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Calls for parliamentary reform: A brief review

Overview

Calls for reform are a continuing theme in the evolution of parliaments, particularly in the United Kingdom (understandably, noting its long history), and in any study of the struggle between the traditionalists and the reformers it is important to gain an understanding of the antecedents to more recent criticism of parliamentary effectiveness. The following discussion highlights recurring themes in continuing calls for reform, including parliament’s relationship with the public and other public institutions, its relationship with the executive, a lack of governance authority within the parliament, limited interest by parliament’s members in administrative matters and calls to increase the resources and capacity of its members. It also introduces the challenges surrounding the management of symbolic parliamentary buildings.

The nature of reform in the UK Parliament

In the United Kingdom, Walter Bagehot’s The English Constitution is acknowledged as a classic and seminal work (St John-Stevas 1959) in explaining how English government worked, famously referring to the fusion of executive and legislative functions—‘the efficient secret of the English Constitution’ (Benwell and Gay 2011)—to better depict parliamentary politics in England.¹ Bagehot was not a great supporter of the democratic theory and would probably have struggled with contemporary calls for greater public participation, particularly from a public that was not well informed. Jennings’ (1941, 1961) work on parliament was ‘groundbreaking’ in terms of his efforts to marshal parliamentarians towards improving the effectiveness of parliament (Tomkins 2004). He was a promoter of public engagement and the public’s right to question and criticise and was concerned that ordinary people should not be denied the opportunity of learning about government policy. On public administration generally, he believed in the maintenance of efficient and effective procedures but was derisory about the ‘excessive timidity’ of the civil service, partly due to the promotion of ‘safe’ men rather than those with ‘energy and initiative’—criticisms reflecting the Northcote–Trevelyan report on the civil service (Northcote et al. 1854) a century earlier and relatable to the parliamentary environment. It was to the public that Jennings appealed in his call for parliament to be reformed, claiming the quality of government depends essentially on the quality of the House of Commons and the influence that public opinion brings to bear:

If they regard ‘politics’ as a matter for a few enthusiasts; if they insist that ‘all politicians are the same’; if they pretend that the racing and football results are more important than the most urgent questions of public policy … our democracy must inevitably be inadequate. Politics in a democracy is not a game but a matter of bread and butter and the future of our children … This means that they must use the books in the public libraries and read the more intelligent bits in the more intelligent newspapers. (Jennings 1941: 61–63)

Jennings’ seemingly elitist view (not too far from Bagehot’s perhaps) is easily distilled to a question for today: should we read The Guardian or the Daily Mail, the Sydney Morning Herald or The Daily Telegraph? It reflects a contemporary problem of public engagement and perceptions in the context of the ‘Westminster bubble’ and the ‘Canberra bubble’ (see Chapter 7).

Hill and Whichelow’s What’s Wrong with Parliament? (1964) was a ‘benchmark piece’ in the analysis of all that was problematic with Westminster at the start of the 1960s (Kelso 2009: 91). They noted a significant decline in the reputation of parliament in the postwar years and offered examples of unfavourable commentary from the media and ubiquitous pessimism from authors about parliament’s future survival. To improve that reputation, they looked for ways of making parliament work more effectively, making the point that adequate facilities should be made available to elected members at Westminster. Some of their proposals were outwardly focused and included a revitalisation of the public petitions system, televising of parliamentary proceedings and an edited version, or precis, of the daily Hansard to attract greater interest given its falling readership. (The first two of these proposals were adopted, though only latterly in the case of parliamentary petitions.) Crick (1968) also expressed concerns about the decline of popular esteem and crumbling parliamentary effectiveness. He saw the then reputation of the House of Commons as ‘far in excess of its merits’, claiming it had ‘fallen hideously behind the times both in its procedures and in the facilities it extends to its members’ (Crick 1968: 11). Crick was aware of an increasing public hostility towards and a lack of knowledge of the methods by which parliament fulfilled its function. He claimed this was because

the Mother of Parliaments has not been shy of hinting that the way she conducts her business is the wonder of the wise; partly because the study of parliamentary procedure seems to many just so dry and dull; and partly because there is widespread confusion about what the functions of parliament should be. (Crick 1968: 12)

Crick (1968: 161) was scathing about parliament’s ‘arrogant’, ‘feckless’ and ‘ultimately dangerous’ lack of concern for public opinion and public understanding of its proper functioning, likening it to an isolated club, nostalgically holding on to dominant procedural traditions and viewing public concern as an ‘ignorant intrusion into private mysteries’ (p. 162). To him, the mutual back-scratching in debates on parliamentary reform about parliament’s past glories ‘makes the flesh creep’ (p. 162). He noted that not only was parliament symbolic of Britain’s three curses—amateurism, inner-circle secrecy and snobbery—it also was helping to perpetuate them by example (p. 252).

