Posts Tagged ‘parliamentary politics’

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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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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Australia’s Labor Party’s revolving door leadership

In June 2010, Australian Labor Party leader and Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, was ousted by his caucus in a leadership challenge won by Rudd’s Deputy Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, who then became both party leader and Prime Minister. Less than two years later, history appears to be repeating itself, with Rudd now challenging Gillard’s leadership of the party. Gillard announced a ballot for the party’s leadership would take place Monday, February 27. Mr. Rudd’s challenge failed, and Ms. Gillard successfully held off the challenge, winning by 71 votes to 31 votes for Rudd.

If Rudd’s challenge had been successful, he would have replaced Gillard as party leader, but not necessarily as Prime Minister of Australia.

The Australian Labor Party leader is elected by the party caucus in Parliament, that is, the elected members of that party in both the House of Representatives and the Senate. In contrast, Canadian political party leaders are chosen by party members. The rules are different for each party, but essentially, whenever there is a leadership race, anyone who is a member of that party can run as a candidate for the leadership, even if they aren’t a sitting MP, and anyone who is a member of the party has the opportunity to vote for the party leader at a leadership convention. This is more or less the same process used by the main political parties in the UK. In some instances, certain groups may also have voting rights, for example, the trade unions can vote to elect the leader of the UK Labour Party. While slightly more democratic, even in these instances, the party leaders are not directly elected by the general population.

There are pros and cons to each approach. In the case of party leadership decided by the party caucus, this strengthens the role of individual MPs and makes the party leader more responsive to his or her MPs. A party leader elected in a more democratic way, by party members, may be able to more easily exert pressure on his or her MPs, rendering MPs more docile and submissive to the party leader, since they can claim support that extends beyond the caucus and to the party as a whole.

Some parties seek to balance both approaches. For example, in 1998, the UK Conservative Party changed its rules for electing a new leader by opening up the process to party members. Prior to 1998, the party leader was chosen by caucus. However, while the actual selection of the party leader is more open, the party caucus still plays an important role. For example, the party caucus can potentially force a leadership review by calling for a vote of confidence in the party leader. To secure a confidence vote, 15% of Conservative Members of Parliament must submit a request for such a vote, in writing, to the Chairman of the 1922 Committee.

If the incumbent Leader wins the support of a simple majority in any such vote, they would remain Leader and no further vote could be called for a period of twelve months from the date of the ballot.  If the Leader were to lose such a vote (again, on a simple majority basis) they must resign, and they may not stand in the leadership election which is then triggered.  As well, it is the party caucus which decides on who the candidates for the leadership will be from among the current sitting MPs. If only one name is put forward, that person becomes the new leader, without party members having any say in the matter. If two names are put forward, then those names are put to the general party membership. However, if three or more names are put forward, a ballot is held within the Parliamentary Party. An exhaustive ballot system is used to select two candidates to go forward to the general membership of the Party.

Getting back to the situation in Australia, these internal Labor Party machinations have prompted some backlash in Australia, with calls for party leaders to be directly elected by the people. Indeed, even this blog has received hits from people based on those search terms. What is not clear is if people are calling for the Prime Minister to be directly elected, or simply for political parties to democratize the way they choose their leader by opening up the process to party members.

I stated at the outset that if Rudd’s leadership challenge was successful, he would replace Julia Gillard as Labor Party leader. One would assume that he would also automatically become Prime Minister, however, this was less immediately clear because of the current hung parliament situation in the Australian House of Representatives.

The Prime Minister is appointed by the Governor-General. This can only happen if there is a vacancy to fill, meaning Julia Gillard would have to resign. If she loses the party leadership, one would assume that she would then resign as Prime Minister as well. As Australian constitutional law expert Anne Twomey explains:

“A lot of people don’t realise that it’s actually a reserve power of the Governor-General; she has some discretion in making this decision, but it’s a discretion confined by some convention.

“The convention says she has to appoint the person who either holds the support of the majority of the Lower House or is most likely to hold that support.”

Professor Twomey says that is where independent MPs will play a key role.

“Can she feel certain that the independents will support Kevin Rudd and that he is the one who holds the support of the majority of the Lower House?” she asked.

“It might be quite difficult for the Governor-General. There’s two ways she could approach it.

“The first would be to ask the independents to come in or give a letter telling her which way they intend to vote – you saw that sort of experience more recently in Tasmania with the hung parliament there.

“Alternatively she could … wait for parliament to sit, and let there be a vote of confidence or no confidence on the floor of the parliament and whatever the House of Representatives chooses then that person [will be appointed] as prime minister.”

“And that would make sure she wasn’t seen to be in any way biased or influencing results – she could leave it to the House to decide.”

