Category: Prime Minister
-
David Howarth: Who Monitors Donations to Ministers – Parliament, the Prime Minister, or the Electoral Commission?
Does the jurisdiction of the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards over donations to Members of Parliament extend to members who are ministers? The current Commissioner, Kathryn Stone, seems to have decided that it does not, a situation she agreed is ‘bonkers’. The problem is that the Code of Conduct for Members of Parliament says that ‘Members…
-
Chris Monaghan: Party-gate as a Ground for Impeachment? Perhaps, But We Need to Modernise Impeachment Before It Is Fit For Purpose
In a recent post published on the UKCLA blog, I argued that impeachment could serve a purpose in the contemporary United Kingdom. The key points were that a modernised impeachment process could buttress the existing political accountability mechanisms. This would support the ability of the House of Commons to hold the government to account and…
-
Mike Gordon: A Statutory Basis for the Ministerial Code – the Challenges
With the UK in the midst of its latest political corruption crisis, the question of the (in)adequacy of the current infrastructure concerning standards in public life is once more in the spotlight. Immediately prior to the parliamentary farce over the Owen Paterson lobbying affair, the Committee on Standards in Public Life published a significant report,…
-
Aileen McHarg and Alison L. Young: The Resilience of the (Old) British Constitution
In 2009, Vernon Bogdanor wrote about The New British Constitution. His thesis was that a decade of New Labour reforms had produced a shift in the nature of the constitution, from one based on parliamentary sovereignty, to one based on the ‘sovereignty of the constitution’. Since 2009, further constitutional reforms have been implemented by governments…
-
Ronan Cormacain: Unaccountability – The Disease within Government
Pierre Janelle diagnosed the root cause of The Catholic Reformation as “anarchy the disease within the church”. It is my contention that unaccountability is the disease within Government and the root cause of many of its shortcomings today. Unaccountability means the reluctance of the Government to be held to account by Parliament, the courts, constitutional…
-
Rodney Brazier: Mr Johnson and His Flat
Let me begin with what should be platitudinous. The presumption of innocence is a cherished legal principle in the United Kingdom. No one is guilty of a crime unless a court so decides after a fair hearing, and anyone accused of wrongdoing short of a crime is entitled to the protection of an analogous principle. …