Category: Devolution
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Elena De Nictolis and Thomas Poole: Fiscal Capacity without Fiscal Autonomy: Regional and Local Fiscal Devolution in the Autumn Budget
Introduction The Burnham government’s ambitious plans to reform local devolution took their first concrete step with the Budget of 28 October. The full plan for devolution will follow in the Rewiring the State Delivery Plan, due before the end of the year. But the Budget already brought significant news on the fiscal powers of English…
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Patrick Graham: Legality, Legitimacy, and Durability – The Limits of Constitutional Reform in Northern Ireland
There is some unreality to the current clamour for reform of Northern Ireland’s devolved government. The three major non-unionist parties, as well as the British and Irish governments, have proposed or are open to substantial changes in the teeth of unionist opposition. That debate too often overlooks cross-community consent as a principle shaping constitutional form,…
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Sara Closs-Davies, Dominic de Cogan and Amy Lawton: Devolving Power, Dividing Outcomes – The Social Consequences of UK Fiscal Devolution
This post is part of a series on ‘Economic Aspects of the Constitution’. The other posts in the series will be available here. Fiscal devolution in the United Kingdom (UK) is often examined through a technical lens. Yet some of its most significant implications and impacts are social. Tax devolution was introduced with the implicit promise…
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Thomas Poole and Elena De Nictolis: The English Devolution and Community Empowerment Act 2026
After months of parliamentary debate, the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Act 2026 (‘English Devolution Act’) received Royal Assent on 29 April 2026. The Act has important implications for the relationship between central and local government and the long-running ‘English question’ in UK constitutional politics. This post situates the Act within almost three decades of…
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Stewart Duncan: Reforming Holyrood’s Committees: A Constitutional Perspective
Committees, scrutiny and the distribution of power at Holyrood From when the Scottish Parliament was first established, much was asked of its committee system. In a unicameral legislature, without the revising chamber that tempers legislation at Westminster, committees were expected to be the ‘engine room’ of scrutiny and a partial substitute for a second chamber.…
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Gareth Evans: The Devolution of the Crown Estate in Wales
On 22 July 2025, the Crown Estate (Wales) Bill passed unopposed through report stage in the House of Lords. The Bill, which seeks to devolve the management of the Crown Estate in Wales, was introduced as a Private Members’ Bill in the Lords by the former leader of Plaid Cymru, Lord Wigley. This is by…
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Anurag Deb and Nicholas Kilford: Conditioning the UK Parliament’s Power to Legislate for a Devolved Part of the UK: Part II – Some Challenges Posed by Northern Ireland
Introduction In its judgments in Continuity Bill and Treaty Incorporation, the Supreme Court identified what we describe in the first part of this post as the ‘conditioning limitation’. The purpose of that first part was to demonstrate how the conditioning limitation potentially threatens otherwise constitutionally innocuous or unexceptional exercises of devolved legislative power. Although those…
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Anurag Deb and Nicholas Kilford: Conditioning the UK Parliament’s power to legislate for a devolved part of the UK: Part I – The Climate Change Act (Northern Ireland) 2022
Introduction The Climate Change Act (Northern Ireland) 2022 (‘CCA’) is, from a constitutional perspective, a fairly unassuming, if far-reaching, exercise of devolved legislative power. It is an example of a devolved part of the UK seizing the opportunity the devolution framework provides to ‘design policies and take public spending decisions that more closely align with…
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Iain Jamieson: Altering the Effect of Section 28(7) of the Scotland Act 1998
This article suggests that the Supreme Court’s interpretation of section 28(7) has created such problems in relation to the legislative competence of the Scottish Parliament that the provision needs to be amended, repealed or qualified. Text The terms of section 28(7) appear innocuous. Section 28(1) confers power on the Scottish Parliament to make laws to…
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Thomas Horsley, Coree Brown Swan, Nicola McEwen and Lisa Claire Whitten: Westminster Rules: The United Kingdom Internal Market Act and Devolution
The UK Labour Government is committed to resetting relations with the devolved institutions. Yet, in its manifesto, Labour made no mention of any plans to reform the United Kingdom Internal Market Act 2020 (UKIMA) – regulating intra-UK trade post-Brexit – to deliver that commitment. In government, Labour now appears reluctant to engage directly with the Act, preferring…