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

The Commons Political and Constitutional Reform Committee (PCRC) has published its report  on legislative standards [1]after an eighteen month inquiry. 

Graham Allen MP, Chair of the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee

The Constitution Society welcomes the report as an important contribution to the campaign for a general improvement in the quality of legislation. [2] We especially endorse the fourth of the report’s five key recommendations:  that a test for identifying constitutional legislation should be agreed between Parliament and the Government.

In evidence to the Committee in 2012, the Society argued that constitutional legislation should be distinguished from ordinary legislation for three reasons[3]:

-        Constitutional legislation is the architecture of the state. The elements of the constitution are unavoidably interconnected, so an alteration in one part of the building can have unforeseen consequences in other parts.

-        Most major constitutional legislation has an effective presumption of irreversibility.

-        A practice has arisen under the current government of employing ‘manner and form’ restrictions where a piece of legislation passed by an ordinary majority imposes restrictions on future Parliaments regarding how that legislation is to be implemented or repealed.

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Following The Constitution Society’s submission of written evidence (which can be found here) to the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee’s inquiry into ‘Ensuring standards in the quality of legislation’; Nat le Roux, Director of The Constitution Society, was invited to give oral evidence on the 21st of June. He appeared alongside Lord Butler and Sir Nicholas Monck who served as representatives of the Better Government Initiative.

Below is a video of Nat attending the oral evidence session before the Committee.

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The Constitution Society is happy to announce that our evidence to the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee on the
subject of ‘Ensuring Standards in the Quality of Legislation’ has been submitted. 

The evidence highlights the large amounts of low quality legislation and calls for the introduction of new Parliamentary processes to mitigate against political pressures to pass ill-thought out laws. The Constitution Society welcomes the idea of a ‘Legislative Standards Committee’  to review draft legislation and check:

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