This year of all years we need the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee

Joe Wright, 3 June 2015

There is a cruel irony in the government’s decision to abolish the Political and Constitutional Reform Select Committee (PCRSC), the body responsible for holding the executive to account on democratic representation, especially in the year we celebrate the 800th anniversary of Magna Carta. Apart from being another insult to the Liberal Democrat’s legacy, the move has huge practical implications. There are monumental constitutional issues in the pipeline for which the government will make decisions that alter the governance and make-up of the UK for decades to come. They include:

Scottish devolution

English votes for English laws (EVEL)

the creation of a British Bill of Rights

a possible exit from the European Union

boundary changes

redressing the imbalance in the House of Lords without creating yet more lords

devolution to the cities, including the replacement of Police and Crime Commissioners with city mayors

All of these would have benefited from detailed oversight, not to mention looking at ways to improve upon the woeful 66% voter turnout at the last election (Germany consistently posts a 70+% turnout, France fluctuates around 80 in presidential elections). Instead, these issues will be spread among other already overburdened and tenuously related select committees, and left to the wisdom of Cabinet minister, Oliver Letwin, overseeing the government’s cabinet committee for constitutional reform.

In a parliament where the government will fight a divisive referendum on Europe, it is understandable, if unethical, that they would seek to minimise the potential for political headache. But even politically the move doesn’t add up. Abolishing the committee won’t help minimise opposition to sloppy legislation. Select committees are constructed by MPs. They vote on committees’ membership and all-important chairmanship. Without that representative element, opposition to the government can build silently behind the scenes. For a government with the smallest majority in decades, deciding to constrain rather than accommodate parliament seems a recipe for trouble – no matter how good the whips are.

There is even trouble brewing for the government in the Lords. The Conservatives do not hold a majority in the Upper House and influential Lords have publicly stated they would be willing to break the Salisbury Convention for legislation on crucial constitutional issues lacking proper parliamentary scrutiny. The Salisbury Convention requires that Lords not vote down legislation in a governing party’s manifesto, though they can still offer amendments and delay proceedings.

Graham Allen, who led the PCRSC throughout its existence, also worries that it sets a worrying precedence: ‘If Parliamentarians let this pass without comment it may well encourage Whitehall officials to propose other Executive curbs to row back the gains made by the last Parliament. The rights of all of us are at stake here.’

Politics aside, such colossal decisions require wide consultation, the kind that select committees offer by calling experts, stakeholders and academics to give evidence. For years constitutional reform has taken place piecemeal and smothered in politics – so often this approach might as well be called a constitutional convention itself. But there is too much at stake this parliament to trust constitutional reform to executive wisdom.

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