Parliament
Research on Parliament is the core of the programme's work, and falls into two broad categories; the legislative, scrutiny and constitutional processes that govern our democracy and the organisation and infrastructure of Parliament as an institution.
As Parliament's 'critical friend' we have a long-standing reputation
for developing challenging but realistic and workable policy
recommendations to reform Parliament, particularly in the field of
legislative scrutiny, many of which have subsequently been implemented
at Westminster. Our rigorous, evidence based research is often quoted
in parlimentary reports and utilised by government departments,
our team are regularly called to give evidence to parliamentary select
committees and we advise parliamentary officials on initiatives for
reform both here in the UK and abroad.
Legislative, scrutiny and constitutional processes
The Parliament & Government programme has undertaken a number of in-depth research projects in the area of law-making, leading to influential reports with recommendations for improving parliamentary scrutiny. Our most recent work in this area, Making Better Law, analyses the political, procedural and cultural factors that together
help determine the quality of the UK statute book. It diagnoses the
causes and consequences of deficient law and sets out a comprehensive
package of reform recommendations for Government and Parliament to
improve the quality of law-making in the future.
Parliament plc: its organisation and infrastructure
As well as considering the public's levels of political engagement in the annual Audit of Political Engagement, we also examine how Parliament as an institution can work to improve the public's understanding and engagement with the democratic processes. The latest work in this area is the Parliament and the Public report, which examined the public's knowledge of and attitudes towards Parliament.