Highlighting the relationships between ‘managerial’ and ‘procedural’ functions, Hill and Whichelow (1964) and Crick (1968) pointed to the potential to increase the effectiveness of House of Commons scrutiny by increasing the capacity of members to contribute. Crick sought to counter the view that providing facilities and resources to backbench members could lead to a dangerous counter-bureaucracy. He was clear that parliament’s most important function was not its capacity to threaten the government or to refuse to pass legislation but to act as a broker of ideas and information so the electorate could sit in judgement. He was concerned that reform would be internalised within an isolated Palace of Westminster rather than externalised to serve public purposes, and his calls for better facilities for members were intended to allow them to carry out their very public function. Menhennet and Palmer (1967) were two House of Commons Library staff who argued that it was misleading and futile to look back to a golden age when parliament worked perfectly. Instead, they claimed that contemporary pressure for reform required continuing evolution and a strengthening of the working efficiency of all members. Like Jennings (1961), they maintained that members’ (and therefore parliament’s) effectiveness depended on public acceptance of the responsibilities as well as the privileges of a democracy and that the people themselves could be guilty of a dereliction of their duties to parliament.

The Study of Parliament Group was founded in the United Kingdom in 1964 by Fellowes, Ryle and Crick—clerks who were concerned about the surprisingly few contemporary studies of parliament compared with historical studies (Englefield 1985). In 1974, the group commissioned an investigation into the working environment in which members of the UK House of Commons conducted their business (Rush and Shaw 1974). The investigation resulted in a detailed exposition of each of the then five departments and their functions, and drew attention to an inefficient use of space, largely due to the duplication of services in a bicameral parliament—still prevalent today—and a lack of facilities normally required by any ‘managerial or professional man’ (Crick 1968: 67; see also HOCGC 2014). Rush and Shaw (1974) also cited several negative assessments of facilities by members, including from one MP that his office accommodation was ‘ideal for a suicide’ (in Hill and Whichelow 1964: 85). In comparison with other legislatures, they concluded, the United Kingdom’s appeared to rank in the middle when it might be expected to rank higher, concurring with Hanson’s (1963: 279) view that there were disadvantages in being ancient: ‘admiration for the long-established inhibits a willingness to change’. Norton (1993), like others (Menhennet and Palmer 1967; Crick 1968), was also dismissive of an earlier ‘golden age’ of parliament and cited the positive developments in parliamentary administration in the twentieth century such as the increase in numbers of career politicians and the expansion of physical resources, including office space (new accommodation in Parliament Street, Millbank and Portcullis House) and research support. But in his view, the end of the twentieth century was a lost opportunity in terms of the political will required to strengthen the parliament’s resources.

In terms of the use of technology in enabling a more externally focused public-facing parliament, Seaward (2009), a parliamentary historian, described the House of Commons’ move into the new media age as extremely tentative and the UK Parliament’s attempts to assert its right to be the principal forum for political debate as absurd. Proceedings were not broadcast on radio until 1975 and on television until 1989, although the House of Lords agreed to televising proceedings in 1983 (UK Parliament 2019c). The parliament seemed threatened by the challenge from the media and Segal, a scholar in political sociology, made an early case for not televising parliament despite repeated demands (in Crick 1968). He argued that there was little evidence to suggest it would lead to a new political reality, enhancing democratic process or make parliament’s public figures behave more reasonably. Puttnam (Hansard Society 2005), as chair of the United Kingdom’s Hansard Society Commission on the Communication of Parliamentary Democracy, argued that parliament consistently failed to present itself as the sum of its parts. The commission’s report stated that parliament’s communication was still organised around inward-looking procedures and had failed to link its work to other representative bodies in discussing public issues. It urged that the extra costs involved in improving communication, such as a new parliamentary website, should be regarded as an ‘investment in modern democracy, not a charge against it’ (Hansard Society 2005: vii). Discussion of whether parliament’s communications are fit for purpose are ongoing (Williamson and Fallon 2011; DDC 2015; Leston-Bandeira 2015; Uberoi 2017).

