Constitutional Change & Devolution (AQA A Level History: Component 2: Depth study): Revision Note

Scottish and Welsh devolution

Why did Labour back devolution?

• Support for home rule had grown in both Scotland and Wales during the Conservative governments from 1979 to 1997

  • Many voters felt they were being governed by a party they had not elected

  • The poll tax was introduced in Scotland in 1989, a year before England and Wales, which increased resentment

  • At the 1997 general election the Conservatives won no seats in Scotland or Wales

• Labour's plans for Scotland were shaped by the Scottish Constitutional Convention

  • Labour, the Liberal Democrats, churches, and trade unions worked together between 1989 and 1995

  • The Scottish National Party (SNP) and Conservatives did not take part

• Labour also argued that devolution could strengthen the Union

  • Giving Scotland and Wales more control over their own affairs might reduce support for independence

• Labour had supported devolution before, but earlier proposals had failed in 1979 referendums

Approach: The source is useful because Labour clearly presents devolution as a way to strengthen the United Kingdom rather than break it apart

However, it is a campaign document, so the claim that devolution would reduce separatism should be checked against what happened to support for the SNP and Plaid Cymru afterwards

The 1997 referendums

• Labour held referendums before creating new devolved institutions

  • Scotland voted on the 11th September 1997

  • Wales voted on the 18th September 1997

• Support was much stronger in Scotland than in Wales

  • This helps to explain why Scotland received a more powerful parliament, while Wales initially received a weaker assembly

Scotland

Wales

How did devolution work?

• Both Scotland and Wales were elected using the Additional Member System

  • This combined constituency seats with regional list seats

  • It produced more proportional results than elections to Westminster

• Scotland had significantly greater powers from the start

  • The Scottish Parliament could make its own laws in devolved areas

  • The Welsh Assembly initially had more limited powers, mainly carrying out policies in areas transferred from the Welsh Office

Devolution in practice

• Devolution allowed Scotland and Wales to make choices that differed from Westminster

  • Scotland removed up-front university tuition fees for Scottish students from 2000

  • It introduced free personal care for elderly people in 2002

  • The Scottish Parliament did not use its power to vary income tax

• Devolution also gave nationalist parties a stronger political platform

  • The SNP narrowly became the largest party in the 2007 Scottish election, and Alex Salmond became First Minister

  • Plaid Cymru joined a coalition government with Labour in Wales in July 2007

• Devolution also raised the West Lothian question

  • Scottish MPs at Westminster could vote on laws affecting only England

  • English MPs had no equivalent say over areas devolved to Scotland

    • Example: In 2004, Scottish Labour MPs helped pass top-up fees for English universities, even though the policy did not apply in Scotland

Reform of the House of Lords, 1999

The problem Labour wanted to solve

• Before 1999, most members of the House of Lords sat there by right of birth

  • Around 750 hereditary peers had the right to sit and vote

  • They sat alongside life peers and 26 bishops

• Most hereditary peers supported the Conservative Party, giving the Conservatives a long-standing advantage in the Lords

• Labour's 1997 manifesto promised to remove the automatic right of hereditary peers to sit and vote

  • The government described this as the first stage of a wider reform

Stage one: the House of Lords Act (1999)

• The House of Lords Act (1999) ended the automatic right of hereditary peers to sit in the Lords

  • More than 600 hereditary peers lost their seats in November 1999

• A compromise allowed 92 hereditary peers to remain temporarily

  • This compromise, proposed by the crossbench peer Lord Weatherill to stop the Lords blocking the bill, became known as the Weatherill amendment

  • Most of the 92 were chosen in elections held among the hereditary peers themselves

• The reform changed the balance of the chamber

  • The Lords became a mainly appointed House of life peers

  • An Appointments Commission was created in 2000 to recommend some non-party political members

Approach: The source is useful because it sets out Labour’s case against hereditary membership, arguing that Parliament should reflect a modern society rather than allow people to sit by birth

However, she was speaking for the government and was trying to win support for the bill, so the source is strongest for showing Labour’s justification for reform rather than proving that its solution was complete

Stage two: the search for a reformed House

• Labour had removed most hereditary peers but still had to decide what should replace the old system

  • A Royal Commission under Lord Wakeham was set up to consider the next stage

  • Its January 2000 report recommended a mainly appointed House with a minority of elected members

• Agreement proved difficult

  • In February 2003, MPs voted on seven different options, ranging from a fully appointed to a fully elected House

  • None of the options won Commons support

• The disagreement continued

  • In March 2007, MPs voted in favour of a fully elected House

  • The Lords instead supported a fully appointed House

• By 2007, no second stage of reform had become law

  • The 92 hereditary peers, originally kept as a temporary measure, were still there

Approach: The source is useful because he predicted that Labour might remove hereditary peers but fail to agree what should replace them

As an opposition spokesman, he had a clear reason to criticise the government’s plans. However, the failure to complete a second stage by 2007 gives his warning added significance

How far did Lords reform change the system?

