Debates on further reform
Previous pages examined how the UK constitution has changed since 1997.
Under Labour (1997-2010), this included House of Lords reform, a wider Human Rights Act 1998, the creation of the Supreme Court under the Constitutional Reform Act 2005, and the devolution Acts for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
Under the Coalition (2010-15), it included the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011 and further devolution to Wales. Since 2015, further devolution to Scotland has continued.
More recently, the Fixed-term Parliaments Act has been repealed and the remaining hereditary peers removed from the House of Lords.
This page explores three linked debates about further reform of the UK constitution.
The first is whether the individual reforms since 1997 should now be taken further. This covers devolution, the House of Lords, the voting system, and rights protection.
The second is how far devolution specifically should be extended within England.
The third is whether the constitution as a whole should be codified and entrenched, including through a new Bill of Rights.
| Key terms West Lothian Question: the anomaly whereby MPs from Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland can vote at Westminster on matters that are devolved in their own constituencies, such as English health or education policy. English MPs cannot vote on the equivalent devolved matters in those nations. English Votes for English Laws (EVEL): a set of House of Commons procedures used between 2015 and 2021. It gave English (or English and Welsh) MPs a veto over legislation certified as applying only to England, as an attempted answer to the West Lothian Question. Localism: the transfer of decision-making power to the lowest practical level, typically local councils, combined authorities or neighbourhood groups, rather than to a single regional or national body. Regionalism: the creation of elected government at the level of a whole region of England (for example the North East or South West), sitting between local councils and central government. Codification: the process of gathering the rules that make up a constitution, currently scattered across statutes, common law, convention and treaty, into a single authoritative document. Entrenchment: making a law or constitutional provision difficult to amend or repeal, usually by requiring a special procedure such as a referendum or a supermajority, rather than a simple Act of Parliament. Bill of Rights: a document setting out citizens’ fundamental rights and freedoms, usually given stronger legal protection than ordinary law. The Human Rights Act 1998 already performs part of this role in the UK, but as an ordinary Act of Parliament it can still be amended or repealed by a simple Commons majority. First-past-the-post (FPTP): the electoral system used for UK general elections, in which the candidate with the most votes in a constituency wins, regardless of whether they win a majority of votes cast. Proportional representation (PR): a family of electoral systems in which the number of seats a party wins closely reflects its share of the vote. Used for the Scottish Parliament, Senedd and Northern Ireland Assembly, but not for the House of Commons. |
Part 1: Should the post-1997 reforms go further?
Elsewhere, a wide range of reforms since 1997 have been discussed: devolution, House of Lords reform, the Human Rights Act 1998 and Supreme Court, and the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011. This page reviews whether each should now go further, starting with devolution.
The devolution settlements
The table below summarises the main limitation of each settlement as it stood in 1997-2006, the extensions already made since then, and the live debates that remain.
| Nation | Limitation of the 1997-2006 settlement | Extension already made | Live debate |
| Scotland | The original Scotland Act 1998 devolved policy areas but kept almost all tax-raising and borrowing powers at Westminster, limiting the Scottish Parliament’s fiscal accountability. | The Scotland Act 2012 and Scotland Act 2016 devolved significant powers over income tax rates and bands, and some welfare and borrowing powers, following the 2014 independence referendum. | Whether Scotland should move to full fiscal autonomy or independence remains contested. At the 2026 Scottish Parliament election, the SNP won a fifth consecutive term with 57 seats, seven short of a majority. Labour and Reform UK tied on 17 seats each. |
| Wales | The Government of Wales Act 1998 created only an executive body with no primary law-making power, so Wales lagged behind Scotland throughout the 2000s. | The Government of Wales Act 2006 introduced primary law-making powers. The Wales Act 2014 and Wales Act 2017 then devolved further tax and ‘reserved powers’ competence. The Senedd Cymru (Members and Elections) Act 2024 enlarged the Senedd from 60 to 96 members. | The enlarged Senedd was first used at the May 2026 election. Plaid Cymru became the largest party with 43 seats, and Reform UK became the second largest with 34. Labour fell to just 9 seats, raising fresh questions about how a fragmented Senedd will use its expanded powers. |
| Northern Ireland | Devolution under the Northern Ireland Act 1998 depends on power-sharing between unionist and nationalist parties. The Assembly has been suspended for extended periods, including 2017-2020 and 2022-2024, when that power-sharing broke down. | The New Decade, New Approach agreement (2020) restored the institutions and changed how the Assembly forms an executive. | Whether further reform is needed to make power-sharing more resilient to collapse, and how devolution interacts with Northern Ireland’s post-Brexit trading arrangements, remain live and sensitive questions. |
| England | England received no devolved legislature at all in the 1997-2006 wave of reform, only limited local government changes. | Combined authorities and directly elected mayors expanded steadily from 2017, then formalised and extended by the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Act 2026. | Should England’s mayoral strategic authorities eventually be topped by a single English-wide body? This would reopen the regionalism or English Parliament options discussed in Part 2. |
Sources: House of Commons Library briefings on the Scotland Acts, Wales Acts and Senedd Cymru (Members and Elections) Act 2024; Scottish Parliament and Senedd election results, May 2026.