Kelso (2009) has provided a detailed analysis, through a historical institutionalist lens, of more than a century of procedural reform at Westminster, in both the House of Commons and the House of Lords.² Her excellent account explains the paradox of parliamentary reform within the context of efficiency reforms proposed by a dominant executive to expedite its legislative program versus effectiveness reforms designed to increase legislative and policy scrutiny and effectively balance executive–legislative relations. Effectiveness reforms are less likely to succeed as they threaten to destabilise the normative values of the dominant elite—those who privilege the role of the executive in providing strong government—over those who believe that a parliament’s primary function is to act as a check on the executive. According to Kelso, the paradox lies in the fact that the effectiveness reformers tend to argue that a strong parliament will sustain strong government—an acceptance that the political system of party government and partisanship is unlikely to change. Kelso’s somewhat fatalistic and two-dimensional approach does not deal specifically with administrative or cultural reforms³ nor is it focused on the role of public opinion, but she does address the role of agency in achieving effectiveness reforms and notes the (recent) influence of extra-parliamentary organisations in shaping the reform debate.

Contemporary scholars have continued the emphasis on procedural and behavioural reform (for example, Russell 2000, 2011a; Russell and Sandford 2002; Cowley and Stuart 2003, 2004; Kelso 2007a, 2009), including relationships between parliament’s members and the executive (see Norton 2000; Russell and Cowley 2016, 2018) and between parliament and the public (Kelso 2007b; Wright 2015), particularly after the widely condemned ‘cash for comment’ and expenses scandals (see Oliver 1997; Winnett and Rayner 2009; vanHeerde-Hudson 2011).⁴ These themes are explored in detail in later chapters.

The nature of reform in the Australian Parliament

Reid and Forrest (1989), in their seminal, comprehensive work on Australia’s parliament, observed that its administrative arrangements were as important to parliamentarians as were those of executive government to ministers of state, devoting a whole chapter to the topic. But they also noted that although Australia had a written constitution, unlike the United Kingdom, it was silent on administrative matters and provided ‘only the most rudimentary guide to the financial processes of government’ (Reid and Forrest 1989: 347).⁵ They observed little evidence of any resistance to executive domination during the parliament’s establishment in 1901: ‘[I]n so far as its staffing and appropriations were concerned, [it] was dominated by the executive government from the beginning, without so much as a murmur, much less a fight’ (p. 400). Parliamentarians who were not members of the executive played very little part in the development of the overall administrative arrangements and almost anything to do with the library, the buildings or facilities needed the prime minister’s imprimatur. Officials were organised from the beginning into five small departments, making it unlikely that one would overshadow the other four, and officials were encouraged to develop limited, inward-looking relationships and loyalties to their own departments rather than to the parliament as a whole (pp. 400–3). These early proclivities were to have a profound long-term effect. Reid and Forrest also offered insights into the ‘recurrent and increasingly important difficulty’ of parliament’s communication with the public. Designed in ‘an age of communication by the written word’, it was now required to function in ‘an age of instantaneous electronic communication’, but despite these dramatically different circumstances, parliamentary procedures in 1988 were ‘essentially those introduced in 1901’ (p. 8).

Wiltshire (1982: 305) lamented the ambivalence of ‘lame-duck’ presiding officers as a basic cause of the inability of parliaments to accept responsibility for ‘all matters related to the running of the house’. He criticised the cautious approach to reform of the 1981 Senate Select Committee on Parliament’s Appropriations and Staffing (the Jessop report) and the reluctance of the presiding officers to confront the executive over questions of staffing and appropriations—a problem highlighted by then senators Gareth Evans, Alan Missen and Kathy Martin.⁶ Uhr (1982) related parliament’s scrutiny role to the effectiveness of its internal management, providing a useful link to the arguments in this book:

[I]t is unrealistic to expect [the parliament] to exercise an intelligent and respectable oversight of the executive departments when it was not even master of the five small departments which administer Parliament House … [I]n the sorry spectacle of parliament’s inability to manage its own appropriation and staffing, one does see a number of the central problems of legislative–executive relations in Australia. (Uhr 1982: 28)

Problems Uhr cited included a demarcation between members who complained about the subservience of parliament to the executive and those who defended the executive’s responsibility for the conduct of public administration. No one could realistically expect a dominant executive to grant additional powers (or resources) to parliament to enable it to wield more authority (Uhr 1982: 29)—and, potentially, emerge as Crick’s (1968) counter-bureaucracy.

