Accountability and the Tripartition of Houses of Parliament in the United Kingdom

Maximilian Taylor

Maximilian Taylor is a barrister of the Inner Temple in England, UK

Introduction

Parliamentary democracies show a few different ways of arranging seats in the legislative chamber, which can promote certain constitutional values. For example, confronting benches can encourage heated scrutiny of public policy, while a hemicycle arrangement can highlight the diversity of opinion among legislators. The British House of Lords has a somewhat uncommon arrangement, insofar as it has a Crossbench, perpendicular to the (confronting) Government and Opposition benches, on which independent members sit. I will argue below that it would enhance Parliament if a Crossbench were adopted in the House of Commons and the Crossbenches were standardised across both Houses thereof, because that would reconcile the accountability and individuality of parliamentarians to the greatest extent.

Confidence and Partition of the House

Parliamentary democracy is defined as a system of government in which the executive must maintain the confidence of the legislature (or one of its Houses), the latter of which is accountable to the electorate. A vote of confidence is a ternary decision because a Member of Parliament (MP) may either vote aye, no, or abstain. The advantage of partitioning the House of Commons into the Government, Opposition, and Crossbench is that it could more accurately show the electorate the parliamentary postures of support, opposition, or neutrality to the ministry.

Tripartite houses of parliament can be contrasted with both confrontational and hemicyclic ones. On the one hand, confrontational houses falsely dichotomise support or opposition to the ministry, because all parties therein, except the party (or parties in a coalition) in Government, form the Opposition. They can also produce misleading outcomes, such as the Bloc Québécois in Canada sitting on the Opposition benches despite affirming the Trudeau Ministry in its last motion of confidence. On the other hand, hemicyclic houses – like the Bundestag – do not make it immediately clear which parliamentarians support, oppose, or are neutral to the executive, because seats are arranged on a spectrum.

Additionally, Crossbenchers have different interests to Opposition parliamentarians. Whereas the Shadow Cabinet (the Opposition team of spokespersons for each major Government departmental policy area) is competing to form a ministry at the next general election, the Crossbench might consist of a party which would be unlikely to be able to form a Government, but which could hold the balance of power – especially in a hung Parliament. Crossbenchers might also support Government policies on a case-by-case basis. Neutrality would likely be the best way to bring only their preferred policies to fruition, because it would give them a credible foundation upon which to fairly cooperate with either the Government or the Opposition.

Moreover, adding and standardising a Crossbench would reemphasise an objective parliamentary partition based on relations with the executive, against a subjective one based on party affiliation. This is crucial and would entrench one of the defining features of the UK’s parliamentary system of government, as opposed to the presidential one. How this plays out in practice can be seen in the allocation of committee seats and other offices, as I will discuss in the next paragraph. While on paper, parliamentarians are electorally responsive to their constituents, in practice MPs are elected on a party platform with which they must largely conform in order to be supported in policymaking and be re-elected to office. So, the importance of the party waxes as the importance of its MP wanes. Therefore, deemphasising the role of parties in a parliamentary partition would strengthen MPs’ responsibility to their constituents.

Organisation and Resources

Another reason to tripart the House of Commons would be to organise and resource the Crossbench, similar to the Opposition, so that Crossbenchers could effectively participate in parliamentary business. The [British] Ministerial and Other Salaries Act 1975, s 2, defines the role and appointive systems of the Leaders of the Opposition and Opposition Whips, in both Houses of Parliament. Schedule 2 to the 1975 Act provides for these officers’ payment.

Conversely, the Convenor of the Crossbench in the House of Lords is a creature of constitutional convention, and their remuneration is governed by a resolution of that House. The Convenor is elected by Crossbench Peers and their role is to call their meetings, represent those Peers in parliamentary business, and ‘…draw attention to transgressions of order’ (the House at large preserves order rather than the Lord Speaker). The title ‘Convenor’ is used instead of ‘Leader’, because Crossbenchers do not take a collective position on issues and are not subject to party discipline (albeit that some Crossbenchers might belong to smaller parties within the bloc).

Potential Challenges to Reform

The greatest challenge to adopting a Crossbench in the House of Commons would be the First Past the Post electoral system, because it creates a mostly two-party system, as observed in the operation of Duverger’s Law. This also explains why the Crossbench in the House of Representatives is often less numerous than in the Senate in Australia. The Australian House of Representatives uses a majoritarian electoral system with single-member constituencies, whereas the Senate uses a proportional one for statewide elections. Accordingly, there might be a reduced limit on how many Crossbench MPs could reasonably be expected to be elected to office in a House of Commons which were to retain First Past the Post.

Another challenge might be for the Speaker to rule on parliamentarians’ alignment in relation to their confidence in the ministry without a vote on the matter. The UK is a negative parliamentary democracy, meaning that the Government is deemed to enjoy the confidence of the House of Commons unless proven otherwise. As such, there usually are fewer opportunities to assess legislative confidence than in a positive parliamentary democracy, like Spain, wherein the appointment of the prime minister depends upon a victorious vote of confidence. Finally, the Lords Spiritual – the senior Anglican bishops who sit in the House of Lords by right of office or election by their episcopal peers – would complicate the standardisation of the Crossbenches because, unlike other peers, they sit on the Government benches irrespective of the alignment of individual bishops.

Conclusion

UK Parliamentarians should sit as the Government, Opposition, or Crossbench according to whether they would affirm, negate, or abstain from votes of confidence in the ministry. However, the Lords Spiritual should be exempted from this rule due to both their uniqueness and the sensitivity of the establishment of the Church of England. Consequently, the 1975 Act should be amended to create, define, and provide for the payment of Convenors of the Crossbench in both Houses of Parliament. While a plurality of opposition MPs justifies selecting a Leader of the Opposition, by enabling cohesive shadow governance and warranting public funding, these factors do not apply to Crossbenchers. So, the Convenors of the Crossbench in each House of Parliament should be elected by the Crossbenchers thereof by majorities, in order to reconcile a prompt election with a democratic mandate. Any doubt as to the person elected should be resolved by the respective Speakers, so that there would be consistency with the appointment of Leaders of the Opposition. Also, the Standing Orders of the House of Commons ought to be amended for the Convenor of the Crossbench therein to enjoy comparable precedence and immunities in debate as Government and Opposition frontbenchers, because order is preserved by the Speaker instead of the House at large.

The British constitution might diminish the effectiveness of standardising the Crossbenches across both Houses of Parliament, but standardisation would still be worthwhile because only the degree rather than substance thereof would be affected. Accordingly, this reform would cohere with Parliament as presently constituted and enhance both parliamentarians’ accountability to their constituents and cooperation with their colleagues.

Maximilian Taylor is a barrister of the Inner Temple in England, UK. He is grateful to Dr Gaurav Mukherjee and Dr Elisabeth Perham for their helpful comments on an earlier draft.

Suggested citation: Maximilian Taylor, ‘Accountability and the Tripartition of Houses of Parliament in the United Kingdom’ IACL-AIDC Blog (15 May 2025) Accountability and the Tripartition of Houses of Parliament in the United Kingdom — IACL-IADC Blog.