Should We Be Worried About the Decline of Parliamentary Scrutiny?

Many concerns have been expressed in recent years about a decline in the quality of parliamentary scrutiny at Westminster, by both academics and those in the policy world. Such claims are often connected to the extraordinary events around Brexit, immediately followed by the United Kingdom’s (UK’s) response to the COVID-19 pandemic. But complaints about parliamentary decline are nothing new, so it is important to assess such claims objectively. This article uses parliamentary data and examples, supplemented by findings from earlier academic studies, to explore whether there is clear evidence of decline. Importantly, it asks whether changes seen during the Brexit and COVID-19 years were isolated, or whether they hastened a more lasting, and therefore worrying, downturn. The data examined covers rushed government bills, government amendments to its own bills in Parliament, publication of bills in draft form, and non-legislative forms of scrutiny such as government engagement with select committees. Several of these indicators do point to a decline, which appears to have strikingly accelerated during the premiership of Rishi Sunak. The problems encountered over Brexit and COVID-19 were therefore far from a one off, and some of the worst problems have occurred subsequently. The later part of the article explores the reasons for decline, noting that there has been important cultural change both inside government and Parliament. It calls for concerted action to reverse this, including by the new 2024 government. It also proposes collection of more systematic parliamentary data, in order that trends in the future can be better monitored by both government and Parliament.