Nethercote (1982) heralded the great inroads the Australian Parliament had made in scrutinising executive government but also warned of the challenges to parliament’s authority from non-parliamentary institutions, such as the Office of the Ombudsman, the Administrative Appeals Tribunal and the Australian Law Reform Commission. Aldons (2001b), a former parliamentary official, also noted the presence of external scrutiny bodies, but, unlike Nethercote, he took a more inclusive view, claiming they could bolster, rather than threaten, the legitimacy of the political system, of which parliament was a key but not the only part. According to Reid and Forrest (1989), the Senate’s extensive use of standing committees from 1970 revolutionised the overall effectiveness of the parliament, but they were less impressed with the House of Representatives’ committee system.⁷ Like Nethercote (1982) and Aldons (2001b), they also noted new administrative law enacted since 1976 that provided for redress of grievances and additional scrutiny external to the two houses of parliament. They regarded the quest for parliamentary control in the Australian Parliament ‘by nineteenth-century means’ as a ‘useful way of diverting twentieth-century politicians from effectiveness in a late twentieth-century parliament’ (Reid and Forrest 1989: 388)—in other words, the Australian Parliament’s administrators had done little to increase the effectiveness of its members, preferring to maintain the practices of the past. Unlike Segal (in Crick 1968) in the United Kingdom, Reid and Forrest argued for parliament’s control function (to influence, advise and criticise) to be transferred to the television screen and, indirectly, to the public, emphasising the continuing tension between the inward-looking and outward-facing approaches of parliamentary actors.

On procedural reform, former Clerk of the Senate Harry Evans, well-known as the guardian of the Senate’s practice and procedure and advocate for its powerful constitutional role, conceded that some procedures and practices were valued simply because they were ‘traditional and quaint’ while having no substantial legislative value. Although he was referring to the vestiges of traditions inherited from the United Kingdom, perhaps reflecting the Senate’s early decision not to tie itself procedurally to Westminster (Reid and Forrest 1989; Fewtrell et al. 2008), he was, however, concerned that radical hostility towards an ‘obscurantist Bagehotian philosophy’ of symbols and rituals could sweep away useful procedures and preference legislative efficiency over deliberation and scrutiny (Evans 2009).

Reid and Forrest (1989) made farsighted predictions for the Australian Parliament in the next century. They saw the lack of a spokesperson for the parliament as a significant weakness, claiming the machinery for introspection, including about its relationship with the public, was lacking. The administrative structure of five separate parliamentary departments was keeping the elected houses weak; they thought a longstanding proposition for a single parliamentary department would ‘offer the Parliament an organisational and public identity it had not previously enjoyed’ (p. 484). Such observations resonate not only with recent UK literature (Norton 2017; Judge and Leston-Bandeira 2018), but also with a recommendation by the Australian National Commission of Audit (Officer 1996) for a single parliamentary department in the Australian Parliament. The commission’s proposal was fiercely opposed by the Senate (see Chapter 3) and similar proposals, directed largely at efficiency, were not taken up (Malcolmson 1999).⁸

Research by practitioners in Australia has often concentrated on the need for governance reform. Some argue that the Australian Parliament should be financed independently of government, as occurs in the United Kingdom; others have provided good reasons why this is all but impossible, including the requirement for constitutional change (Verrier 2007, 2008; Sloane 2014; Breukel et al. 2017). Elder (2006), a former clerk of the House of Representatives, noted shortcomings in the governance arrangements for the delivery of cross-parliamentary services. Parliamentary entitlements have also been the subject of adverse media comment and numerous official reports (see Committee for the Review of Parliamentary Entitlements 2010; Remuneration Tribunal 2011; Fels 2015). Governance issues are further discussed in Chapter 5.

None of the foregoing claims should surprise anyone with a contemporary interest in parliamentary administration; indeed, they would sound familiar even decades later. They emphasise the ongoing need to manage parliament’s internal functions in the context of increasing public expectations.

Managing an iconic workplace: The symbolism of parliamentary buildings

The ongoing debate about the effectiveness or otherwise of the buildings that house the two parliaments is of sufficient significance to warrant a separate discussion at this point. The priorities attached by each parliament to the preservation, maintenance and renewal of the parliamentary buildings are central to the argument that management challenges are not subsidiary issues. (Conflicting priorities towards managing the parliamentary buildings are discussed in Chapter 6.) As Parkinson (2012) argued, effective democracy depends on and is influenced by the physical space in which it is practised. In this respect, I note a continuing disinclination to address building deficiencies, particularly in the United Kingdom, and also point to the architectural and symbolic influences the parliamentary buildings bring to bear on institutional effectiveness.

