Since the days of Franklin D. Roosevelt, the first hundred days have been seen as a crucial test of a government’s mettle. With this in mind key figures from across the Conservative Party are looking to push forth with their most controversial measures before August 16th. However, this is likely to be something of a challenge and as we have seen in the past week, a number of backbenchers have already come out against the scrapping of the Human Rights Act.
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Rebellious MPs are far from the only bulwark to Tory progress. Indeed, there are at least three further areas where they could face difficulties:
Select Committee Chairs
With changes in the balance of the parties different Select Committee Chairs are moving parties. This will affect scrutiny significantly. The SNP, for example, have got Energy and Climate Change which could be interesting for renewables and nuclear policy. In addition, some former Chairs have been given Ministerial posts. Rory Stewart, for example, the go-getting former diplomat and writer has left his position as Defence Select Committee Chairman and taken a Ministerial position at DEFRA. This could have a big impact for the MOD at a time where trident’s replacement and the UK’s Nato obligations will come under close scrutiny. Stewart’s replacement will be pivotal.
Lords a leaping
Have the noblemen and women in the ermine gowns just become the arbiters of our democracy?
With a small but clear majority in the Commons the Government has now to turn its focus to the House of Lords where it doesn’t have a majority. By constitutional convention, hammered out in the 1940s by the then Lord Salisbury and Lord Addison, the Lords will not vote down measures in the manifesto of a Party elected to Government. At that time the Conservatives utterly dominated the Lords, but a Labour government had been elected by a landslide - so a deal was struck that the Lords would not strike down at second or third reading, any legislation which had appeared in the winning party's manifesto, and could therefore be assumed to have the approval of the electorate.
Which areas might the Lords attack?
The most obvious case for treatment will be the promised bill to create a British Bill of Rights and end the jurisdiction of the European Court of Human Rights. That central aim is opposed by Labour, the Lib Dems and many of the legions of lawyers on the crossbenches - not to mention by a number of Conservative peers, and that's before they get onto the implications for the devolution settlements in Scotland and, especially, Northern Ireland, where the ECHR is embedded in the Good Friday Agreement.
There will be a number of key issues for business such as: measures in the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Act on things like civil liability in health and safety cases; on quangos that were saved from abolition under the Public Bodies Act and any number of benefits changes under the Welfare Reform Act.