Labor currently governs as a minority government with the support of a Green and a few independent MPs. If these independents indicated to the Governor-General that they can’t support Labor with Mr. Rudd as party leader, but would support Opposition leader Tony Abbott’s party, the Governor-General could then ask Mr. Abbott to form the government. Or, if the independents indicate that they can’t support either Rudd or Abbott, they could indicate their preference for an election to be called:

“The independents can’t themselves advise the Governor-General and say ‘hey, call an election’, but what they can do is say ‘we will not give support to the new Labor leader, we will support Tony Abbott to the extent that when he comes into power, the first thing he’s going to do is advise the Governor-General to call an election’.

“So that would be the way of causing an election if the independents thought that was the way to resolve the matter.”

The Governor-General’s third option would be to dissolve parliament, which she can only do on the advise of the Prime Minister, meaning she would have to appoint someone Prime Minister first:

“So if the Governor-General is inclined to think this whole issue that should be resolved by an election, she would be able to appoint Tony Abbott who presumably would not want to be stuck dealing with independents and therefore would advise her to call an election – that would be the way to achieve it.”

The Rudd-Gillard contest presented a special dilemma for the Labor Party:

Gillard is well liked by the majority of her colleagues but disliked by the majority of the voters. Rudd is loathed, indeed hated, by the majority of his colleagues, but is vastly more popular than Gillard among the public.

Because of this, Rudd tried to by-pass caucus support for his leadership by appealing directly to the general public. As Geoff Robinson, a lecturer in politics at Deakin University explains:

“There’s a difference between Julia Gillard’s appeal, very much to the parliamentary party, perhaps the traditions of the Westminster system, whereas Kevin Rudd is mounting a populist, almost an American-style campaign to the mass of the electorate, potentially to Labor supporters.”

Recent polls showed Rudd to be more popular than Gillard, and also more popular than Opposition leader Tony Abbott, but while this may be the case, it is the Labor party caucus which will decide who the party leader will be, and by all accounts, there was great animosity towards Rudd among those he would have to work with day in and day out.

While there is certainly a case to be made for parties such as the Australian Labor Party to democratize how it chooses its leader (and indeed, some are making that case), in a Westminster parliamentary system, party leaders couldn’t be elected directly by the people.  It is not a presidential system. As I have repeatedly stressed in many other posts, voters in Westminster parliamentary systems do not elect governments, much less the Prime Minister, they elect parliaments. It is the party (or group of parties) which can command the confidence of the House which forms the government, and the leader of said party then becomes Prime Minister. A government may, in theory, be removed at any time, if it loses the confidence of the House. If the party in power wishes to change leaders at some point during its mandate, that is the party’s prerogative.

In most instances, e.g., when there is a single-party majority government in place, a change in the party leadership will not affect the governing party’s ability to command the confidence of the House. However, as discussed above, in a minority situation, where the government depends on the support of other parties to stay in power, or in again, perhaps in the case of a majority coalition government such as the one in the UK, a change of party leader might make it more difficult for the government to retain the confidence of the House. The Australian independent MPs might not have supported Labor with Kevin Rudd as leader – they had agreed to support the party led by Julia Gillard. Similarly, if the UK Conservatives ousted David Cameron for another leader, the Liberal Democrats might rethink their position in the coalition.

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Electoral Reform and DPR Voting, Part 2

(Note: Back in April of this year, I wrote about Direct Party and Representative Voting, an electoral voting system invented by Stephen Johnson. That post continues to get regular hits on this blog, and recently, Mr. Johnson contacted me asking if I would be interested in revisiting the topic. He provided me with a few more points addressing some of the questions I had raised in my original post. I invited Mr. Johnson to contribute a post to this blog, and he accepted. This is the second of two posts. Click here to read Part 1.)

Electoral Reform and DPR Voting, Part 2

by guest blogger Stephen Johnson

Can DPR Voting claim that no votes are wasted?

In DPR Voting you cast your Party vote for the party you support and this determines which party (or parties) form the Government. You can vote for the party of choice whether or not there is a party candidate standing in the constituency. The Party votes are added up nationwide and then the percentage of votes of each party is used to determine the total number of votes each party has in the parliament. This means that every vote makes a mathematical difference to the result of the election and determines the number of votes each party will have in the parliament regardless of where the vote is cast. The mathematical consequence of percentages is that if one party gets one extra vote the percentage of the total vote for that party increases and the percentages for all the other parties is reduced. There are no longer any marginal constituencies, as there are in the FPTP system. Every vote in every constituency is equally important. Your vote makes a real difference to the party you vote for, and for many people this is the real purpose of going out to vote.

