On Tuesday, I gave evidence to the Public Administration Select Committee as part of its inquiry into the future of the civil service. I was appearing alongside Professors Anthony King (Essex) and Matthew Flinders (Sheffield). Anyone wishing to watch the session can do so here, though to make sense of some of my comments you…
I am conscious I have not had time to post a quiz recently. I thought I would catch up with one that focuses on individual members. As usual, the first two readers to supply the correct answers will be the winners. All the questions relate to current members of the House of Lords. 1. I…
I’m conscious that I have been neglecting the blog. A combination of commitments and marking has meant that what little time I have had available has been devoted to research. I am working on three research projects, or rather four but three have submission deadlines that are not that far away. All three are related to…
I have previously written about the decline in the volume of letters received in the Palace of Westminster. At the beginning of each year, I put down a question to find out how many items of correspondence were received in the Palace in the preceding year. I have now received the figure for 2012. The…
At the Study of Parliament Group annual conference, held last weekend in Oxford, one of the subjects discussed was e-petitioning. The system that has been introduced is proving somewhat dysfunctional: it raises expectations that cannot be met as well as exacerbating the tendency to confuse Government with Parliament. People sign a petition on a government website…
