Director @HansardSociety, working to make Parliament more effective.
🎧 Co-host of the Parliament Matters podcast: https://t.co/Kaq1BBhmdE
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Oct 30 • 14 tweets • 3 min read
🧵Very disappointing that the Chancellor has chosen an Income Tax (Charges) motion as the first Ways and Means motion for the Budget today. She could have chosen a different type of motion - one for an Amendment of the Law. Which type of motion a Government chooses is an ...1/
indicator of its willingness to engage with alternative views and whether it prioritises ministerial control and convenience over robust parliamentary scrutiny. This is procedural nerdery but it matters as it affects the debate on the Finance Bill. Why and how? 2/
Sep 15 • 16 tweets • 4 min read
🧵Before anyone gets carried away with this story, when you actually read what the article says it is entirely familiar to anyone who understands the Private Members' Bill process in the House of Commons. Bills don’t become law after...1/
...just one vote in the House of Commons. According to the @DailyMailUK story the Government appears to be encouraging one of the 7 MPs who topped the Private Members' Bill (PMB) ballot to adopt a bill to test support on assisted dying. This is not surprising. Every...2/
Sep 10 • 39 tweets • 5 min read
🧵There are 3 debates + 2 votes in the @HouseofCommons today on the Winter Fuel Allowance. One matters legally and the other two matter politically. Why?
It’s important to understand what’s happening procedurally because it goes to the heart of the way policy decisions are made and implemented by Ministers and Parliament’s weak role in the process.
Sep 6 • 20 tweets • 4 min read
In advance of the parliamentary debates next week on the introduction of a means test for the Winter Fuel Payment, the @UKHouseofLords Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee has published its report on the regulations and does not pull its punches! 1/
The Committee is "unconvinced by the reasons given for the urgency attached to laying these Regulations" & notes "It is generally regarded as poor practice to implement major policy changes during a Parliamentary recess". (the regs were laid on 22 August). 2/
Apr 22 • 27 tweets • 5 min read
🧵1/ Unpacking the realpolitik behind parliamentary ping-pong on the Rwanda Bill: as MPs and Peers clash over legislative amendments, how credible are their claims about the political maneuvering of the other side? #RwandaBill #Politics #Realpolitik
2/ There’s a degree of hypocrisy on both sides: the public arguments don’t quite match political reality.
Dec 31, 2023 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
🧵When the clock strikes 12 tonight, it will bring forth not just a new year, but some significant changes in UK law. The Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Act 2023 lists nearly 600 items of retained EU law (REUL) to be revoked "immediately before the end of 2023". 1/
The Bill originally provided for an automatic revocation of *all* retained EU law today (Dec 31), with ministers specifying what should be kept. Imagine what the last few months would have been like politically if that provision had been kept! 2/
Mar 18, 2023 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
🧵As a friend reminded me yesterday, this is like the European Arrest Warrant debate in 2014. It’s not a minor procedural matter. Opinions about Brexit & N/I shouldn’t blind us to the underlying question it raises: should the Govt alone get to decide the terms of a debate? 1/
If Ministers can assert that a resolution of the @HouseofCommons means whatever they would like it to mean, rather than what the actual wording of the resolution says, where does this lead? 2/
Mar 17, 2023 • 14 tweets • 5 min read
🧵If this report is accurate, it’s the latest example of the Govt deliberately eliding scrutiny and approval of policy with scrutiny and approval of actual legal text - ie the legislation, in this case the Statutory Instrument (SI). Why does this matter? 1/
MPs will be asked next Wed (22/3) to approve the legal text of the SI on the Stormont brake but No 10 has reportedly said this will also be their vote on the wider Windsor deal. But SIs are not amendable. MPs can only accept or reject a Statutory Instrument in its entirety. 2/
Feb 2, 2023 • 6 tweets • 4 min read
NEW: The Delegated Powers & Regulatory Reform Committee in the @UKHouseofLords has just published its report on the Retained EU Law Bill and it doesn't mince its words. It calls for 5 of the 6 most important provisions in the Bill to be removed. #REUL publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld5803/ldse…
The report demolishes the Govt's argument that this Bill will re-establish Parliament as the principal source of law in the UK. It won't. The Bill undermines Parliament by granting Ministers 'extraordinary powers' to dispose, retain, or re-write #REUL by Statutory Instrument.
