British reform

We tend to assume that the EU’s older member states have settled constitutional and organisational arrangements – but nothing stays still for a moment in the UK. On 15 December last, the UK Parliament’s Public Administration Select Committee apparently launched a new inquiry on Good Governance and Civil Service Reform. Its remit is straightforward –

As part of the inquiry the Committee is looking to devise a framework, or set of principles, within which the Civil Service can be effectively scrutinised and measured. The Committee will examine the following issues:
• What is meant by the Prime Minister’s term “post-bureaucratic age” and what its implications for good governance are.
• How the Civil Service may need to adapt and reform.
• How such reform can be sustained and realised.

The first written evidence can be read as a pdf file at the top of the list here.The paper by Chris Hood and Martin Lodge is, as always, worth reading – and their verbal evidence is also available there.
I discovered this material thanks to a fantastic site which gives the detailed technical lowdown on all matters relating to the new constitutional (or intergovernmental) relationships which now form government in the UK. This also put me on to the evidence currently being considered about a possible new settlement for Scotland Another interesting-looking new blog on the new developments in the UK's political and legal arrangements is from the independent Constitution Unit.