Codifying the current settlement would not be enough

In yesterday's Daily Telegraph (9 October), the Attorney General, Lord Goldsmith, suggested Britain might benefit from a written constitution. 'At present', he said, 'much of what we regard as our unwritten constitution consists of laws that can be changed by a simple Act of Parliament and conventions that may be open to dispute.'

So, he wants to codify the current constitutional settlement. Goldsmith cited as an example the convention of holding a general election every five years (a bad example - only five of the eighteen post-war elections occured after a five year interval), or the clarification of when ministers have exceeded their powers.

This is the most timid imaginable of consitutional reform proposals - simply to write down how our polity currently operates, when it is surely the polity itself that needs reform. Judges can, at present, quite easily declare that Ministers have exceeded their powers, for example when the government breaks a law that it itself (via Parliament) has enacted. But when the government can so easily push laws through Parliament, this is hardly a great check or a balance.

Lord Goldsmith's most promising idea is so by default: the codification of the royal prerogative powers, currently exercised by the Prime Minister, would compel the codifiers to 'consider' whether he would have to consult Parliament, for example on going to war. Parliament, though, needs even more power than that to keep the executive properly in check: a fully-elected second chamber that can significantly and legitimately revise legislation for the better; strengthened select committees; more opporunity to initiate legislation; and a share of the large amount of patronage the Prime Minister currently wields.

We should support the more radical thinkers on the Labour and other benches in pursuing these aims - British democracy could do with some fresh thinking, and Labour should not let the Tories steal a march.