| dc.description.abstract | The House of Commons is the senior chamber in the UK’s sovereign parliament, to which the executive is accountable. Yet MPs have surprisingly little control over what the Commons can discuss, and when. Instead, this by default tends to rest with the government.Control of the House of Commons’ time has frequently been a topic of controversy in recent years. The parliamentary battles over Brexit in 2019 saw MPs seeking to ‘seize the agenda’ from the government to debate alternative Brexit options, and the government attempting to prorogue parliament against the wishes of MPs. In 2020 there were major tensions over parliamentary scrutiny of the government’s pandemic response, and MPs’ rights to participate in parliament virtually. But such controversies are nothing new. In 2009 the ‘Wright committee’ urged that the House of Commons should ‘wrest control back over its own decisions’ –yet key recommendations to tackle this were never implemented.This report asks why MPs lack control of their own institution, examines the problems that this causes, and, crucially, suggests what should be done to resolve them. It argues that a core principle guiding House of Commons functioning should be majority decision-making, not government control. | en_US |
