Lessons from the Process of Government Formation After the 2010 General Election
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House of Commons Political and Constitutional Reform Committee Lessons from the process of Government formation after the 2010 General Election Fourth Report of Session 2010–11 Volume I Volume I: Report, together with formal minutes, oral and written evidence Additional written evidence is contained in Volume II, available on the Committee website at www.parliament.uk/pcrc Ordered by the House of Commons to be printed 20 January 2011 HC 528 Published on 28 January 2011 by authority of the House of Commons London: The Stationery Office Limited £15.50 The Political and Constitutional Reform Committee The Political and Constitutional Reform Committee is appointed by the House of Commons to consider political and constitutional reform. Current membership Mr Graham Allen MP (Labour, Nottingham North) (Chair) Mr Christopher Chope MP (Conservative, Christchurch) Sheila Gilmore MP (Labour, Edinburgh East) Andrew Griffiths MP (Conservative, Burton) Simon Hart MP (Conservative, Camarthen West and South Pembrokeshire) Fabian Hamilton MP, (Labour, Leeds North East) Tristram Hunt MP (Labour, Stoke on Trent Central) Mrs Eleanor Laing MP (Conservative, Epping Forest) Sir Peter Soulsby MP (Labour, Leicester South) Mr Andrew Turner MP (Conservative, Isle of Wight) Stephen Williams MP (Liberal Democrat, Bristol West) The following Members were also Members of the Committee during the Parliament: Nick Boles MP (Conservative, Grantham and Stamford) Catherine McKinnell MP (Labour, Newcastle upon Tyne North) Powers The Committee’s powers are set out in House of Commons Standing Orders, principally in Temporary Standing Order (Political and Constitutional Reform Committee). These are available on the Internet via http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm/cmstords.htm. Publication The Reports and evidence of the Committee are published by The Stationery Office by Order of the House. All publications of the Committee (including press notices) are on the internet at www.parliament.uk/pcrc. A list of Reports of the Committee in the present Parliament is at the back of this volume. The Reports of the Committee, the formal minutes relating to that report, oral evidence taken and some or all written evidence are available in a printed volume. Additional written evidence may be published on the internet only. Committee staff The current staff of the Committee are Steven Mark (Clerk), Lydia Menzies (Second Clerk), Hannah Stewart (Legal Specialist), Lorna Horton (Inquiry Manager), Emma Sawyer (Senior Committee Assistant), Annabel Goddard (Committee Assistant), Keith Pryke (Committee Support Assistant) and Rebecca Jones (Media Officer). Contacts All correspondence should be addressed to the Clerk of the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee, House of Commons, 7 Millbank, London SW1P 3JA. The telephone number for general enquiries is 020 7219 6287; the Committee’s email address is [email protected]. Lessons from the process of Government formation after the 2010 General Election 1 Contents Report Page Summary 3 1 Introduction 5 Inquiry 5 Background 6 2 Constitutional Rules and Conventions 8 The First Opportunity to Form a Government 8 When should a Prime Minister resign? 10 Appointment of the Prime Minister 12 3 Practical aspects of government formation 14 Timing 14 The role of the civil service and the Cabinet Secretary 14 4 The Programme for Government 16 Status of the coalition agreement 16 Internal Party Processes 18 5 Pre-election and post-election activity 20 Background 20 Name of convention 20 Defining restrictions 21 Restrictions in practice 22 Pre-election contact between the civil service and opposition politicians 24 6 The Cabinet Manual 26 Conclusions and recommendations 27 Formal Minutes 30 Witnesses 31 List of printed written evidence 31 List of additional written evidence 31 List of Reports from the Committee during the current Parliament 33 Lessons from the process of Government formation after the 2010 General Election 3 Summary The May 2010 general election resulted for the first time in more than thirty years in a House of Commons in which there was no single-party majority—commonly known as a ‘hung’ Parliament. After five days of negotiations between political parties a national coalition government was formed for the first time since the Second World War. The process of government formation and transition generally went well, but in this Report we suggest some practical improvements and identify some areas where constitutional conventions are unclear. Government transition depends on the party balance in the House of Commons, but Members of Parliament currently play no role in choosing a Government. A case has been argued to us for an investiture vote, along the lines of that already in place for the Scottish First Minister, whereby the House would choose a Prime Minister before he or she was appointed by the Monarch. There appears to have been some confusion over the rights and duties of the incumbent Government and Prime Minister, in particular over when a Prime