Reimagining Parliamentary Procedures: Insights from a Veteran Clerk of the UK House of Commons
Paul Evans, who served as Clerk of the British House of Commons from 1981 to 2019, offers a wealth of insights on reforming legislative procedures in his recent chapter "Reimagining Parliamentary Procedure." His decades of experience provide a unique perspective on how parliaments can adapt to modern challenges while maintaining their core democratic functions. POPVOX Foundation Senior Fellow Beatriz Rey had a chance to speak with him. Interview transcript is available here and is summarized below:
The Essence of Legislative Procedures
Evans defines legislative procedures as "the process by which you achieve a decision with hopefully minority consent." He emphasizes that good procedures should allow for debate and deliberation while providing clarity on decisions made:
"The important thing about procedures is that they allow debate and deliberation, but they also are clear about the decision: what decisions are in play and what decisions have been made. And hopefully as long as they appear to be procedurally fair, they will engage to a degree at least on the loser's consent."
The Complexity Trap
Evans also warns that procedures can become overly complex and disconnected from human understanding:
"The danger is that procedures become so rule-bound and complex at some point that they don't make sense to anyone outside of the process. And the other problem is that they don't make sense to people inside the process as well."
He provides an example from the UK:
"If you look at the way we do laws in the UK, we have things called committee stage and report stage at the House, and it's all done by textual amendment. Often, the textual amendments are to draft legislation which in itself is highly complex, and it's very difficult to see what the textual amendment effect is and what it means."
Universal Lessons for Legislatures
Prioritize Procedural Legitimacy
Evans stresses the importance of procedures commanding legitimacy from both legislators and the electorate:
"The reason you have to command procedural legitimacy among the electorate is that they must – let's be honest, politics is, in a sense, a minority pursuit among most of the population... In order to consent to the framework of law within which they then conduct their lives, voters need to have a broad sense that these laws have been made by a process which is reasonable."
Reconnect Procedures to Human Understanding
Legislators should consider ways to make procedures more intuitive and aligned with how people naturally debate and make decisions:
"One of the things I'm trying to do in my chapter is say: perhaps it's time for us to go back and have another look at the way they make laws and try to make it more like how people actually think. How people debate and decide things."
Encourage Meaningful Participation
"The more you can make procedures feel meaningful and lively, and people feel being heard, and debate takes place with people shifting positions with nuances going on, the more you disincentivize grandstanding."
Incorporate Public Participation
Evans advocates for involving citizens in pre-legislative stages:
"Public participation is at least as much about educating the public as it is about educating or informing politicians themselves. It's about bringing them in as partners and making them understand the sheer complexity and difficulty of making laws for society."
Balance Plenary and Committee Work
Evans praises the British select committee system (committees that check and report on areas related to governmental work; they run inquiries on specific topics, whose outcomes may require a response from the government):
"These committees can't do too much harm. And they do really good work. They do inquiries, look at policies, take evidence from experts, they deliberate, and they do it all in private. There's no grandstanding... That whole process is much more free-flowing than the one you would see in legislative committees."
Regularly Review and Update Procedures
Evans admires the New Zealand Parliament's practice of reviewing its rules at the beginning of the three-year Congressional cycle (as opposed to at the end of the Congressional cycle, as many legislatures do):
"What they do is adopt them at the end of the three-year cycle so that the people who are agreeing with the changes are experienced with procedures. They don't massively change them. They just tend to tweak them here and there and sometimes come up with a new concept. I think that's a very good model."
Adapt to Digital Realities
While acknowledging the benefits of digitization, Evans cautions against over-reliance on AI:
"Within a short time, I can see a situation in which all the questions from members are generated by Chat GPT. The Table Office uses AI to edit them and forward them to the government, and the government uses AI to answer them. And there will be no human intervention at any point in any of this process of holding people accountable. That seems to be a bit weird."
The Path Forward
As many parliaments grapple with modernization efforts, Evans' insights offer a valuable roadmap. He emphasizes that the key to successful reform lies in creating procedures that make legislators feel they are truly making a difference:
"People never feel better than when they feel they're making a decision. They feel they're making a difference. And I think that's what a procedure needs to be able to do: make them feel they're making a difference."
By focusing on clarity, meaningful participation, and regular reviews, parliaments worldwide can work towards procedures that better serve both legislators and citizens in the 21st century. As Evans concludes:
"It's quite a difficult balance to be constructed between these two approaches. One of the ways is trying to get some of the lawmaking process more into this additional deliberative human process and less into the highly structured, outstanding adversarial process."
This balance, while challenging to achieve, could be the key to revitalizing parliamentary procedures for the modern age.