Analysis:
Every nation’s settlement has been extended at least once since its original Act. This suggests devolution in the UK has operated as a continuing process, rather than a one-off event. This pattern is often described as devolution being ‘a process, not an event’, a phrase associated with the former Welsh Secretary Ron Davies.
Evaluation:
How far this process should still go is judged differently in each nation. Wales’s move to a much larger, more proportional Senedd in 2024-26 is a genuinely significant structural change. Northern Ireland’s extensions, by contrast, have been about stabilising existing institutions rather than granting new powers.
| Check your understanding 1. Using the table above, identify one way in which the devolution settlement for Wales has been extended since 2006. You could: pick a single named Act, for example the Senedd Cymru (Members and Elections) Act 2024, and state precisely what it changed. 2. Compare the pressures for further devolution reform in Scotland and Northern Ireland. You could: identify that the Scottish debate centres on gaining new powers, such as fiscal autonomy or independence, while the Northern Ireland debate centres on stabilising powers the Assembly already has. |
Compromise versus further extension
A recurring theme in these debates is the tension between the benefits of the gradual, compromise-based approach the UK has actually followed since 1997, and the case for pushing reform further and faster.
- Benefits of compromise: an incremental approach lets each settlement be tested and adjusted, rather than risking a single, irreversible change. The Scotland Act 2012 and Scotland Act 2016, which refined the original 1998 Act, are good examples.
- This approach has also kept the Union together, by accommodating demands for more self-government without granting full independence.
- It allows different parts of the UK to move at different speeds. Wales, for example, moved to primary law-making powers later and more slowly than Scotland.
- Disadvantages of further extension: repeated extension can look like a series of concessions extracted under pressure, rather than a coherent design. The 2014 ‘vow’ to Scotland, made during a referendum scare, is a clear example.
- Asymmetric devolution also leaves unresolved anomalies, such as the West Lothian Question.
- Further extension in one nation can generate demands for equivalent treatment elsewhere. England’s devolution debate has partly followed Scotland’s for this reason.
Analysis:
None of the UK’s devolution settlements since 1997 has been reversed. This stability suggests the gradual, compromise-based approach has accommodated nationalist and regionalist pressure without triggering the break-up of the Union.
Evaluation:
Against this, the same gradualism means difficult structural questions have never been decisively settled, most obviously England’s institutional gap and the unresolved West Lothian Question. Its long-term sustainability depends on whether future flashpoints, a further Scottish independence referendum being the clearest example, can continue to be absorbed in the same way.
Reforming Parliament: the Lords and the voting system
House of Lords reform since 1997 has removed most hereditary peers, but has never created a fully elected second chamber. The House of Lords Act 1999 removed all but 92 hereditary peers, as a transitional arrangement that was intended to be temporary.
A coalition government bill to create a largely elected House of Lords was introduced in 2012, but was dropped after Conservative backbenchers threatened to block it. The House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Act 2026 finally removed the remaining 92 hereditary peers, but did not introduce elections.
The Brown Commission‘s 2022 report (examined in full in Part 3) recommended replacing the House of Lords with an elected ‘Assembly of the Nations and Regions’. Prime Minister Burnham has personally backed a similar idea since 2022, an elected ‘senate of the nations and regions’, and said in 2026 that he would not rule out an early change to the upper house.
A similar pattern applies to the electoral system used for the House of Commons. The UK held a referendum on replacing First-past-the-post (FPTP) with the Alternative Vote on 5 May 2011. Voters rejected the change by 67.9% to 32.1%, on a turnout of 42.0%.
