The Constitution Society: Working to promote informed debate about constitutional reform

[First Published on Tuesday 9th August 2011]

The following post was first published on ConSoc’s previous site. It is recorded here as a window onto issues as they were at the time. For more up to date news on the Constitution and Constitutional reform, make sure to follow the ConSoc blog.

THE FOLLOWING IS TAKEN FROM THE CONSTITUTION SOCIETY PAMPHLET, THE END OF THE PEER SHOW?, AVAILABLE TO DOWNLOAD HERE, FREE OF CHARGE. 

The future of the House of Lords is the most important constitutional question of the present age, because if it is resolved badly there may be little left of a British constitution at all.  A constitution, whether written or unwritten, serves three fundamental purposes:

• It defines the way in which power is to be lawfully exercised by the Government of the day.
• It imposes limits on that power, so as to prevent absolutism and preserve basic values.  
• And it provides some means of holding governments to account for the exercise of their power.  

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[First Published on Friday 22nd July 2011]

The following post was first published on ConSoc’s previous site. It is recorded here as a window onto issues as they were at the time. For more up to date news on the Constitution and Constitutional reform, make sure to follow the ConSoc blog.

The following is taken from the Constitution Society pamphlet, The End of the Peer Show?, available to download here, free of charge. 

The Government believes that people have a right to choose their representatives. That is the most basic feature of a modern democracy.

The House of Lords is well known for its wisdom and expertise.  However, it is undermined by the fact it lacks democratic authority as it is not directly elected by the British people. 

The Government published proposals on House of Lords reform on 17 May 2011, as a draft Bill and accompanying White Paper.  Consistent with the Government’s Programme for Government, the proposals provide for a wholly or a mainly elected second chamber, with elections using a system of proportional representation. The House of Lords would maintain its current role. It would continue to be a revising chamber, scrutinising legislation and holding the Government to account. 

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[First Published on Monday 6th June 2011]

The following post was first published on ConSoc’s previous site. It is recorded here as a window onto issues as they were at the time. For more up to date news on the Constitution and Constitutional reform, make sure to follow the ConSoc blog.

Dr Robin Archer of the LSE has explained the lessons the UK might learn from examining the history of the Australian Senate. The insights he offered, in an interview with The Constitution Society, are of particular interest in light of the government’s new proposals on reform of the House of Lords.

The Coalition Government introduced a Draft Bill this May proposing that the House of Lords move from being entirely appointed to 80% elected, using the Single Transferable Vote (a form of Proportional Representation) to recruit peers from large multi-member constituencies.

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[First Published on Monday 17th January 2011]

The following post was first published on ConSoc’s previous site. It is recorded here as a window onto issues as they were at the time. For more up to date news on the Constitution and Constitutional reform, make sure to follow the ConSoc blog.

An unspoken minor casualty of global warming has been the devaluation of the adjective ‘glacial’: as ice caps and glaciers melt more quickly, ‘glacial’ no longer adequately describes a process as numbingly slow as the reform of the House of Lords.

Radical changes in the constitution of the UK’s ‘upper’ House of Parliament have been openly desired since Gladstone’s era; but the heat of the furious debates has not thrown much light on either the composition or the powers of a reformed Lords.

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[First Published on Friday 17th December 2010]

The following post was first published on ConSoc’s previous site. It is recorded here as a window onto issues as they were at the time. For more up to date news on the Constitution and Constitutional reform, make sure to follow the ConSoc blog.

Was the Black Knight a member of the House of Lords?

You must remember him: the implacable defender of a plank over a stream in Monty Python’s 1975 Holy Grail film, refusing to admit defeat even after all his limbs are chopped off and his opponent skirts around him and moves on. Well, it’s nearly 100 years since the powers of the Lords were curtailed, with Prime Minister Asquith’s promise of full reform to follow, and Britain’s ‘upper’ parliamentary chamber is still there: a mish-mash of hereditary and appointed characters.

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[First Published on Thursday 25th November 2010]

The following post was first published on ConSoc’s previous site. It is recorded here as a window onto issues as they were at the time. For more up to date news on the Constitution and Constitutional reform, make sure to follow the ConSoc blog.

Constitutional expert Dr Meg Russell has warned that the Coalition pledge to make the political makeup of the House of Lords  reflect that of the lower House has put Parliament on an “unsustainable course” which will do “serious damage” if it goes unchecked.

The Constitution Unit’s deputy director voiced her concerns following the recent announcement of the latest round of peer appointments by the Coalition.  The 50 new names take the Prime Minister’s peerage list to the “unprecedented” level of 111 in the six months since his election and means that the number of Members in the Second Chamber now exceeds the level prior to the removal of hereditary peers in 1999.

[First Published on Monday 8th November 2010]

The following post was first published on ConSoc’s previous site. It is recorded here as a window onto issues as they were at the time. For more up to date news on the Constitution and Constitutional reform, make sure to follow the ConSoc blog.

According to the Government “our political system is broken” and “we urgently need fundamental political reform”. 

The Coalition Agreement (the Government’s manifesto by another name) therefore groups a series of proposals for change in the paragraph entitled “political reform“, which Nick Clegg later identified as together forming “the biggest shake-up of our democracy since 1832”.

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[First Published on Sunday 11th July 2010]

The following post was first published on ConSoc’s previous site. It is recorded here as a window onto issues as they were at the time. For more up to date news on the Constitution and Constitutional reform, make sure to follow the ConSoc blog.

On the 29th June 2010, an epic debate took place in the House of Lords on the subject of reform of the House.  The debate, which arose as a result of a motion by Lord Steel of Aikwood (Liberal Democrat), was introduced by the Leader of the House of Lords, Lord Strathclyde (Conservative), who announced that he would establish a Leaders’ Group, chaired by Lord Hunt of Wirral to consider and draw up a draft bill for reform.  Although this marks the beginning of what are arguably the most extensive set of works ever on the form and composition of the House, with potentially profound constitutional impact, the debate has been largely ignored by the press.  The significance of the issues are not, however, lost on the Lords themselves, who attended the house in large numbers to express their views, with a total of 65 peers speaking in the course of the 8 hour debate, which continued long into the night. 

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[First Published on Saturday 24th July 2001]

The following post was first published on ConSoc’s previous site. It is recorded here as a window onto issues as they were at the time. For more up to date news on the Constitution and Constitutional reform, make sure to follow the ConSoc blog.

Thursday 10th July saw yet another call for some joined up thinking and a holistic approach to issues relating to the British constitution. “Towards a codified constitution”, a paper published by JUSTICE and written by a group of constitutional experts led by Stephen Hockman QC and Vernon Bogdanor, contends that since 1997 we have been through a period of profound constitutional change without it being wholly clear what the British constitution actually is. During that period we have, in a piecemeal and unplanned way, been codifying the constitution. (Gus O’Donnell’s Cabinet Manual is a case in point.)

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[First Published on Tuesday 13th April 2010]

The following post was first published on ConSoc’s previous site. It is recorded here as a window onto issues as they were at the time. For more up to date news on the Constitution and Constitutional reform, make sure to follow the ConSoc blog.

At a debate of the Society of Cogers on 19th April 2010, Nat le Roux, Chairman of the Trustees of the Constitution Society, argued that our problem may not lie with our constitution itself, but rather with the conduct of our politicians.  He suggested that the single biggest problem of contemporary democracy – is that all politicians are terrified of losing power, because the lesson of the last 30 years is that once you’ve lost power you don’t get it back for a generation.  

The full text of his speech appears here:

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