Read more

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Electoral Reform and DPR Voting, Part 1

(Note: Back in April of this year, I wrote about Direct Party and Representative Voting, an electoral voting system invented by Stephen Johnson. That post continues to get regular hits on this blog, and recently, Mr. Johnson contacted me asking if I would be interested in revisiting the topic. He provided me with a few more points addressing some of the questions I had raised in my original post. I invited Mr. Johnson to contribute a post to this blog, and he accepted. This is the first of two posts, you can read Part 2 here. The views expressed below are Mr. Johnson’s.)

Electoral Reform and DPR Voting, Part 1

by guest blogger Stephen Johnson

The functioning of our democracy depends in part on the acceptance by the people of the way the electoral system works.  This blog (April, 2011) reviewed Direct Party and Representative Voting, a new proportional electoral system, and found some merit and some shortcomings. Stephen Johnson argues that the system deserves a closer look as a PR system to replace ‘First Past the Post’ (FPTP). Read more

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Report on 2010 elections for positions in the House

The UK House of Commons Procedure Committee released a report on 31 October 2011, which reviewed the elections held, for the first time, in most cases, to fill various positions in the House. It is an interesting report as it provides more detailed information into how exactly these elections proceeded.

In the dying months of the previous parliament, the House of Commons adopted many of the recommendations of the Committee on Reform of the House of Commons (the Wright Committee). These recommendations were implemented for the first time in the new Parliament elected in May 2010.

Among the changes introduced were first time elections for the Deputy Speakers of the House, the chairs of the main select committees and the chair and members of the new Backbench Business Committee, and a new system adopted by the parties to elect their members of the relevant select committees. While the entire report is interesting, I will focus on the elections affecting select committees.

To recap for those who don’t know, one of the recommendations of Wright Committee adopted in March 2010 and implemented for the first time following the May 2010 general election was the election of the chairs of the major select committees. Previously, this process had been a private arrangement between the party Whips. Standing Order No. 122B outlines a three stage process:

  1. The Speaker writes to the party leaders indicating the proportion of chairs of select committees falling to each party based on the composition of the House following the election;
  2. The House agrees to a motion tabled in the names of the leaders of all parties entitled to one of more chairs specifying to which party each chair is allocated;
  3. Two weeks later, ballots are held for each of the posts, except in cases where only one candidate has come forward, in which case they are declared elected without a ballot. The vote is conducted using the Alternative Vote system (preferential ballot), meaning MPs rank the candidates in order of preference.

What happened in May 2010

A total of 24 committee chair positions were open for election. Of these, 8 were elected unopposed and 16 were contested and decided by secret ballot. The allocation of chairs between the parties, as stated above, follows the convention of mirroring the party breakdown in the House. The Speaker sent a letter indicating the proportion each party was entitled to and was arithmetically correct, but the motion tabled by the party leaders was not, nor does it have to be. The motion allocated one fewer chair to Labour and one more to the Conservatives than would have been the case if the figures supplied by the Speaker had been strictly followed.

Members nominated for a committee chair position engaged in rather vigorous campaigning. One of the main problems faced by candidates was making themselves known to new MPs who weren’t familiar with their record in the House or past work on committees. The volume of communication sent out by some candidates even overloaded the email system. This went on for the two week period between the House agreeing to the motion tabled by the party leaders and the actual ballot date. As mentioned, AV is used, since it eliminates the need for subsequent ballots and it ensures that the winning candidate has the support of more than half of those voting.

Once the committee chairs were elected, committee membership was elected. The Wright Committee had proposed that the members of select committees should be elected by secret ballot by each political party, according to their level of representation in the House and using transparent democratic means. The House would then endorse the results.

In 2010, the process of internal party elections was carried out after the election of the chairs. Once complete, the party Whips submitted a list of names for each committee to the Committee of Selection and the House agreed to the formal motions to nominate the select committees. Little information was published as to how the division of seats between the parties was made nor on the method used for election within each party. The Labour Party asked Members to nominate themselves for a select committee. Those who had applied for an undersubscribed committee or where the number of candidates matched the number of vacancies were declared elected unopposed. They then held a two-stage election process with elections for the vacancies on the 12 most subscribed committees followed by an election for the rest of the vacancies.

The Conservatives adopted a similar process to Labour. The process of administering the election will handed over from the Whips, who ran the contest in 2010, to the 1922 Committee for future elections.

The Liberal Democrats were awarded a number of select committee places in accordance with their party strength. Interested members signed up for vacancies and there was no need for ballots.

Committee Recommendations

After reviewing the election process for committee chairs, the Procedure Committee made a few recommendations. The members of minority parties complained that they were excluded from even standing for a post as a select committee chair. While the Committee sympathised, they did not recommend a change to the election process for select committee chairs.

