Of regions and men
A cynic might be forgiven for remarking that all that changes in thf Qtieen's speech at each year's opening of Parliament is the price Her Majesty's Stationery Office charges for it : during the four years of this Gov- ernment's life this has now risen by 80 per cent. Nothing so drastic is ever allowed to influence the actual content of the speech. Indeed, the only novelty this year is the pro- posal to set up a Royal Commission on the constitution.
The need for just such a- commission has been spelled out in this journal on a num- ber of occasions in the past year, and it is good to see that this need has now been officially recognised. But quite apart from the general suspicion that the new commis- sion may simply be intended as a means of postponing decisions on embarrassing issues (and it seems clear that it will be used as yet another excuse for the Home Secretary to put off the recommendations of the Boundary Commissioners until after the next general election, a tactic that is little shott of gerrymandering), there are already dan- gerous signs that the Government sees the commission's work chiefly in terms of regionalism and devolution.
There are, of course, good reasons why a Labour government, seeing its Scottish and Welsh fastnesses quaking under siege from the Nationalist parties, should be preoccupied with this problem. The very act of setting up a commission may perhaps take some of the steam out of the Nationalists, while a judiciously balanced mixture of devolution where there is at present centralisation (in Scotland and Wales) and centralisation where there is at present devolution (in Ulster and the Channel Isles) might offer Labour the hope of still greater electoral advantage without the risk of appearing to depart from the path of moderation. And, not least, there is a genuine case to be made for some degree of regional devolution from White- hall (even in England) provided the regions are sufficiently large and their authorities directly elected. No doubt the Maud Com- mission on Local Government will in any case point the way towards this.
But while regionalism is the politicians' vogue word, and local nationalism their elec- toral fear, the strongest case for constitutional reform lies in another field altogether: in the relationship between the state and the individual. The real need for a constitutional commission at the present time is that we need a constitution, so that there is some check on the absolute power of the execu- tive. Parliament, today, cannot provide that check; still less can the courts; while the Ombudsman (through no faith of his own) is little More than a joke. If the proposed constitutional commission is to take as its starting-point the individual citizen, if it is to consider, as the SPECTATOR has advocated, a written constitution, setting a limit to the powers of the executive and pro- viding the citizen with a means of appeal against unconstitutional action (including legislation) by the state, then we would sup- port it unreservedly.
Unfortunately, it is hard to believe that this is in the Government's Mind at all. For if it were, there would be no case whatever for going ahead, as the Government has made it plain it intends to do, in advance of the findings of the constitutional com- mission, with its plant for the reform of the House of Lords. The unreformed House, pathetic as it is, at least succeeded in stop. ping the Stansted scandal: the 'reformed' House, packed with Prime Ministerial nominees, would be unlikely to achieve even that. Yet what is needed is a constitutional reform that limits executive • power; rather than one which abolishes such feeble barriers to abuse as already exist.
The hope must be that, whatever Mr Wil- son's original intentions, the force of public opinion, supported by the official Opposition, will insist that any constitutional commission in fact tackles the central issue of whether our existing sb-ealled 'unwritten constitution' is any longer a sufficient framework for en- suring freedom and justice in Britain—and, if not, what needs to be done. For in the last analysis it is the rights of men, and not of regions, that matter.
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