An Amsterdam-based architectural firm, XML, has studied the relationships between space, decision-making and democracy in the plenary chambers of the state legislature of every UN member. Mulder (2017), one of its founding partners, summed up these relationships thus:

Parliament is the space where politics literally takes shape. Here, collective decisions take form in a specific setting where relationships between various political actors are organized through architecture. The architecture of spaces of political congregation is not only an abstract expression of a political culture—it participates in politics.

This is perhaps a present-day confirmation of the oft-quoted view of Winston Churchill that ‘we shape our buildings and afterwards our buildings shape us’ (HC Debates 1943). Churchill was a devotee of the agonistic model of opposing benches in the House of Commons chamber while Mulder favoured more consensual designs for parliamentary chambers such as the semicircular shape that is now dominant around the world, particularly in Europe. The horseshoe shape of the two chambers in the Australian Parliament is a mixture of adversarial and consensual models (Parkinson 2012). Crosby (2016) extols the virtues of consensual designs for debating chambers, including in the Scottish Parliament, the Welsh National Assembly and London’s City Hall. Discussions about the design of plenary chambers alone, important as they are, do not necessarily take account of other important building influences, including the efficiency of members’ offices in serving constituents; informal spaces for meetings and deliberation; public access, including security issues; and parliamentary efficiency. In both parliaments, reviews of annual reports indicate progress through the years in the support given to members through accommodation and office resources. In the United Kingdom, this includes the completion of Portcullis House in 2001 and the ongoing acquisition and refurbishment of offices in the parliamentary estate. In Australia, the resources available to members increased exponentially when the new purpose-built Parliament House was opened in 1988. Few would now disagree that the level of resources, including communication channels, available to members has improved significantly; paradoxically, the demands on politicians’ time and attention have increased exponentially (Flinders et al. 2018b).

Material defects in the Palace of Westminster remain, however, and much has been written on the subject by scholars and practitioners alike (see Childs 2016; Gay 2016; Flinders 2016, 2019; Meakin 2017a, 2017b, 2018, 2020; Crick Centre 2018; Flinders et al. 2018a, 2019; R. Kelly 2018; Meakin et al. 2020). Prominent among early critics was Cocks (1977), a former clerk, who described the Palace of Westminster as a legislature that was admired and copied around the world, but which had been unable to put its own house in order. His criticism of the role of members in its rebuilding and modernisation, supervised by Charles Barry following the major fire in 1834, was coruscating. Shenton (2012, 2017) chronicled the battleground of the UK Parliament building’s design and construction and the associated personal and political conflicts, lamenting its current dire condition (see also Eagles 2017). Related observations have also emerged from a new history of parliament by the British Academy and Wolfson Foundation Research:

The constantly postponed parliamentary ‘Restoration and Renewal’ project offers an irresistible metaphor for the battered state of the Westminster Parliament. For over the last decade, if not more, Britain’s venerable legislature has been beset with a series of challenges to its reputation, authority and effectiveness every bit as dangerous as its mouldering masonry and chaotic cabling … Parliament … frequently appears to be an incoherent collection of individuals and cultures with competing and often incompatible aims and objectives, underlining a sense of chaos and confusion. (Seaward 2017)

The case for the United Kingdom’s crumbling parliament symbolising a crumbling democracy continues to be prosecuted (see Flinders 2016, 2019; Higgins 2017; Anderson and Meakin 2019). Scholars lament a missed opportunity to overcome internal resistance and use the building’s restoration and renewal to improve the parliament’s culture and effectiveness and open its environs to the public (Hansard Society 2011;⁹ Flinders 2016; Flinders et al. 2018a, 2018b, 2019; Meakin 2017b; Crook and Harrison 2018; McCarthy-Cotter et al. 2018). Many intimates of the existing building have resisted the potential loss of the building’s historical connections, particularly if members are forced to ‘decant’ during its restoration (see D’Arcy 2015; HC Debates 2017a; Moore 2018). Norton (2018b) reinforced the notion that informal meeting spaces for members are an intrinsic part of parliamentary life, meriting serious analysis in the restoration debate. He cited informal meetings in division lobbies as an argument against the perceived efficiency of electronic voting. Childs (2016), on the other hand, was more concerned about opportunities for greater inclusivity, including for the public, than maintaining the existing culture, calling for more flexible and welcoming meeting places, including the layout of the House of Commons. The debate about the restoration and renewal of the Palace of Westminster continues.¹⁰