Every general election since has continued to use FPTP, even though the Scottish Parliament, Senedd and Northern Ireland Assembly all use forms of proportional representation (PR). Prime Minister Burnham has described himself as ‘a strong supporter of electoral reform’ and wants a commitment to PR in Labour’s next manifesto. More than 90 Labour MPs have backed calls for an independent commission on the voting system.
Analysis:
House of Lords and electoral reform show the same pattern as devolution: incremental change that stops short of the most radical option. The House of Lords Act 1999 and the House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Act 2026 both removed hereditary peers without creating an elected chamber. Likewise, the 2011 referendum rejected changing the Commons voting system, even though the devolved nations kept their own, different systems.
Evaluation:
Prime Minister Burnham‘s personal support for PR and an elected second chamber is unusually strong for a serving Prime Minister. Whether this converts into legislation depends on persuading his own party, given that the 2011 referendum result shows public and parliamentary appetite for changing Westminster’s voting system cannot be assumed.
| Check your understanding 1. Explain what happened to the House of Lords in 1999 and in 2026. You could: identify what each Act removed, and note that neither created a fully elected chamber. 2. Outline the result of the 2011 referendum on the Alternative Vote, and explain why the devolved nations use a different electoral system from Westminster. You could: give the referendum result and turnout, then note which systems the Scottish Parliament, Senedd and Northern Ireland Assembly use. |
The Human Rights Act and the Fixed-term Parliaments Act
Two further reforms from 1997-2010 illustrate the same debate in different ways. The Human Rights Act 1998 is examined in full in Part 3, alongside the wider question of a Bill of Rights.
The Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011 set fixed five-year terms for Parliament and removed the Prime Minister’s power to request an early dissolution. It was repealed by the Dissolution and Calling of Parliament Act 2022, which received royal assent on 24 March 2022 and restored the Prime Minister’s traditional power to call an election.
Analysis:
The Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011 is the only major post-1997 constitutional reform examined in this document to have been reversed outright, rather than extended. This makes it an exception to the general pattern of gradual extension identified elsewhere.
Evaluation:
Its repeal suggests that not every constitutional reform, once made, is treated as a one-way ratchet. Whether this makes the Fixed-term Parliaments Act episode a genuine exception, or simply a reform that was tried and found not to work, is a matter of judgement.
Part 2: Extending devolution within England
England is the only nation of the UK without its own devolved legislature. This part asks how far, and in what form, that gap should be closed.
The West Lothian Question
The West Lothian Question takes its name from Tam Dalyell, the Labour MP for West Lothian. He raised it during the 1977 debates on the (ultimately unsuccessful) Scotland and Wales devolution bills.
Dalyell asked how English MPs would tolerate Scottish MPs voting at Westminster on English domestic matters. He, as a Scottish MP, would no longer answer to his own constituents on the same matters once they were devolved.
The question sharpened once devolution began in 1999, and again after the 2014 Scottish independence referendum. Further powers were then promised to the Scottish Parliament (the ‘vow’), and the UK government came under pressure to address the equivalent gap for England.
The Conservative government’s answer was English Votes for English Laws (EVEL), introduced in October 2015. The Speaker of the House of Commons could certify a bill, or parts of a bill, as relating only to England (or England and Wales). This triggered an extra Commons stage, in which only English (or English and Welsh) MPs approved the relevant provisions.
EVEL never gave English MPs an outright veto in the way a fully separate English Parliament would. It also added procedural complexity to an already complicated process. The government suspended the EVEL standing orders in April 2020, during the coronavirus pandemic, and rescinded them altogether on 13 July 2021.
Analysis:
The rise and fall of EVEL shows that the West Lothian Question is easier to identify than to solve. Westminster has not adopted a fully federal structure. EVEL addressed the symbolic unfairness of English MPs lacking a veto through a procedural fix, rather than through a genuinely separate English legislature.
Evaluation:
EVEL‘s abolition after only six years, without a replacement mechanism, suggests the West Lothian Question remains unresolved rather than settled. How much this matters in practice depends on how often England-only legislation has passed with votes from Scottish, Welsh or Northern Irish MPs, which has been rare since 1999 because governments have usually held a UK-wide majority.
| Check your understanding 1. Explain what is meant by the West Lothian Question. You could: focus on the asymmetry between what a Scottish, Welsh or Northern Irish MP can vote on at Westminster, and what an English MP cannot vote on in return. 2. Outline how English Votes for English Laws attempted to answer the West Lothian Question, and explain why it was abolished in 2021. You could: describe the certification process and the extra Commons stage first, then set out the practical and political reasons ministers gave for scrapping it. |
Localism, regionalism, or an English Parliament?
