Compared to many other democracies, institutional and procedural reform in the British political system has been very slow, gradual and piecemeal. However, there has been a growing movement for more reform, starting with the actual running of the House of Commons:
Since the election of (Conservative MP) John Bercow as Speaker of the House of Commons, there have been many more occasions of the use of the Urgent Question (UQ). This is a device which allows any Member of Parliament on any sitting day to petition the Speaker to demand that a Government Department supplies a Minister to make a statement on some issue or matter that has arisen very suddenly.
Eight weeks before the May 2010 General Election, the House of Commons embraced the election of the Deputy Speakers, the whole House election of Select Committee Chairs, the whole party caucus election of Select Committee members, and the creation of a House Backbench Business Committee.
In November 2013, the Speaker of the House of Commons John Bercow announced the formation of a novel type of inquiry, a Speaker’s Commission, to examine the whole issie of Digital Democracy. This exercise started in early 2014 and will report in early 2015.
The appetite for constitutional change became much stronger in the aftermath of the May 2009 scandal over the expenses of Members of Parliament. Then the formation in May 2010 of a Conservative/Liberal Democrat Coalition Government opened up new possibilities for change with a number of specific measures set out in the agreement between the parties establishing the new government. However, actual progress has been limited.
The proposed changes on the agenda of the current Coalition Government are as follows:
Fixed term parliaments - In the past, elections to the House of Commons had to be held within five years of the previous General Election but the Prime Minister had complete discretion over the actual date which was often the subject of considerable speculation and frequently a year or more before an election was legally necessary. The coalition parties agreed to the establishment of five year fixed-term parliaments and the necessary legislation has now been enacted. Therefore, subject to at an earlier time either a vote of no confidence in the Government or a two-thirds majority vote, each General Election will now be held on the first Thursday of May five years after the previous election.
A new electoral system for the House of Commons - Britain is unusual in Europe in having an electoral system which is 'first-past-the-post' (FPTP) and there are advocates for a system of proportional representation (PR), versions of which are already used for elections to the Scottish Parliament, the Welsh Assembly and the Northern Ireland Assembly and for British elections to the European Parliament. As a vital component of the coalition agreement, legislation was carried to enable a referendum to be held on an electoral system called the alternative vote (AV) which enables the voter to number candidates in order of preference and requires a winning candidate to secure more than 50% of the votes which, if not achieved on the first count, is achieved through successive withdrawal of the lowest-polling candidate and redistribution of that candidate's preferences. The referendum - only the second UK-wide referendum in its history - was held on 5 May 2011, but the current electoral system was supported by a margin of more than two to one (I voted for a move to AV).
Fewer and more equal sized constituencies - Currently the House of Commons has 650 seats; the Coalition Government intended to cut this to 600. Currently the number of electors in each Parliamentary constituency varies quite considerably; the Coalition Government has legislated that no constituency should be more than 5% either larger or smaller than a national average of around 76,000 electors (which could eliminate some 40 Labour-held seats). The Government included these measures in the Referendum Bill on electoral reform and it was intended that the new constituencies would come into effect at the next General Election. However, although the Bill is now on the statute book, the new constituencies will not become operative at the next General Election following a Commons vote of 334 to 292 against early implementation when the Liberal Democrats joined with Labour to block implementation in retaliation for Conservative MPs failing to support the reform of the House of Lords strongly favoured by the Lib Dems.
Election of the House of Lords - At present, no member of the upper house is actually elected; most are appointed on the nomination of party leaders with a small number remaining from the originally much larger group of hereditary peers. The Queen's Speech of May 2012 announced that there would be a Bill on Lords reform in the current session of Parliament. The latest proposal for reform comes from a Joint Committee of the two houses which recommended a 450-seat chamber with peers elected for 15 years in elections to be held every five years. Of these, 80% would be elected by a form of proportional representation with 20% appointed by an independent body. In fact, neither the Commons (especially the Conservative Party) nor the Lords is keen on reform for very different reasons (MPs do not want the Lords to gain more legitimacy and nominated peers do not want to be replaced by elected representatives). In the summer of 2012, the Prime Minister announced that he could not deliver Conservative support for a reform measure which was therefore withdrawn to the intense anger of the Liberal Democrats who very much support reform.