• The 1999 Act produced a major change in who could sit in the Lords

  • Hereditary membership was reduced sharply

  • The Conservatives lost much of their built-in advantage

• But the reform was incomplete

  • The Lords remained largely appointed

  • No agreed long-term replacement for hereditary membership had been introduced by 2007

• The chamber also continued to challenge government legislation

  • The Hunting Act (2004) had to be passed using the Parliament Act after opposition from the Lords

The Human Rights Act, 1998

What did the Act do?

• The Human Rights Act (1998) brought the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) into British law

  • Britain had helped draft the Convention after the Second World War and signed it in 1950

  • Before the Act, people usually had to take human rights cases to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg

• The Act received Royal Assent in November 1998, coming into force on the 2nd October 2000

• It protected rights such as:

  • the right to life

  • the right to a fair trial

  • the right to privacy

  • freedom of expression

Approach: The source is useful because it explains the government’s main case for reform: people should be able to defend their Convention rights in British courts, rather than facing the time and cost of going to Strasbourg

However, Straw was promoting the bill, so the source shows what the government hoped the Act would achieve rather than what happened after it came into force

How the Act worked

• British courts had to interpret laws in a way that matched Convention rights wherever possible

• Public bodies, including the police, councils and hospitals, also had to act in line with those rights

• If a higher court believed that an Act of Parliament could not be read in a way that matched the Convention, it could issue a declaration of incompatibility

  • This did not cancel the law

  • Parliament then decided whether to change it

    • This protected parliamentary sovereignty, because Parliament remained the highest law-making authority

• Ministers also had to state whether new bills were compatible with Convention rights

Approach: The source is useful because he warns that the Act would change the balance between Parliament and the courts, by giving judges a greater role in reviewing legislation

However, he was speaking before the Act came into force, so this is a prediction rather than evidence of its actual impact. It should be tested against later cases

The Act in practice

• The Act gave judges a greater role in reviewing government actions

  • In December 2004, in the Belmarsh case, the Law Lords ruled that holding foreign terror suspects without trial was incompatible with the Convention

  • The government responded by replacing those detention powers with control orders in 2005

• The Act also became politically controversial

  • Critics argued that it sometimes gave too much protection to criminals or terror suspects

  • By 2006, the Conservatives were proposing to replace it with a British Bill of Rights

How significant was the Act?

• The Human Rights Act made it easier for people to enforce Convention rights in British courts

• It also increased the role of judges in examining whether government action and legislation respected those rights

• However, judges could not simply overturn Acts of Parliament

  • Parliament kept the final say over whether a law should be changed

• The Act therefore changed the relationship between courts and government, while leaving parliamentary sovereignty intact

How significant were New Labour's constitutional reforms?

• This question asks whether New Labour's constitutional reforms fundamentally reshaped the United Kingdom, or whether they remained partial and unfinished

  • Some key evidence for each side is outlined below

Evidence that the reforms were significant

• Devolution changed where political power was exercised

  • Scotland and Wales gained their own elected institutions

  • These bodies could make different choices from Westminster in devolved areas

• The Human Rights Act strengthened the role of the courts

  • People could enforce Convention rights in British courts

  • Judges gained a greater role in reviewing whether government actions matched those rights

• Reform of the House of Lords ended the automatic right of most hereditary peers to sit and vote

  • This removed a long-standing feature of the constitution based on birth

• New Labour also widened access to government and public information

  • London gained an elected Mayor and Assembly after a 1998 referendum (first election May 2000)

  • The Freedom of Information Act (2000), in force from January 2005; gave the public a legal right to request information from public bodies

• The Constitutional Reform Act (2005) also changed the relationship between the courts and Parliament

  • It created a new Supreme Court (opened 2009), separate from the House of Lords

• By 2007, the main political parties accepted that the new devolved institutions were a permanent part of the system

Evidence that the reforms were limited or unfinished

• Some reform stopped halfway

  • The second stage of House of Lords reform was never agreed

  • The Lords remained mainly appointed, with 92 hereditary peers still sitting

• Reform of the electoral system at Westminster did not happen

  • The Jenkins Commission recommended a new voting system in 1998

  • The promised referendum did not take place

  • Westminster elections continued to use first-past-the-post

• Devolution was uneven

  • Wales initially received much weaker powers than Scotland

  • The West Lothian question remained unresolved

• The Human Rights Act increased judicial influence but did not make judges supreme

  • Parliament still had the final say over whether incompatible laws were changed

• Devolution did not remove nationalist politics

  • Nationalist support did not fade

  • After a dip in 2003, the SNP became the largest party in Scotland in 2007 and Plaid Cymru entered government in Wales