of the Petitions Committee should be elected and have the power to refer petitions to a relevant Select Committee, to commission their own inquiries into specific petitions, to question ministers on the issues and to invite petitioners and others to give evidence at public hearings.

I believe that adopting those recommendations would improve the process significantly.

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