Leston-Bandeira, C and Thompson, L (2017) Integrating the view of the public into the formal legislative process: public reading stage in the UK House of Commons. Journal of Legislative Studies, 23 (4). pp. 508-528. ISSN 1357-2334
Abstract
Recent years have seen increasing calls to integrate the public’s voice into the parliamentary process. This article examines the impact of public reading stage (PRS) on the UK Parliament’s scrutiny of a bill. A new stage of the legislative process piloted by the House of Commons in February 2013, PRS invited the public to comment on a bill undergoing parliamentary scrutiny (the Children and Families Bill). The PRS was designed to encourage members of the public to participate in the scrutiny of legislation through a specially designed forum on Parliament’s website. Over 1000 comments were submitted. Drawing on a content analysis of the comments given by the public to the bill, complemented by interviews with MPs, key officials and PRS participants, we find that although the public reading stage had an impressive response, it failed to make much of a tangible impact on the parliamentary scrutiny of the bill. This was largely due to the choice of bill being used for the pilot and its lack of appropriate integration into the formal legislative process.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | (c) 2017 Taylor & Francis, This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Journal of Legislative Studies on 01/11/2017 , available online: http://doi.org/10.1080/13572334.2017.1394736 |
Keywords: | legislative process; parliament; public engagement; scrutiny of legislation |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Education, Social Sciences and Law (Leeds) > School of Politics & International Studies (POLIS) (Leeds) |
Funding Information: | Funder Grant number British Academy SG141934 |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 07 Apr 2017 15:09 |
Last Modified: | 01 Apr 2019 00:38 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Taylor & Francis |
Identification Number: | 10.1080/13572334.2017.1394736 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:114664 |