Other members complained about the volume of communications issued by candidates in contested elections, arguing for more control over how MPs campaigned. Others called for opportunities for members to meet with and hear from the candidates for each post, which would have been very helpful for the newly-elected MPs. The Committee reviewed these issues and in the end decided against more central control over the campaign. Given the number of elections involved, they decided that it would be unwise to lay down rules about how each event should be organised, leaving it instead to the candidates to decide how best to reach out to their fellow MPs.

Another issue raised was the participation of Ministers. Voting for the chairs was open to all MPs, but since the role of select committees is to hold Ministers to account, some suggested that it was not appropriate for Ministers to have a vote in deciding who should undertake that role. The Committee recognized this as a valid concern, but problematic to address. Excluding Ministers from voting would affect the party’s balance of the electorate. Changing the rule to say that Ministers could vote in all elections except those relating to their department might be difficult to police. Instead, the Committee concluded that Minister would be “well-advised to refrain from voting in the election for a chair to scrutinise their own department” but decided that a more formal prohibition would be undesirable.

The Committee also reviewed the use of AV for the vote and decided that it would be best to move from AV to FPTP. The Committee justified this on the following grounds: 1) FPTP is simple and is the voting system MPs are most familiar with and 2) the results from 2010 showed that even in the contests which required more than one round of counting, the candidate who was in the lead on the first count remained there and won. Of the 16 contested elections, seven were decided on the first count, five on the second, three on the third and one required 6 counts. In each case, even the one which went six rounds of counting, the winning candidate was ahead by a significant margin in the first round of counting and the subsequent rounds only served to increase their lead until they surpassed the 50% mark.

I have to say that I find this recommendation a bit problematic, given the reasons the Committee provides to justify it. First, AV is hardly that much more complicated than FPTP. While I can understand that a newly-elected MP might find it difficult to rank several candidates, none of whom he or she knows at all, they probably would find it as difficult to vote for a single candidate among a list of names that they don’t know at all. As for the second reason provided, simply because the elections held in June 2010 weren’t that close, this doesn’t mean that in future years, there won’t be much closer races. At least with AV, the eventual winner will be the candidate who eventually receives 50% of the vote. With FPTP, if there are very close races for some chair positions, the winning candidate may well be elected by a bare majority of the vote – maybe even one vote.

In my view, this would be problematic when electing the chair of a select committee. I would think that it would be preferable to have a chair who had the backing of an overall majority of his or her fellow MPs, even if that means they are the “compromise” candidate, than to end up with a chair who was narrowly elected over another candidate, and given the vote totals, very likely elected only by their own party, with no support (or barely any support) from members of other parties, which is exactly what could happen using FPTP. The chairs of select committees have to represent and answer to the House, not simply their party caucus. The whole point of moving away from Whip-appointed chairs to House elected chairs was to make the committees more independent and accountable. FPTP could very well undermine this in the event of a very hotly-contested race between several candidates.

Because FPTP was never meant to be used in instances where there are more than two candidates running, I think the Committee is making a mistake in recommending that AV be dropped in favour of FPTP for the election of committee chairs. Alternatively, they could recommend that if there are only two candidates contesting for one position, FPTP could be used since one candidate will inevitably end up with more than 50% of the vote, but in instances where there are three or more candidates, AV be used to ensure that the eventual winner have majority support of the House.

Regarding the election of committee membership, the Procedure Committee got little feedback from members and thus concluded that there was little evidence that any changes were needed. However, they did recommend that it would be more in keeping with the “spirit of the Wright reforms” if each party published details of the process by which it elected its members to select committees.

As stated at the outset, the report covers much more than simply the elections for Select Committee chairs and members. I strongly recommend readers have a look at the report in its entirety.

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On pairing

Pairing is a parliamentary practice whereby two members of parliament from opposing political parties may agree to abstain where one member is unable to vote, due to other commitments, illness, travel problems, etc. The rationale behind the practice is to maintain the relative distribution of seats in the House so that a party’s strength is based on who was elected, not which MPs are ill that day, or had their flight delayed.

There are slight variations in how pairing is organized in different jurisdictions.

UK House of Commons

As explained on the UK Parliament website,

Pairing is an arrangement where an MP of one party agrees with an MP of an opposing party not to vote in a particular division. This gives both MPs the opportunity not to attend. Pairing is an informal arrangement and is not recognised by the House of Commons’ rules. Such arrangements have to be registered with the whips who check that the agreement is stuck to. Pairing is not allowed in divisions of great political importance but pairings can last for months or years.

There have been times, however, where one or more of the parties have refused to participate in pairing arrangements. In December 1996, for example, Labour and the Liberal Democrats discovered that the Tories had been cheating by pairing the same three Conservative MPs with three Labour MPs and three Liberal Democrat MPs. Because of that, the two opposition parties decided to withdraw from all pairing arrangements beginning in January 1997.

