Miller/Cherry No.2

Question 1

What did the Case of Proclamations claim about the powers of the king?

Answer 1

“The King hath no prerogative, but that which the laws of the land allows him”

Question 2

Entick v Carrington on the powers of the government?

Answer 2

Secretary of State could not order searches of private property without authority conferred by an Act of Parliament or the Common Law.

Question 3

According to Mark Elliot what 2 constitutional principles does the case involve?

Answer 3

parliamentary sovereignty and executive accountability.

Question 4

Mark Elliott - what is the importance of access to the courts in the context of parliamentary sovereignty?

Answer 4

“access to court is a logical corollary of the principle of parliamentary sovereignty, authoritative judicial interpretation and curation of legislation being a prerequisite if Parliament is to have the capacity to enact effective law”

Question 5

Hale on how parliamentary sovereignty would be undermined if the PM had unlimited powers of prorogation?

Answer 5

Parliamentary sovereignty ‘would…be undermined as the foundational principle of our constitution if the executive could, through use of the prerogative, prevent Parliament from exercising its legislative authority for as long as it pleased’.

Question 6

Mark Elliott - how would an unlimited power of prorogation affect parliament?

Answer 6

“Untrammelled executive power to prorogue parliament would render the sovereignty of Parliament a dead letter”.

Question 7

Mark Elliott on the importance of parliamentary accountability?

Answer 7

“Parliamentary accountability is no less fundamental to the constitution than parliamentary sovereignty”

Question 8

Lady Hale on importance of parliamentary accountability (citing Bobb v Manning)

Answer 8

“the conduct of government by a Prime Minister and Cabinet collectively responsible and accountable to Parliament lies at the heart of Westminster democracy”. Ministers are accountable to Parliament through such mechanisms as their duty to answer Parliamentary questions and to appear before Parliamentary committees, and through Parliamentary scrutiny of the delegated legislation which ministers make. By these means, the policies of the executive are subjected to consideration by the representatives of the electorate, the executive is required to report, explain and defend its actions, and citizens are protected from the arbitrary exercise of executive power”

Question 9

Robert Brett Taylor on the effect of the absence of legal limits on prorogation?

Answer 9

“the absence of any express limits rightly legitimises the courts, in performing its ordinary judicial function, to subject the exercise of prorogation to the requirements of legality as the Supreme Court did in this instance.”

Question 10

According to Erskine May, what is the point of PQs?

Answer 10

parliamentary questions are asked in order to ‘obtain information or to press for action’ and ‘should relate to affairs with which [ministers] are officially connected to proceedings pending in Parliament or to matters of administration for which they are responsible”.

Question 11

Roger and Walters on the significance of select committees?

Answer 11

“For the first time, the House of Commons now had at its disposal means of systematic scrutiny of the government of the day potentially much more rigorous than the traditional methods of debate and question”

Question 12

Standing Orders of the House of Commons, SO 152 on the function of select committees?

Answer 12

Select Committees are appointed to “examine the expenditure, administration and policy of the principle government departments”

Question 13

Hale on why long prorogation is bad?

Answer 13

“The longer that Parliament stands prorogued, the greater the risk that responsible government may be replaced by unaccountable government: the antithesis of the democratic model”

Question 14

What 3 things were implemented after the Wright Reforms?

Answer 14

1. Select committee chairs to be elected by secret ballot by the House of Commons using the AV voting system (implemented 2010)
2. Select committee members to be elected by secret ballot by political parties (implemented 2010)
3. Backbench Business Committee created in order to schedule non-government business in the House of Commons (Implemented 2010)

Question 15

How has the number of UQ’s posed to the government changed between 2006-2017?

Answer 15

Since the implementation of the BBBC the number of urgent questions allowed by Speaker John Bercow increased from 9 in the 2006-2007 session to 73 in the 2016-2017 government.

Question 16

How many days/session does the BBBC have control over?

Answer 16

35

Question 17

Robin Cooke on the adversarial model in parliament?

Answer 17

“the adversarial method is going out of fashion elsewhere as the means of establishing the truth, but it remains the animating principle of the Commons”

Question 18

How does the fusion of the elected branches of government affect parliamentary scrutiny?

Answer 18

Whilst the implementation of committees, such as BBBC has made the commons more independent, i.e. between 2010-14, backbenchers rallied against the government in 31% of issues, as opposed to only 10% in 1945-57, most MP’s still see their role as a job and they will generally position themselves in the best way for career advancement.
Tony Wright - “if you want to be picked to join a team, it is more sensible to be an enthusiastic cheerleader than a questioning critic.”

Question 19

How does the political culture of parliament affect scrutiny?

Answer 19

“You can change the machine but you cannot change the culture of parliament” - no amount of reforms can change the ingrained culture of Parliament i.e. only 34% of parliament are women and only 10% of MPs are from an ethnic minority. Further 21% of MPs were university educated at Oxford or Cambridge, whereas only 20% of the population went to university.
This shows that regardless of any reforms put in place to the mechanism of parliament, the fact is that Parliament does not well represent the population, therefore the scrutiny given by MP’s can never be enough to represent people from all walks of life.

Question 20

Anthony King on the government’s control of parliament?

Answer 20

“So far as the House of Common is concerned, the government of the day is still in charge most of the time. The vast majority of bills on important issues continue to be initiated by the government”

Question 21

According to Mark Elliott, does Miller/Cherry No.2 make the convention if ministerial responsibility legally enforceable?

Answer 21

NO - rather he says that the constitutional reason that underpins ministerial responsibility is a convention and the constitutional reason that underpins parliamentary accountability is the same reason (parliamentary democracy).