By CivilServiceWorld

27 Jan 2010

Lords reform, freedom of information, devolution, not to mention MPs’ expenses – policymakers and lawyers at the Ministry of Justice have had a busy decade. Ruth Keeling talks to constitutional issues chief Rowena Collins Rice


Looking at the constitutional reforms of the last decade or so, it’s easy to feel that they’ve moved cripplingly slowly. Reform of the House of Lords – promised in 1997, begun in 2001 – is still not complete, for example. This may seem like a snail’s progress to outside observers, but those involved with the development of constitutional law are more likely to describe the last ten years as a whirlwind of activity.

“Interesting times, constitutionally”, is how Rowena Collins Rice (pictured above), director-general of the democracy, constitution and law group within the Ministry of Justice (MOJ), describes the decade. Having joined the directorate in 2008, she is responsible for a number of high-profile areas: Lords reform; the new Supreme Court; party funding; election rules, such as those governing postal voting; international, European and human rights law; freedom of information; examining the potential for a new bill of rights; and MPs’ expenses.

This last matter has pushed Collins Rice and her staff to the limit during the last year. “It has been beyond tough”, she says. The outrage over the way MPs had treated their expense accounts produced a Parliamentary Standards Bill that went from announcement to royal assent in just a month. Civil servants involved directly with the legislation “have had to go way more than the extra mile, and that has been quite difficult personally for some of them. There is no getting away from that,” says Collins Rice.

While this flurry of intense activity went on, borne by just a handful of expert staff, the rest of the department carried on with its many other responsibilities. One day in particular was dubbed “Constitution Monday” by staff, says Collins Rice, because while the standards bill was making its way through Parliament, the Political Parties and Elections Act completed its parliamentary stages and the Constitutional Renewal and Governance Bill – which includes the civil service code – was introduced.

With so much going on, it is easy to imagine that there was more work to be done than could be managed with the people available. “No organisation could sensibly be on a stable resource footing to cope with the peaks that we have had to cope with in the past year,” Collins Rice says. But other priorities could not be pushed onto the back burner; her unit had to keep up the pace on implementing completed legislation, writing new laws, amending bills being discussed in the Commons and Lords, and running public events to discuss the potential for a national bill of rights.

“On any one day, expenses or House of Lords reform or another piece of work will be the thing of the moment,” she says. “That has been characteristic of what life has been like, and we have had to be on the balls of our feet.” She describes herself as “immensely proud” of the efforts she and her staff have made to deliver that kind of responsiveness; “by being extremely flexible in pulling together small teams and combinations of experts at very short notice, to deal with urgent issues and to sustain longer-term stuff.”

One development which has helped her unit, she says, is closer working between policy and legal officials. Instead of policy officials working out their ideas before asking for legal advice – which may then force a return to the drawing board – the two groups have been working together right from the start. Such methods are not unheard-of in other departments, but Collins Rice says that as the law department, the MoJ has been able to take it a step further. Collins Rice’s own background – legal academia, followed by civil service fast stream as a policy administrator, followed by legal training (she is now the department’s chief legal adviser) – undoubtedly helped.

Systems and processes are one thing, but Collins Rice says that success is down to the civil servants who operate them. “It is a huge tribute to their professionalism and the ethic of working together and flexibly – and their sheer commitment,” she says. “I hope most of my colleagues will eventually look back on this with a sense more of exhilaration than of those long, dark nights in Parliament when it didn’t seem to be going so well.”

If her staff are half as passionate about their work as Collins Rice herself, then it is little wonder that the Parliamentary Standards Bill became law so quickly. Her excitement about the new Supreme Court infects me so much that I visit it after the interview – and she’s right, it is a very well-designed building.

Collins Rice says she has always been interested in the question of how law should work: she studied jurisprudence at Oxford, teaching it afterwards, and joined the civil service four years later to see how law is made. Now, she says, she is at the centre of the web that defines the relationship between citizen and state, working on issues “that will form part of the history of these last 15 years”. Such an experience is “awe-inspiring”, she says, and “a huge privilege”.

As well as a privilege, the role is a great responsibility. The kind of questions that Collins Rice is discussing and settling can arouse strong passions, and have major implications for the country. For that reason, she does not think House of Lords reform has moved too slowly. People have been thinking “very deeply and seriously” about the final outcome, and she argues that “it is not bad that things like that take a little time to mature”.

Even with the pressure that such responsibilities inevitably bring, Collins Rice says there is no other job she’d rather be in right now. “If I could have sat down and decided what in all the world I wanted to do, this would be it,” she says. And there should be plenty for her to continue to get her teeth into in the future, whichever party wins the election: a Conservative justice minister would want her to repeal the Human Rights Act; Labour would demand a British bill of rights; the Liberal Democrats want an extension of the voting franchise and proportional representation. As Collins Rice says: “The story is not over.”

A timeline of reform
1998 Human Rights Act makes the European Convention on Human Rights into law

1998 Belfast Agreement creates Northern Ireland Assembly

1998 Scotland Act brings devolution for Scotland

1998 Government of Wales Act creates the Welsh Assembly

1999 House of Lords: all but 92 hereditary peers abolished

2000 Freedom of Information Act gives the public rights to access government documents

2000 Lords Appointment Commission replaces prime minister as selector of peers

2002 Northern Ireland peace process breaks down

2003 All seven options for Lords make-up rejected in Commons

2004 Government drops year-old promise to abolish all hereditary peers

2008 Northern Ireland power-sharing restarts

2009 Constitutional Reform and Governance Bill: includes Civil Service Bill and further Lords reforms

2009 Parliamentary Standards Act follows expenses scandal

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