It is not clear how long this protest lasted – perhaps only until the end of that parliament since in the 1997 general election, Labour were elected with a huge majority. Pairing is currently practiced by all three of the major parties in the UK House of Commons, but only, as stated above, for votes that aren’t of great importance (one or two line whips).

Canada House of Commons

In the Canadian House of Commons, pairing did not have any official recognition up until 1991. It was considered a private arrangement between Members. In 1991, the Standing Orders were modified to provide for the establishment of a Register of Paired Members, which is kept at the Table. The actual pairing arrangements are arrived at by the party Whips, and Members who will not be participating in any recorded divisions on a given day will have their names entered into the Register by their respective party Whips. These pairings Members are published in the Debates (Hansard) and in the Journals immediately following the entry for any recorded division held on that day.

While this process has formalized pairing to a degree, it still remains largely a private arrangement between the parties, and nothing can be done if a paired Member “forgets” that they were paired and votes. Also, unlike in the UK, the practice in the Canadian House of Commons is that pairings are agreed to on an ad hoc basis, that is, vote by vote. There aren’t any long-term pairing agreements which may last months or years, as occurs in the UK House of Commons. As well, since there is no distinction between one-line, two-line and three-line whips in the Canadian House of Commons, the parties can agree to pairing arrangements on any type of vote, including those of “great political importance”.

Pairing most commonly occurs in the Canadian House of Commons during hung parliaments, when there is a minority government in place. In such instances, the numerical balance between the parties matters far more, and it becomes far more important that the relative voting strengths of the parties is maintained. When one party forms a majority government, pairing is much less common.

Australia House of Representatives

As in the UK and Canada, pairing in the Australian House of Representatives is an unofficial arrangement organized by the party Whips. As in the UK, Members have at times been paired not only on particular questions or one sitting, but sometimes for extended periods. This has even included pairing the Prime Minister with the Leader of the Opposition. As in Canada, pairing is more common when the relative strength of the parties is much closer. Also like Canada, pairing is allowed on crucial votes, and arranging pairings on key votes can be a very protracted and disorderly affair. Parties might also pull out of pairing arrangements, for various reasons:

Pairs have been cancelled by the Government because of the need for an absolute majority to pass a bill to alter the Constitution. The Opposition has cancelled the arrangements for the remainder of the session as a consequence of its view on the manner in which the proceedings of the House were being conducted. (House of Representatives Practice, p. 279)

New Zealand Parliament

Pairing was abolished in the New Zealand Parliament in 1996, following the introduction of new Standing Orders to accommodate the change to the MMP voting system. MPs no longer have to be in the chamber at the time of voting. Parties declare their total votes including the ‘proxy’ votes of those away.

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Speaker Bercow and accusations of bias

British House of Commons Speaker John Bercow annoys many MPs. There have been a rash of articles over the course of the past year hinting at behind-the-scenes plots to get rid of him. Having regularly livestreamed proceedings from the UK House of Commons, I find it difficult to assess why there is such animosity towards Speaker Bercow.

Reasons oft-advanced is that he is arrogant and overbearing, and that he hates the Conservative Party. It is this last point that raises some eyebrows. Bercow was a member of the Conservatives, until he became Speaker of course. Like all MPs elected Speaker in the UK, once elected to the post, Bercow resigned his party membership in order to maintain the highest degree of impartiality. And is perhaps because he does strive to be impartial that some Conservative MPs think he now “hates” the party.

Recently, the Daily Mail ran an article claiming that Bercow reprimands Conservative MPs twice as often as the does Labour MPs. This conclusion is based on figures compiled by Rob Wilson, the parliamentary private secretary to Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt, who counted the number of times Mr Bercow shouted “order” at MPs since the general election in May 2010. He found that Conservative members were admonished 257 times compared with 109 times for Labour MPs. The article quotes Mr. Wilson saying: “Those MPs who have suggested bias in the Speaker’s handling of the Commons would feel vindicated by these figures.”

Of course, there was no suggestion anywhere that perhaps, just perhaps, Conservative MPs were called to order more often because it was deserved.

Conservative backbench MP Douglas Carswell addressed some of the complaints made against Speaker Bercow earlier this year. He dismissed the claims that Bercow was biased:

Bercow’s biased, complain others. If by that you mean he shows favour to one side of the Commons chamber or party, that is demonstrably not true. If anything he can be tediously even handed.

What bias Bercow does undoubtedly have is one which favours backbenchers against the frontbenches - and in support of the legislature over the executive.

Under Bercow, even tiddly little backbenchers like me can force ministers to come before the Commons and answer urgent questions. It makes their life difficult – and keeps them on their toes.

