Commission Update

The Commission team has been busy talking to key people and reviewing the published evidence in preparation for our forthcoming options paper on the future of the executive.

We have held a series of meetings involving various members of the Commission and experts from across the political spectrum. Notes from these meetings are posted on the website. In addition, we have had one-to-one meetings with thinkers, politicians and academics who have given us their time generously. We don't post notes of these meetings on the website but I want to share some of their insights. In addition, we will be using their ideas in the paper to be published in September on how best to constrain the overweening power of the executive.

We met with Lord Falconer, who is a barrister and former Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice. We also met Professor Andrew Blick, head of the Department of Political Economy at King's College London. I want to thank them for giving their time and contributing their ideas. Individual members of the Commission have contributed their ideas in some detail, and we owe particular thanks to Rory Stewart who talked us through some changes he would like to see. We have attended events on the constitution held by the Institute for Government both on line and in person and have benefited from its excellent discussions and ideas.

Sometimes they have suggested reforms that I think are genuinely new - it has been a lively and challenging experience.

Overall everyone has agreed that power has agglomerated into the executive and this is not healthy or democratic. Executive power has been inflated and has to be constrained and reformed.

Over the past year or so we have seen Number 10 Downing Street functioning poorly and the culture of lying has corroded our democracy.

We will be publishing our paper in early September giving options for changes that could be made to redistribute power away from the executive based on these discussions.

Following that we will launch a third piece of work on reform of the House of Lords. Watch this space.