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Alex Brazier, Director of the Hansard Society's Parliament and Government programme, was interviewed on his thoughts about political engagement (or the lack of it) as highlighted in the most recent Audit of Political Engagement. Tony Benn, Iain Dale, Anne McElvoy and Liam Fogarty also gave their thoughts on this issue.
To listen to the programme click here.
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Liaison Committee’s recommendations on financial scrutiny a real step forward
The Hansard Society welcomes the House of Commons’ Liaison Committee report on financial scrutiny and urges Parliament to do more to scrutinise and seek accountability for government spending.
The Hansard Society’s report The Fiscal Maze; Parliament, Government and Public Money (2006), made several proposals to improve Parliament’s financial scrutiny functions. The Hansard Society welcomes the Liaison Committee’s recommendations which, if implemented, represent a real move in the right direction.
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An article by Alex Brazier on the future of Select Committees, originally published in the House Magazine
In the past few years, the Hansard Society has produced a number of reports and studies which have looked at the role and operation of select committees. A consistent theme of this work has been that they represent one of the most successful aspects of the parliamentary process.
The report of the Hansard Society Commission on Parliamentary Scrutiny (2001) argued that select committees had a number of different strengths; their activity is not primarily determined by party political considerations; their structure provides a way to monitor the work of government departments and agencies; and they provide an important arena for scrutiny and accountability work which is not prescribed by the government’s business agenda. Also, further development of committees could provide MPs with an alternative career path which does not rely solely on the patronage of the political parties or involve making a career in government.
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An article by Susanna Kalitowski discussing the Hansard Society's recent publication, Audit of Political Engagement 5.
Gordon Brown has made constitutional reform a centrepiece of his premiership. Less than a week after taking office, he unveiled a green paper which set out a dizzyingly wide range of options for enhancing the accountability of the executive, the power of Parliament and the rights and responsibilities of citizens. It promised to consult and involve ‘all the people of this country' in the formation of a ‘new constitutional settlement'.
The Hansard Society has welcomed the proposals, many of which have been central to our work for decades. However, our latest Audit of Political Engagement - an annual survey measuring public attitudes to politics - reveals that the government's task will be far from easy for two reasons: 1) most people know very little about constitutional issues and 2) there is a complete lack of public consensus on what should be changed.
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An article by Susanna Kalitowski discussing the No Overall Control publication.
There has been increasing speculation that the next UK general election might produce a parliament in which no single party holds a majority of seats – a ‘hung parliament’. It is over 30 years since the last hung parliament so what would be the modern day consequences for Parliament, the political parties, individual MPs, and the public? Would a hung parliament strengthen Parliament and better reflect the wishes of the electorate or would it render government indecisive and unstable?
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On 20 March, Leader of the House of Commons Harriet Harman MP announced that the government is to introduce a system of post-legislative scrutiny to look at the effect and impact of laws, three years after they are passed. The Government’s Paper Post-Legislative Scrutiny - The Government's Approach outlines proposals for implementing post-legislative scrutiny.
The Hansard Society has long called for improved scrutiny of legislation after it has been enacted by Parliament to learn how individual laws are working in practice and we welcome the government’s commitment to introduce post-legislative scrutiny.
In 2005, the Hansard Society produced a Briefing Paper, Post-legislative Scrutiny, which discusses this subject and is available for download.
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The annual Audit of Political Engagement has become an important contribution to debate about the public's view of the political process since it was first published in 2004. Each Audit measures the nature and extent of political engagement and reveals where views have changed - and where they remain constant. It offers a yearly snapshot of political knowledge and engagement in Britain.
Audit 5 includes a special section on constitutional issues to discover how much the public know about how our constitutional arrangements operate, which areas they are satisfied with and which they think are ripe for reform. This report is a valuable source of information and debate for all those who are concerned with the health of our democratic system.
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There has been increasing speculation that the next UK general election might produce a parliament in which no single party holds a majority of seats – a ‘hung parliament’. It is over 30 years since the last hung parliament so what would be the modern day consequences for Parliament, the political parties, individual MPs, and the public? A new Hansard Society publication examines the impact of a hung parliament on British politics.
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In a recent speech, Foreign Secretary David Miliband argued that Britain has a moral 'mission' to spread democracy throughout the world. Last July, the Hansard Society published a pamphlet which brought together leading experts to consider whether democracy is a universal good and whether it should be actively promoted. This publication, and the previous four in the Democracy Series, can be downloaded for free.
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The Hansard Society welcomes the Government's Green Paper on constitutional reform, The Governance of Britain. In our response to the Green Paper, we put forward our views on how these ambitious and important aims can be realised, referring to findings and recommendations from Hansard Society research, reports and commissions.