Commentators have observed the way in which this Parliament is more rebellious than others. One of the key reasons for this is the way the Speaker calls amendments. Under previous Speakers amendments tabled by backbenchers that the government might have found inconvenient would almost never get called. Now, there is every chance that they will.

I suspect that is precisely why part of the Tory hierarchy has taken against Mr B. It is because the legislature is slowly getting off its knees, no longer lying prostrate before the executive, that some inside the government remember fondly the days when Whips anointed Speakers – and Speakers behaved accordingly.

This is the impression I have from watching proceedings in the House of Commons. If Bercow is biased, as Carswell notes, it is towards the legislature at the expense of the executive. He is helped in that role by some of the new procedures that were voted on by the House in the dying days of the previous Parliament, such as the creation of a Backbench Business Committee, new rules for electing committee chairs and choosing committee membership, etc., which have also strengthened the legislature vis à vis the executive. But Bercow has also appeared more willing to make use of existing rules, such as Urgent Questions. His predecessor, Speaker Martin, allowed only two urgent questions during his last year as Speaker; Bercow has granted over 60 in the first year of this new Parliament.

If the legislature is being strengthened at the expense of the executive, it is natural that the party forming the executive would perceive that as bias against them. Once in power, a party develops a sense of entitlement; having that undercut doesn’t always sit very well.

This is not meant to downplay many of the other criticisms levelled at both Speaker Bercow, and in particular, his very out-spoken wife. However, the charges of “hating” the Conservatives, and bias in the Chamber are, I believe, undeserved. The rules have changed, voted on and adopted by the House itself, and Speaker Bercow is simply applying those rules. Perhaps some MPs belonging to one of the parties forming the government believe they are entitled to more of a free ride in the House. Speaker Bercow disagrees.

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More on open primaries

In a previous post proposing ways to increase the role and power of backbench MPs in Ottawa, I suggested that parties use open primaries to select their candidates in each constituency. By this I meant letting all registered voters in the riding vote for which candidate they prefer, rather than limit the vote to members of the party only, which is current practice. I wrote:

When candidate selection is top-down, parliamentarians tend to reflect the values of whoever happened to be the party leader when they began their careers. It means parties are slow to sense, let alone respond to, changes in the national mood. I think we forget that once elected, an MP is to represent all of their constituents, not simply those who voted for him or her. If they owe not simply their election, but their selection as party candidate to the electorate at large, it will be increasingly difficult for them to “forget” about the voters once on Parliament Hill.

Recently, Globe and Mail columnist John Ibbitson has proposed that Canada’s Liberal Party consider implementing an open primary system to choose its next leader. Ibbitson writes:

Right now, the Liberal leader is directly chosen by party members. But it costs money to join and who would want to? People who belong to political parties aren’t entirely normal.

In the United States, you have to register to vote. Everyone who registers as a Democrat or a Republican has a say in that party’s leadership contest through the primaries and caucuses.

This weakens the party elite because outsiders such as Barack Obama (or Bill Clinton or Ronald Reagan or Jimmy Carter) can do an end run around the establishment by appealing directly to voters. Because the weaker a party gets, the more powerful its few surviving poobahs become; a strong party will have a broad base and a weak elite, the very opposite of today’s Liberal Party.

Renewal could come for the Liberals if a leadership contest galvanized hundreds of thousands of people to, say, take out a free one-day party membership so they could vote in the New Brunswick primary, which everyone would be watching because the Northern Ontario primary the week before had vaulted an unknown but charismatic minority candidate into the front ranks of the contest.

Yes, fundraising would be an issue, given the campaign-contribution limits; yes, the Conservatives might try to fix the contest (although that’s really not very likely). But think of the mailing list!

Or the Liberals could carry on with an old leader, a plethora of commissions and grasstops instead of grassroots. In which case, their party will die.

As I stated in my earlier post, and as Ibbitson writes here, primaries are common in the US, and perhaps partially explain why US political parties are such weak entities when compared to political parties in Westminster style parliamentary systems. Party discipline is very important in the Westminster parliamentary model of government because it is governments, not individual Members, who are held accountable. We don’t directly elect our head of government, or even the government – we elect a Parliament, and it is that elected Parliament which determines which party or group of parties will form the government, and that determines which party leader will end up being Prime Minister.

However, primaries could still work in countries such as the UK and Canada. They wouldn’t be as open as they are in the US, where the party executive has no real say in who presents themselves as a candidate for that party in a primary. Persons who wanted to put themselves forward as a candidate for a certain party would still have to be a member of that party, and ultimately, the party executive could veto any potential candidate they weren’t entirely comfortable with. However, once a number of candidates had come forward, the selection process would be opened up to all registered voters in the constituency (for a local candidate) or nationally, as Ibbitson proposes for a party leadership race.