Unlike Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, England has never been given its own devolved legislature. Three broad options are usually discussed for closing this gap. Since 1997, the UK has in practice experimented mostly with the first of the three.
| Option | What it involves | Advantages | Disadvantages |
| Localism | Power passed down to individual local councils, combined authorities and elected mayors, with different areas able to negotiate different deals. | Decisions taken closer to the communities affected. Allows areas with different needs, for example transport in Greater Manchester versus rural Cumbria, to be treated differently. | Creates a patchwork of unequal powers across England, a ‘postcode lottery’ of devolution. Does not answer the West Lothian Question, since there is still no single English voice at Westminster. |
| Regionalism | Elected assemblies for whole regions of England, for example the North East, sitting between local government and Westminster. | A regional tier could rebalance power away from London and the South East, and give regions with distinct economic identities a stronger voice. | Rejected decisively by voters in the 2004 North East referendum (78% against, on a 48% turnout). England’s regions also lack the strong historic identity that Scotland and Wales have. |
| English Parliament | A single devolved legislature for the whole of England, mirroring the Scottish Parliament and Senedd, alongside a separate, smaller UK Parliament for reserved matters. | Would directly answer the West Lothian Question by giving England the same kind of institution as the other three nations. | England’s population, around 56 million out of a UK total of around 68 million, is far larger than Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland combined. This raises practical questions about where sovereignty would then sit. |
Sources: House of Commons Library research briefings on English devolution and the West Lothian Question; Electoral Commission results for the 2004 North East referendum.
In practice, England has moved furthest and fastest down the localism route. The Localism Act 2011 gave local authorities a general power of competence, and made way for the combined authorities that later gained directly elected mayors, starting with Greater Manchester in 2017.
This approach was extended substantially by the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Act 2026, which passed in April 2026. The Act replaced the previous patchwork of mayoral combined authorities with a clearer tier of mayoral strategic authorities, some of which can apply for ‘established’ status and a single integrated funding settlement.
Greater Manchester and the West Midlands already hold established status. West Yorkshire, the North East, the Liverpool City Region and South Yorkshire were due to receive it for the 2026/27 financial year. A further six priority areas were due to hold their first mayoral elections in May 2026.
Analysis:
The pattern since 1997 has been gradual, asymmetric localism, rather than a single decisive answer for England. Successive governments have preferred negotiated deals with individual cities and city regions over the more radical, symmetrical options of a full regional tier or an English Parliament.
Evaluation:
This incremental approach has proved more durable than regionalism, which voters rejected outright in the 2004 North East referendum. But its patchwork nature means England still has no single body that can speak for it as a whole.
| Check your understanding 1. Outline the difference between localism and regionalism as answers to England’s devolution gap. You could: use the table above and give a real example of each: a named mayoral strategic authority for localism, and the 2004 North East referendum for regionalism. 2. Explain why an English Parliament would answer the West Lothian Question more directly than either localism or regionalism. You could: link your answer back to the definition of the West Lothian Question, and to what each of the three options in the table actually gives England. |
Is an English Parliament the answer?
The case for an English Parliament rests on symmetry and principle. The case against rests on scale and practicality.
- The case for: an English Parliament would directly answer the West Lothian Question, which EVEL‘s abolition in 2021 left unresolved.
- It would give England the same institutional voice that Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland already have.
- It would create a single, accountable body for English domestic policy, rather than the current patchwork of mayoral strategic authorities.
- The case against: England’s population, around 56 million of a UK total of around 68 million, is far larger than any other devolved body would serve. This risks creating a rival centre of power to Westminster.
- The 2004 North East referendum result suggests limited public appetite for new tiers of government in England.
- The English Devolution and Community Empowerment Act 2026 shows government policy continuing to favour localism over a single English institution.
Analysis:
Every UK government since 1997, of both main parties, has chosen localism over an English Parliament whenever it has had the chance to legislate on England’s institutional gap. This runs from the Localism Act 2011 through to the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Act 2026.
Evaluation:
An English Parliament remains the most logically consistent answer to the West Lothian Question. But its practical disadvantages, above all the risk of creating an institution large enough to rival Westminster, have so far outweighed that logic for every government that has considered it.