The Australian experience is quite different, given the Australian Parliament’s relatively recent history. Nevertheless, concerns about the effectiveness and symbolism of the parliamentary building have similarly evolved, and the planning and construction of Australia’s federal capital and its national buildings were not without controversy, even if their designer, Walter Burley Griffin, was not subject to the extent of hostility meted out to Barry.¹¹ The first meeting of the Australian Parliament took place on 9 May 1901 at the Exhibition Building in Melbourne; its first purpose-built home in Canberra, the ‘provisional’ Parliament House, was opened on 9 May 1927. Plans for its permanent location were caught up in controversy relating to aspects of Griffin’s design for Canberra, but eventually the ‘new and permanent’ Parliament House opened on 9 May 1988. As described by then prime minister Bob Hawke:

It is a building for the entire Australian community, a workplace for the community’s elected representatives and a free and open forum for resolving the community’s concerns … [T]he symbolic and practical importance of the building, as well as the very high standard of excellence of its construction and finish, will be a great source of pride to all Australians now and in the future. (in McCann et al. 2018)

Kouzmin (1979) likened the building of the new Australian Parliament House to Sydney’s Opera House project, citing incompatibility between architectural idealism and political necessity. Disney and Nethercote (1996) offered the reflections of its occupants as an assessment of the effectiveness of parliament’s structures and processes, including the observation that the building’s excessive space was impersonal and isolating (Hutchison 1996; see also Uhr and Wanna 2000). Annual reports from the former Department of the Parliamentary Library (DPL) evidenced dismay from librarians when members eschewed the longer distances between their offices and the library and submitted their requests by electronic means rather than in person (DPL 1989). Many participants in a roundtable discussion on architecture and parliament also commented on the effect of the distance between functional areas in the new Parliament House (Fewtrell et al. 2008).¹² The much-lamented non-members’ bar in the former building was one of the Australian Parliament’s important informal spaces (see Norton 2018b); its successor in the new building was underutilised and later housed parliament’s childcare centre. ‘Aussie’s’ coffee shop, while popular, was only a partial substitute. The building’s workplace culture has been heavily criticised in recent times (including widely publicised allegations of sexual assault; AHRC 2021), marking another similarity with the Palace of Westminster (O’Malley 2018; Warhurst 2018; Prasser 2019).

Aside from the historical and physical differences between the two parliamentary buildings, a symbolic difference lies in the newly housed Australian Parliament’s relationship with the public. Its architect, Romaldo Giurgola, believed it was important that the new building was seen to be inviting all citizens to visit and see democracy working. The descending arms of the forecourt walls were described as a gesture of welcome and the position of the building, nestled into Capital Hill, symbolised the rise of democracy rather than the imposition of government over the people. Public access was estimated to extend to one-fifth of the building. However, public access has been progressively restricted in the first 30 years of the building’s life, due to security concerns—ironically, from public protests as well as potential terrorist attacks (Bennett 2008). These restrictions are seen to have contributed to a deterioration of the relationship between parliament and the public (The Canberra Times 2017; Day 2017; Fewtrell 2017). A further difference is the presence in the Australian Parliament of the executive’s ministerial offices—seen as both a boon and a disadvantage by its occupants (Fewtrell et al. 2008) and a factor of significance in recent workplace culture inquiries (AHRC 2021).

Dilemmas in the management of the United Kingdom’s and Australia’s symbolic, iconic parliamentary buildings continue to arise, including in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic and concerns about a debilitating parliamentary workplace culture. These are discussed in later chapters on governance, management and procedural and cultural reform.

Conclusion

As we can see, calls for parliamentary reform have been manifest. Those I have documented—they are by no means exhaustive—detail a long chronology of criticisms over many decades going to the heart of parliament’s conflicting roles and an apparent inability or resistance among parliamentary officials and elected members to bring about meaningful reform. There is, of course, a story to tell about repeated attempts in both parliaments to improve their administrative efficiency and these attempts are described in the next chapter, along with insights into the specialised nature and roles of parliamentary administration.

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