Minister should remain in office and when he or she should leave office. An incumbent Prime Minister has a duty to stay in office until a successor has been identified, as well as a right to stay in office until it is clear that he or she does not have the confidence of the House. A coalition government’s programme, drawn up after an election, cannot have the same mandate as a party manifesto which is available to the people before they vote. A possible consequence is that Members of the House of Lords may not feel bound by the Salisbury- Addison convention. One way of addressing the lack of a direct mandate is to ensure that the House of Commons is given the opportunity to subject the Government’s proposals to full pre-legislative scrutiny. Conventions applied restricting the activities of the incumbent Government in the periods immediately before and after the May 2010 general election. These conventions are described in detail in the draft Cabinet Manual published in December 2010. We suggest some changes to the way in which restrictions are articulated in that document. When Ministers have acted in breach of these conventions, this needs to become public knowledge, and we propose a mechanism by which this could be achieved. Lessons from the process of Government formation after the 2010 General Election 5 1 Introduction Inquiry 1. We launched this inquiry in order to identify the lessons from the process of government formation and transition that followed the general election in May 2010. Following the general election, no single party was able to command a majority in the House of Commons. Though they were relatively common during the period before the Second World War and could feasibly become a more frequent occurrence, hung Parliaments have been rare in post-Second World War UK history. The last time this result occurred in a UK general election was in 1974, and the last peacetime coalition Government was formed in 1931 (although, like hung Parliaments, coalition governments were not unusual in the period before the Second World War).12 Therefore, the events of May 2010 are “of considerable political and historical significance”, and “will serve to mould ideas and expectations about the future”.3 2. During the inquiry, we heard from representatives from the Conservative, Labour and Liberal Democrat parties who took part in negotiations following the general election, from the Cabinet Secretary, and from a panel of academic experts. We also received written evidence from a wider range of experts and from Members of the House of Lords. This Report seeks to cover not only the specific lessons that can be learned from the 2010 election and its aftermath, but also a number of broader constitutional issues have arisen in the course of our inquiry. 1 Ev w2 [Professor Blackburn] 2 Robert Hazell and Akash Paun, Making Minority Government Work, (Institute for Government, 2009) p12 3 Ev w2 [Professor Blackburn] 6 Lessons from the process of Government formation after the 2010 General Election Background 3. The number of seats won by each party in the general election of 6 May 2010 was as follows.4 Other, 29 Labour, 258 Conservative, 306 Liberal Democrat, 57 4. This meant that no single party had a majority in the House of Commons. In the days after the election, representatives of the Liberal Democrat party leadership held talks with representatives of the leadership of both the Conservative and Labour parties with a view to reaching an agreement that would result in a government being formed. Four days after the general election, on 10 May, the incumbent Prime Minister, Rt Hon Gordon Brown MP, tendered his resignation to the Queen, who invited Rt Hon David Cameron MP to form a government. The next day, the Conservative and Liberal Democrat parties reached an agreement to form a coalition government. 5. As the general election approached, on 2 February 2010, Gordon Brown asked the Cabinet Secretary to begin drafting a Cabinet Manual.5 On this day the then-Prime Minister announced the Cabinet Manual initiative at a public event (not to Parliament) at which he depicted it as part of a broader reform programme that could eventually lead to a 'written' constitution for the UK.6 The Cabinet Secretary told the Justice Committee later that month that the Cabinet Manual would be an “account of the workings of Cabinet Government” and would “consolidate the existing unwritten, piecemeal conventions that 4 The chart below includes the seat won by the Conservative party in Thirsk and Malton on 27 May 2010. The election was delayed in Thirsk and Malton due to the death of a candidate. 5 Q 167 6 “Towards a new politics”, 10 Downing Street press notice, 2 February 2010 Lessons from the process of Government formation after the 2010 General Election 7 govern much of the way central government operates under our existing constitution”.7 Later in the same month, in anticipation of the possibility that the 2010 general election could result in a hung Parliament, the Cabinet Office published a draft chapter from the Cabinet Manual on Elections and Government Formation (referred to in this Report as the ‘draft Cabinet Manual chapter’).