Part 3: Should the UK constitution be codified and entrenched?
A separate but related debate concerns the UK constitution as a whole, rather than devolution specifically. Its rules are currently spread across statutes, such as the Human Rights Act 1998 and Constitutional Reform Act 2005, as well as common law, convention and treaty.
Should these rules be gathered into a single codified document, potentially including a new Bill of Rights? And should that document be entrenched, so that it could not be changed by an ordinary Act of Parliament in the way most law can?
The Bill of Rights debate
The Human Rights Act 1998 incorporated the European Convention on Human Rights into UK law, and is sometimes treated as a de facto Bill of Rights. Because it is an ordinary Act of Parliament, however, it can be amended or repealed by a simple Commons majority.
Conservative governments proposed replacing the Human Rights Act with a new British Bill of Rights from 2015 onwards. The Justice Secretary, Dominic Raab, introduced the Bill of Rights Bill to the House of Commons on 22 June 2022.
The incoming Prime Minister, Liz Truss, halted the Bill’s progress in September 2022. Her successor’s government confirmed on 27 June 2023 that it would not proceed, leaving the Human Rights Act in place.
Analysis:
The Bill of Rights Bill shows that even a government committed to a Bill of Rights in principle can struggle to agree its content or find parliamentary time for it. The project did not survive a change of prime minister.
Evaluation:
The Bill’s abandonment left the underlying question unresolved rather than settled, much like EVEL‘s abolition in Part 2. Whether a future government revives the idea of a British Bill of Rights, or leaves the Human Rights Act as it stands, remains an open question.
| Check your understanding 1. Explain the difference between the Human Rights Act 1998 and a fully entrenched Bill of Rights. You could: focus on how easily each could be amended or repealed by a simple Commons majority. 2. Outline what happened to the Bill of Rights Bill between June 2022 and June 2023. You could: set out the sequence of events in order, from its introduction, through the change of prime minister, to its abandonment. |
Recent proposals for wider codification
In December 2022, the former Prime Minister Gordon Brown chaired a Labour Party commission on the UK’s future. Its report, A New Britain: Renewing our Democracy and Rebuilding our Economy, set out some of the most detailed proposals for constitutional reform put forward by a major UK party in a generation.
The Brown Commission‘s report recommended replacing the House of Lords with an elected second chamber, further devolution to the nations and regions, and new independent bodies to enforce standards in public life. It stopped short of proposing a single, fully codified constitution.
The debate gained a fresh, practical edge in 2026. Andy Burnham, previously Mayor of Greater Manchester, became Prime Minister in July 2026, after Sir Keir Starmer’s resignation. Prime Minister Burnham has argued that his own plans to devolve further power away from Westminster strengthen the case for a written constitution.
Analysis:
For the first time, a serving Prime Minister has personally linked further devolution to the case for codification, rather than treating them as separate debates. This connects Parts 1 and 2 of this document directly to Part 3.
Evaluation:
Whether this raises codification‘s political priority in practice is unclear. Commentators have noted that constitutional reform is unlikely to be a major vote-winner at the next general election. Any move towards codification would also need to be debated alongside wider questions, such as electoral reform and a regional second chamber.
The table below sets out the main arguments made for and against full codification and entrenchment.
| Case for codification and entrenchment | Case against codification and entrenchment |
| Would make the constitution clear and accessible to citizens, rather than scattered across many sources that even specialists disagree on. | The UK’s uncodified constitution has proved highly flexible, allowing reforms such as the Scotland Act 1998, Constitutional Reform Act 2005 and, most recently, the House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Act 2026, to be passed relatively quickly by ordinary legislation. |
| Would protect fundamental rights and devolved powers from being altered or removed by a government with a simple parliamentary majority. | Entrenchment would reduce parliamentary sovereignty, a principle many regard as the core feature of the UK’s constitutional tradition. It would give courts the power to strike down Acts of Parliament that conflict with the entrenched document. |
| Would give the judiciary clear authority to enforce constitutional rules, rather than relying on political convention that governments can choose to disregard. | Deciding what should count as fundamental enough to entrench, and getting cross-party and public agreement on the content of a Bill of Rights, would likely prove highly contentious. |
Support for full codification has remained narrow and largely academic. The Liberal Democrats have for decades been the main party to formally back a codified constitution and a Bill of Rights.
