For example, are we worried about the quality of the legislation produced by the Scottish Parliament, or the origins of the legislation? In other words, we may tend to frame the problem in terms of the imbalance of power between executive and legislature rather than the specific policy ...
How the zip became caught up in the Scottish Parliament debateKen Smith
Acts have created many other parliaments. Many nations with parliaments have to some degree emulated the British "three-tier" model. Most countries in Europe and the Commonwealth have similarly organised parliaments with a largely ceremonial head of state who formally opens and closes parliament, ...
Between the pair, they also agreed which party's MPs would be appointed to which ministerial jobs, and agreed how any changes to cabinet's composition would be decided. The coalition documents explicitly set out that collective cabinet responsibility applied as normal, and also estab...
The Freedom of Information (FOI) Act has been in place since 2005. It played a part in opening up the MPs’ expenses scandal in 2009 and a host of important stories. Behind the headlines, FOI is primarily a local tool, and around four in every five requests goes to local government: ...
Day 2: Head to the Royal Mile and begin the day at Edinburgh Castle on one end and then heading to Holyrood Palace which stands at the opposite end. Visit Edinburgh Castle in the morning when it opens, stroll down the Royal Mile (there are many shops and museums along the way) and...
MPs can raise issues with the government though Early Day Motions (EDMs), very few of which are ever debated. Many topics tend to be trivial. The Procedure Committee in 2013 nonetheless found that there should be no changes. EDMs have generally...
Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) This is the main vehicle used in the UK. It isformally a joint committee of the Houses of Parliament. In practice it is Commons-dominated and is the major way in which MPs in the Westminster Parliament (plus a few peers) exercise a ...
parliament is that they know this would help keep their seat in the control of their side of the party. This happens every parliament. But this time around, there is a particularly large bulge of retirements, because many Labour MPs on the centre and right of the party held off their ...
Tory MPs now backing Johnson’s candidacy for leader may find the essay interesting. Gove, who wore a kilt in debates, was such a gifted speaker that he could even make a compelling case to a student audience against free choice in sexual behaviour. He was unusually ideological by Union sta...