When Labour came into of-fice, pretty much everybody agreed that Britain's constitution was a mess. The new government's programme for wholesale reform was widely hailed as a fine testament to its radicalism. Now, with the House of Lords' vote on March 8th to park the constitutional reform bill with a committee, that programme lies in tatters and a party once applauded for its liberal vision is attacked for its authoritarian tendencies. What went wrong? The problem with this week's bill, which was intended to give the judiciary greater independence by abolishing the office of Lord Chancellor (who both sits in the cabinet and runs the legal system), giving his power to appoint judges to an independent commission and setting up a Supreme Court detached from the House of Lords, lay partly in the way the changes were introduced. The government announced its plans with startling arrogance. Governments contemplating legislation usually publish first a green paper (for discussion), then a white paper (for specific proposals), then a bill. A higher bar is usually set for constitutional change than for ordinary legislation. Yet last year, in the course of a cabinet reshuffle, with no prior discussion, this government announced plans for fundamental changes to a 1,000-year-old judicial system. Interested parties, such as judges, were understandably miffed not to have been consulted. Disinterested parties, such as the press, thought the government should have taken the trouble to chew the matter over in public.
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