Or, a title I never expected to write.

David Cameron’s current public offer to the LibDems is a parliamentary committee on voting reform, rather than an outright commitment to PR. Unsurprisingly, many LibDems aren’t happy with this, and feel one of their key issues may be being kicked into the long grass. That’s an understandable position, but I don’t think there’s really any alternative to the committee option.

First, there’s no such thing as a “PR” system. When we say “PR”, we actually mean an umbrella term for a whole variety of very different systems, with a bewildering array of acronyms. Each has its benefits and trade offs. The party list system is the most mathematically “correct”, but removes the constituency link and makes individual MPs more accountable to their party than their constituency. A “top-up” system may preserve the constituency link, but risks a two-tier system of MPs. STV, though the best for maintaining the constituency link, is a logistic nightmare for counting: we’d lose election night, which we know would be very unpopular.

Within these options there then need to be various calibrations to suit the political climate of Britain. The party list would likely need the threshold set at an appropriate level to prevent a situation like that in Israel, where extremists and ultra-religious parties act as perpetual kingmakers. STV has the logistic issues I’ve alluded to earlier. Top-up systems also have their own problems. These need to be the subject of detailed debate and discussion before they ever get anywhere near the ballot paper. More importantly, this needs to be sorted out between all three parties; the electoral system has to be fair, and to do that we have to listen to the second-largest party. This is a change that needs to be done slowly and carefully, with the consequences thought through. It would at the very least guarantee a more informed debate on any referendum.

Moreover, PR would likely be just part of a wider series of constitutional changes. Given the voter lock-outs and allegations of electoral fraud, we need to take a wider look at our electoral system beyond the method of marking and counting our ballot papers. If we’re reforming the composition of the Commons, it also makes sense to look at the composition of the Lords. If we do that, we may then have to assess whether it’s appropriate to keep the convention that Cabinet ministers be drawn from Parliament. This might also raise wider issues about the exercise of executive power: potentially putting the exercise of the royal prerogative onto a statutory footing, and perhaps reducing the amount of discretionary power we provide our ministers through the potential to create delegated legislation. Fixed-term Parliaments have been mooted. We may even be looking at reforming the Human Rights Act. If we’re going that far, we might even want to examine codifying the constitution. We either have to find a way to minimise the knock-on effects of voting reform, or choose to deal with them in a methodical and comprehensive fashion.

The changes and their potential impact are too great to be dealt with in either a simple referendum or backroom deal. A cross-party committee is the most appropriate forum.

No better way to return to blogging than to turn around, face your party and tell them they’re wrong!

As I am currently en route to a constitutional law tutorial, it only seems appropriate to talk about the constitutional issue running through the blogosphere this week: Cameron and Hague’s proposed Sovereignty Act. This act, we are told, will assert UK supremacy in the area of EC law.

The problem with this legislation is that it is a pile of logically absurd and constitutionally dangerous nonsense.

First, look at the underlying logic of the act. The only time you need to pass an act declaring you are a sovereign body is when you are, in fact, not sovereign. Yet, if you are not sovereign, you do not have the authority to pass such an act. A sovereignty act is, perforce, ultra vires. The only time such measures do not self-contradict is when they are accompanied by revolutionary violence. Somehow, I don’t think this is what David Cameron is promising.

Fair enough l, you might say, but this is politics; academic legal and logical purism should be subordinated to the realities of power; the logical conundrum will have little practical relevance.

Except that it will.

The problem is that what the Sovereignty Bill proposes is already the legal status in the UK. Parliament is sovereign, and the EU’s authority in this country derives solely from an act of the same: the European Communities Act. The danger comes in that creating a redundant piece of legislation that states the bleedin’ obvious will impose on the courts a duty to interpret it as somehow altering the constitutional order. The courts cannot simply disregard the act on the grounds of it being a grandstanding gesture. This risks driving a steamroller through a delicate area of jurisprudence on the sovereignty of Parliament and its limits. Worse, a challenge to the Bill could even further muddy the waters even further, and this is all before interests in Parliament attempt to amend the Bill to the point that the whole constitution is destabilised.

Conservatives should not support such a potentially destabilising and pointless piece of legislation.