More power to backbench Members of Parliament - In the British political system, the party in Government has considerably more power in the legislature than the Opposition parties and in all the political parties the whips have considerable power over backbenchers. Ordinary MPs could be given more influence by measures such as more independent and stronger all-party Select Committees, more unwhipped votes (especially during the Committee Stage of Bills), more support for Private Members' Bills (those initiated by backbenchers rather than Ministers), more power to scrutinise Government spending, and a new power to subject ministers to confirmation hearings.
The power to force a by-election - Currently a by-election occurs only when an MP dies or resigns or is sentenced to more than one year in prison. In the current session of Parliament, the Government has published a Bill intended to make the recall of an errant MP easier. The Bill proposess that, if an MP is convicted of an offence and sentenced to a custodial sentence of 12 months or less or if the Commons orders the MP's suspension for at least 28 sitting days (or 28 calendar days), then the MP's constituents will have the opportunity to sign a recall petition calling for a by-election. It will require at least 10% of constituents to sign the petition for a by-election to be held.
More devolution nationally and locally - The Scottish Parliament, the Welsh Assembly and the Northern Ireland Assembly all have devolved powers and all of them want more, while many local authorities feel that, over past decades, their powers have been eroded by the national parliament. Some believe that a revitalisation of the British political system requires more devolution of power. The main political parties in the UK Parliament had already agreed to the implementation of the Calman Commission proposals on further Scottish devolution and the offer of a referendum on further Welsh devolution. However, in the final week of Scottish indepedence referendum campaign, the three major parties in the UK Parliament agreed that, if the Scots voted 'no' (as they did), there would be an early transfer of substantial extra powers to the Scottish Parliament. This is now the subject of fierce political debate because of the implications for the other nations, regions and cities in the UK and for the UK Parliament itself.
Use of e-petitions - Citizens are to be encouraged to use the Government web site to create electronic petitions to promote specific political reforms. It is likely that the most popular petition will be drafted as a Bill and presented to Parliament, while those petitions that reach a certain level of support - probably 100,000 signatures - will be guaranteed a debate in the House of Commons.
Funding and lobbying - All political parties find it difficult to raise the funding necessary to promote their messages and run their election campaigns and, in practice, the Labour Party receives much of its funding from a small number of trade unions and the Conservative Party is backed mainly by large companies. It has been argued that democracy would be better served and parties could be more independent if there was public funding of political parties with the actual level of funding depending of some combination of candidates and votes. The parties have agreed to pursue a detailed agreement on limiting donations and reforming party funding in order to remove 'big money' from politics. Also the parties intend to tackle lobbying through introducing a statutory register of lobbyists.
Candidates for further change would include the following proposals:
A wider franchise - At present, every citizen over 18 can vote but it has been suggested that the voting age should be lowered to 16. In the current Coalition Government, the Liberal Democrats support such an extension to the franchise but the Conservatives oppose it. Meanwhile the Scottish Nationalist Government allowed 16 and 17 year olds to vote in the 2014 referendum on Scottish independence.
A wider process for selecting Parliamentary candidates - Today candidates are selected by meetings of members of the political party that the candidate will represent in a future election, but it has been proposed that the process could be opened up to anyone in the relevant constituency who has declared themselves a supporter of that party, a process something like the primaries in the United States.
A more modern culture for the Commons - Many of the traditions and much of the language of the Commons date back centuries and reformers argue that it is time for change to make the proceedings more accessible and acceptable to the public and electorate. The sort of changes mooted are no ceremonial dress for Commons staff, reform of terms such as "My right honourable friend", and a less gladiatorial version of Prime Minister's Questions.
Limits on the Royal Prerogative - At the moment, the Prime Minister alone can exercise powers which once used to belong to the monarch, such as the right to apppoint certain judges and bishops, the signing of international treaties, and the declaring of war, but this could be changed so that Parliament has to decide such matters.
A domestic Bill of Rights - The UK has a Bill of Rights but it is the European Convention on Human Rights which, since 2000, has been part of the domestic law and therefore enforcable in national courts as well as the European Court. Some people believe that Britain should draft its own specific Bill of Rights. A Bill of Rights Commission, chaired by Sir Leigh Lewis, met for 18 months to consider this matter and reported in December 2012 when it was utterly unable to reach any sort of consensus.
A written constitution - For historical reasons, the UK is one of only three countries in the world not to have a written constitution (the others are New Zealand and Israel). The most radical proposal for constitutional change - supported especially by the Liberal Democrat Party - is that the country should now have a formal written constitution, presumably following some sort of constitutional convention and possibly a referendum.