The main concern for many is what Ibbitson casually dismisses in his penultimate paragraph, that other parties might try to fix the contest. I myself had wondered about that in the US system – surely if one is a die-hard Democrat, you would be tempted to vote for the weakest of the Republican candidates in an open primary so as to better the odds of the Democratic candidate winning in the election. And perhaps some party diehards would vote that way – if they even bothered to vote in a primary to choose a candidate for another party. But as Ibbitson writes, that’s not very likely.

Ultimately, as a voter, my main desire would be to have the best person representing me. In marginal ridings – meaning ridings that are hotly contested by two or more parties, I can’t guarantee that the party I prefer will win. Or it could be that the party I prefer definitely won’t win, and so in all likelihood, my representative will be someone from one of the other parties. Faced with this reality, then yes, I would want to ensure that each one of those parties ends up with the best candidate possible.

Parties could easily avoid a scenario wherein they might find themselves with a weak candidate selected by simply working harder to attract strong candidates. I’ve previously written about the problem of placeholder candidates – where a party will quite literally choose any warm body to be their token name on the ballot in ridings they normally have little chance of winning. There is also the problem of “safe” ridings, ridings which are almost always won by one party. In those ridings as well, parties will often run candidates who are favourites of the party executive or leadership, but who might not be particularly well-liked by constituents – including supporters of that party. Attempts to challenge that candidate’s nomination will often be undermined by the party executive. If there were open primaries in place, parties could no longer afford to indulge in either of these practices.

Ibbitson writes that “People who belong to political parties aren’t entirely normal.” This might strike keen supporters of political parties as an unfair assessment, but it is true that being a registered, card-holding member of a political party, at least in Canada, is not the norm. Even most people who are quite keenly interested in politics are not members of political parties (although they might be strong supporters of a certain party). I don’t have any current statistics, but in a detailed report on parliamentary reform (PDF) written in 2008, Thomas Axworthy notes:

Less than one Canadian in ten did anything to help a candidate, such as attending a rally or putting a sticker on their car during the Federal  Election  in  2000. Of  the eight to ten per cent of Canadians who were engaged more robustly in election campaigns, only about 1-2% per cent were consistently active members of a party, placing Canada at the bottom of the list of Western democracies. This tiny  minority of active party members is comparable to the United Kingdom, where two to three per cent of voters are active partisans. (p. 20)

Is it right to leave party candidate selection and party leadership selection in the hands of such a small group of people, who, when push comes to shove, are probably more concerned with what they think is best for their party, not the country, when they decide who their candidates and party leader should be?

(Update 24/08/2011: John Ibbitson has advocated open primaries for the NDP as well in this column. See also this post on the problem of declining party membership.)

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Ministerial responsibility

Ministerial responsibility takes two forms — collective cabinet responsibility (or ‘cabinet solidarity’) and individual ministerial responsibility. Both concepts are governed by conventions inherited from Westminster and both are central to the working of responsible government.

Cabinet is collectively responsible to the people, through the Parliament, for determining and implementing policies for national government. Broadly, it is required by convention that all Ministers must be prepared to accept collective responsibility for, and defend publicly, the policies and actions of the Government. Part of this, of course, requires that the loss of a vote on a no-confidence motion or on a major issue is expected to lead to the resignation of the whole Government. You may want to have a look at this post on collective ministerial responsibility and coalition government.

What I want to look at in this post, however, is the matter of individual responsibility.

As explained in House of Commons Procedure and Practice (2nd ed., p. 32):

The individual or personal responsibility of the Minister derives from a time when in practice and not just in theory the Crown governed; Ministers merely advised the Sovereign and were responsible to the Sovereign for their advice. The principle of individual ministerial responsibility holds that Ministers are accountable not only for their own actions as department heads, but also for the actions of their subordinates; individual ministerial responsibility provides the basis for accountability throughout the system. Virtually all departmental activity is carried out in the name of a Minister who, in turn, is responsible to Parliament for those acts. Ministers exercise power and are constitutionally responsible for the provision and conduct of government; Parliament holds them personally responsible for it.

We’ve seen some good examples of this with the Coalition government in the United Kingdom. By my count, there have been at least four such instances during the Coalition’s first year in power. It isn’t that surprising that the Coalition has had a bit of a rocky start – few in cabinet have had previous government experience, and the merging of two very different parties was bound to create a few headaches along the way. What is interesting to me, however, is that the apologies have occurred promptly after the incident that triggered them.