Dec 23, 2022 • 22 tweets • 6 min read
🧵1/ In his final newsletter of the year @pmdfoster suggests if you're interested in the #REUL Bill then you should read the evidence that I and @SirJJKC gave last month to the @UKHouseofLords Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee.
2/ For all the talk by ministers that the process to review Retained EU Law will be straightforward, 2 SIs published this week illustrate the risk of sunset deadlines and how the review process will involve grindingly difficult technical policy & legislative drafting work.
Oct 17, 2022 • 27 tweets • 6 min read
Today, amidst the political turmoil, the Energy Prices Bill (to implement the Energy Price Guarantee & Energy Bill Relief Scheme) will go through all its @HouseofCommons stages in just 1 day, only 5 days after it was published. It's an incredibly important Bill so here's a 🧵1/
Our @HansardSociety focus is on the delegated powers in the Bill. Ministers (the Secretary of State (SoS)) are asking @UKParliament to confer some very broad powers on them... with potentially huge spending implications... over which MPs will have little influence and control 2/
Feb 23, 2022 • 19 tweets • 4 min read
1/ The paper detailing the assessment of costs & the schedule for the Restoration & Renewal of @UKParliament has been published. A summary thread 🧵#WestminsterRR#Parliament ⬇️ assets.ctfassets.net/vuylkhqhtihf/1…2/ This is the paper that led the Commissions of both Houses to conclude earlier this month that the work should not proceed as originally envisaged.
Nov 28, 2021 • 21 tweets • 7 min read
🧵1/ Interesting test of govt’s commitment to parliamentary scrutiny coming up this week. Will the Statutory Instrument(s) introducing new #Coronavirus restrictions to tackle the #OmicronVariant be debated in a timely way after they are laid before @UKParliament on Mon (29/11)?
2/ Article by @benrileysmith in the @DailyTelegraph suggests not. He cites @sajidjavid on the @AndrewMarr9 programme saying that the govt may not schedule a debate on the SI(s) until mid-December as they only have to hold a vote within 28 days. telegraph.co.uk/politics/2021/…
May 15, 2021 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
🧵1/ Yet again the govt uses the urgency procedure in the Public Health Act 1984 to introduce regulations before they are scrutinised and approved by Parliament. This time the Step 3 Regulations for 'unlockdown' in England which come into force on Mon 17/5 #SIWatch ⬇️
2/ Given they've known for weeks what was coming in Step 3 why was the legal text not published earlier for approval by MPs? The devil is in the legal detail but ministers constantly try to blur the issue by conflating debate about general policy with scrutiny of legal text.
Dec 19, 2020 • 13 tweets • 5 min read
The deteriorating #Covid_19 situation raises important questions about the role of Parliament in the coming days. @HouseofCommons is adjourned until 5 Jan & it can only be recalled by the govt (my @HansardSociety blog explains why: hansardsociety.org.uk/blog/demands-t…) 🧵(1/12)
If the @HouseofCommons is recalled, due to #Covid or negotiations with the EU, there's no provision for virtual proceedings to apply to legislation. MPs can vote via proxy on SIs or a bill, but they can only participate in a debate on legislation if they are in the Chamber (2/12)
Jul 31, 2020 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
A Statutory Instrument subject to parliamentary procedure can’t be published until it has been laid before Parliament. If there are to be regulations rather than just guidance, then the minister can have signed them to bring them into force but .....(1/4)
..the rest of us won’t see them until they are laid before Parliament (ie delivered to the relevant office in each House this morning). I assume they will be like those for Leicester, Luton, Blackburn so made under powers in the Public Health (Control of Disease) Act 1984 (2/4)
Jun 2, 2020 • 23 tweets • 5 min read
Ministers have talked a lot during this crisis of deploying ‘world leading’ measures to tackle the pandemic. Ironically, the #virtualparliament is world leading and yet today they want to scrap it
Remote participation across a range of proceedings in the Chamber & Select Committees, plus remote voting, has been delivered at speed and scale. What staff at Westminster have delivered surpasses what many other legislatures have achieved so far in this crisis.
Aug 28, 2019 • 18 tweets • 7 min read
Lots of discussion today about whether the length of #prorogation really matters given the upcoming party conference season. But conference recess hasn't been agreed. So we’ve crunched the numbers and yes, the length matters! (thread – 1/17!)
The government’s desire to bring this long session to an end and outline a new legislative programme in a Queen’s Speech could be met with a prorogation of one to two weeks. Anything longer than this is both unnecessary and beyond the norm. (2/17)