Labour and the Conservatives have generally preferred targeted, incremental reform instead. Examples include the Human Rights Act 1998 and the Constitutional Reform Act 2005, which created the Supreme Court.
A more recent example is the House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Act 2026, which removed the remaining hereditary peers without codifying the constitution more broadly.
Analysis:
The pattern of reform since 1997 shows a clear preference: devolution has been extended repeatedly, but the wider constitution has never been codified. This matches the incremental, negotiated style of change identified in Parts 1 and 2. Even the Brown Commission‘s 2022 report and Prime Minister Burnham‘s 2026 remarks stop short of proposing full codification.
Evaluation:
Only one of the UK’s major parties has consistently backed codification. Entrenchment would also require cross-party and public consensus on rights and institutions that has not existed even for narrower questions, such as an English Parliament. Full codification therefore still appears unlikely in the near term, whatever the current Prime Minister’s personal view.
| Check your understanding 1. Define ‘entrenchment‘ and explain why it is often discussed alongside ‘codification‘ rather than treated as identical to it. You could: note that a constitution could in theory be codified, written down in one place, without being entrenched, protected from ordinary amendment, and vice versa. 2. Outline the strongest argument for codification and the strongest argument against it, using named examples from the table above. You could: pick one argument from each side of the table and support it with a named Act or event mentioned elsewhere in this document. |
Reaching an overall judgement: how far should the constitution be reformed further?
This document has examined three linked debates: whether the individual reforms since 1997 should go further, England’s devolution gap, and the case for codifying the constitution as a whole.
- The case for further reform: an English Parliament would resolve the West Lothian Question that EVEL‘s abolition left open.
- Scotland and Wales both went into their 2026 elections with fragmented results, leaving the balance of opinion on further devolved powers finely split in each case.
- Prime Minister Burnham has personally linked further devolution, an elected House of Lords and proportional representation (PR) to the case for a written constitution. This gives all three debates in this document a prominence they have lacked since the Brown Commission‘s 2022 report.
- The case for continuity: every government since 1997 has chosen localism over an English Parliament, most recently through the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Act 2026.
- The House of Lords Act 1999 and the House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Act 2026 both removed hereditary peers without creating an elected chamber, and the 2011 referendum kept First-past-the-post (FPTP) for Westminster.
- Support for full codification has remained narrow and largely academic, even after the Bill of Rights Bill and the Brown Commission‘s report.
Reaching a judgement
Analysis:
Across all three debates, the pattern since 1997 is the same. Governments have preferred incremental, negotiated change, whether through mayoral strategic authorities, successive Scotland and Wales Acts, or single-issue statutes like the House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Act 2026, over a single, decisive constitutional redesign.
Evaluation:
2026 is the first year in which a serving Prime Minister has personally connected devolution, House of Lords and voting-system reform, and the case for a written constitution. This may increase the political salience of all three debates, as Burnham himself has suggested. But the same obstacles identified throughout this document remain: England’s size, the 2011 referendum result, and the difficulty of getting cross-party support for entrenchment. Incremental change therefore remains far more likely than a single, decisive settlement in the near future.
A fuller comparison between the UK’s devolved, asymmetric model and the codified federal systems used in the USA and elsewhere is developed separately on histpology.co.uk.
Activities you could complete to consolidate your learning:
- Compile a pros and cons list for extending each of the four devolution settlements (Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and England) covered in Part 1. (Activity)
- Class debate: ‘This House believes the UK should adopt a codified, US-style constitution.’ Prepare speeches for both sides using the table in Part 3. (Activity)
- Research task: find out whether Prime Minister Burnham‘s government has taken any steps towards House of Lords or electoral reform since taking office, and compare its progress with his statements as a backbencher and mayor. (Extension)
- Research task: find the current positions of the Labour, Conservative, Liberal Democrat, SNP, Plaid Cymru and Reform UK parties on further constitutional reform (an English Parliament, codification, PR, or further Scottish or Welsh powers), and note where they agree and disagree. (Extension)
- Research task: find out what, if anything, Prime Minister Burnham‘s government has proposed since taking office on a written constitution, and compare it with the Brown Commission‘s 2022 proposals. (Extension)
- Assessment: write an essay answering one of the following: ‘Should there be an English Parliament?’; ‘Should the UK adopt a proportional representation (PR) system for general elections?’; or ‘Should the UK constitution be codified and entrenched?’ (Assessed task)