The first minister to issue a full apology was Secretary of State for Education, Michael Gove, on 7 July 2010. On 5 July, Gove had made a ministerial statement to the House announcing the cancellation of a Schools Rebuilding Fund, which meant that many schools would see planned renovations cancelled. Accompanying his statement, Gove tabled a list of the affected schools. It turned out that many schools had been miscategorized, which caused great confusion and consternation among local councils across the country. In his 7 July statement before the House, Gove apologised for the way information accompanying his earlier statement was provided to Members, for the inaccurate information provided, and for the confusion caused by the inaccurate information and  media speculation over the nature of his apology.

On 17 February 2011, Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, Caroline Spelman, apologised for the Government’s plan to sell off public forests. According to many accounts I’d read, the policy in itself was a good one; the initial problem was how the government presented it and its failure to communicate it effectively, allowing environmental activists to mount strong opposition. Spelman took full responsibility “for the situation” and ended her statement with “I am sorry we got this one wrong, but we have listened to people’s concerns.”

A couple of weeks later, Prime Minister David Cameron apologised for botched attempts to rescue UK citizens from Libya. The House was not sitting at the time, so his apologies were made to the press. Cameron stated:

Of course I am incredibly sorry. They have had a difficult time. The conditions at the airport have been extremely poor.

There are going to be lessons to be learned from this and we will make absolutely sure that we learn them for the future but, right now, the priority has got to be getting those British nationals home. (…)

This is not an easy situation to deal with. It is immensely frustrating for the people on the ground and we will do everything we can to get those people home.

Cameron also delivered a full statement to the House of Commons when it met again on 28 February 2011. He didn’t apologise, but updated Members on the situation in Libya and the Government’s response.

This contrasts sharply with Canada’s own problems rescuing Canadians from Libya. Neither the Prime Minister, Minister of Defense nor the Minister of External Affairs apologised for the problems, and in some interviews, the Minister of Defense seemed to be laying the blame on External Affairs (which violates the convention of collective responsibility) and denied planes had left Tripoli empty. The Prime Minister also announced sanctions and other measures, not in the House of Commons, but in a televised address.

Meanwhile, back in the UK, on 7 March 2011, Foreign Secretary William Hague took full responsibility for what had gone wrong with a special forces’ mission to Libya. Hague didn’t apologise, but he did assume full responsibility for the botched mission.

In Canada, on 25 May, 2010, following requests that ministers’ staff members appear before committees to testify, the Government House Leader stated in the Canadian House of Commons that:

In our system of government, the powers of the Crown are exercised by ministers who are, in turn, answerable to Parliament. Ministers are individually and collectively responsible to the House of Commons for the policies, programs and activities of the government. They are supported in the exercise of their responsibilities by the public servants and by members of their office staffs.

It is the responsibility of individual public servants and office staff members to provide advice and information to ministers, to carry out faithfully the directions given by ministers, and in so doing, to serve the people of Canada. These employees are accountable to their superiors, and ultimately to their minister, for the proper and competent execution of their duties.

Ours is a system of responsible government because the government must retain the confidence of the House of Commons and because ministers are responsible to the House for everything that is done under their authority. We ministers are answerable to Parliament and to its committees. It is ministers who decide policy and ministers who must defend it before the House and ultimately before the people of Canada.

Accordingly, responsibility for providing information to Parliament and its committees rests with ministers. Officials have no constitutional responsibility to Parliament, nor do they share in that of ministers. They do, however, support ministers in their relationship with Parliament, and to this extent, they may be said to assist in the answerability of ministers to Parliament.

(…)

There is a clear case to be made that the accountability of political staff ought to be satisfied through ministers. Ministers ran for office and accepted the role and responsibility of being a minister. Staff did not.

Interestingly, the new version of the “Guide for Ministers and Ministers of State” published in May 2011, contains the following passage:

Ministerial accountability to Parliament does not mean that a Minister is presumed to have knowledge of every matter that occurs within his or her department or portfolio, nor that the Minister is necessarily required to accept blame for every matter. (p. 3)

When a minster does take responsibility and apologises to the House, there are frequently calls for the minister to resign. Many are quick to assume that if a minister apologises, then there was some error or wrongdoing that occurred, otherwise, the minister wouldn’t apologise. And if some wrongdoing occurred, then the minister is ultimately responsible, and should therefore resign. However, ministerial responsibility is not that black and white. Taking responsibility for mistakes made by staff does not mean the minister is directly responsible for those mistakes occurring. It simply means the minister acknowledges that mistakes were made in his or her deparment, the department regrets that fact, and the matter will be corrected.

Unless there is very clear evidence linking the minister directly to whatever departmental wrongdoing has come to light, ministers can accept responsibility, but lay the blame on department staff. What is far more likely to bring down a minister is a matter of personal misconduct. Sexual or financial scandals, rather than administrative failure, have been far more likely to destroy a ministerial career.

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