The last two Labour governments attempted major constitutional reform and came spectacularly unstuck. Dick Crossman's 1968 bill to reform the House of Lords had to be abandoned after high level filibustering by Michael Foot and Enoch Powell. The following Labour government's travails over devolution consumed two whole parliamentary sessions, and led eventually to Jim Callaghan's downfall in 1979, when the government failed to deliver on devolution and the Scottish National party withdrew support. There are lessons to be learnt from these failures if a Blair government is not to risk the same fate with its "most extensive package of constitutional change ever proposed."
Given the huge weight of expectation riding on a Labour administration, the new leader of the house will face a daunting task. There will be intense pressure of competing legislative priorities; but the total amount of legislative time any government has on the floor of the House of Commons is around 400 hours in each session. Previous constitutional bills have taken 100-200 hours on the floor. The Maastricht bill holds the record at 185 hours. Crossman's bill to reform the Lords was abandoned after 85 hours; the Scotland Act (1978) took 160 hours, and the Wales Act (1978) 110 hours.
Labour will thus face a paradox. In order to get through its programme of constitutional reform, which is designed to devolve power and introduce more checks and balances into political life, the government must first remove one of the greatest checks against hasty constitutional change. This is the parliamentary convention that constitutional measures have to take their committee stage on the floor of the House of Commons. Only by breaking with this convention can the government avoid becoming embroiled in hundreds of hours of debate. This change needs to be accompanied by two others: the introduction of advance timetabling for all bills, so that opponents cannot frustrate a bill's passage by endless filibustering; and an end to the rule that a bill cannot be carried over from one session to the next.
The stumbling block for a reforming Labour government is that parliament itself is responsible for procedural matters, not the government. The changes to procedure suggested above are about smoothing the path for the executive, and cannot be expected to find favour if proposed in isolation. The desire to secure the passage of a large legislative programme should therefore be taken as an opportunity to implement reform of parliamentary procedure to improve the legislative process in general. An astute leader of the house will propose other measures to "balance" the package-such as increased use of special standing committees, publication of bills in draft for consultation, and more powers for select committees.
He or she should also learn from previous history. Since the second world war there have been three main phases of procedural reform: two succeeded and one failed. The first followed the election of the 1945 Labour government. A select committee on procedure was established and presented by the new government with a blueprint for reform of parliamentary proce-dures, which it largely accepted. The second, Norman St John- Stevas's reform-which introduced the system of departmental select committees in 1979-was equally successful. Against these successes must be weighed the failed reform programme led by Crossman between 1966 and 1968, which was the product of improvisation.
What lessons can be learnt from this history? Success depends on several things: an effective and zealous champion of procedural reform within the cabinet; a united and confident party of government; clearly stated and understood objectives of reform which sit comfortably with the ideology of the party of government; prior examination of the issues by the procedure committee in order to lend authority to the reforms, flush out likely areas of opposition and resolve them; and timing-reforms are particularly well received immediately after a general election, especially if the government's victory is substantial.
In Labour's long list of constitutional reforms, the apparently arcane subject of reforming parliamentary procedure is usually tagged on as an afterthought. It is, in fact, the key to all the other reforms. But the opposition to parliamentary reform will be formidable. The House of Commons has often been compared with a club. The members of the government will be senior members of the club, who may come to see little wrong with rules which generally serve the government well. Change requires determined leadership, carefully balancing the different interests of the Whips, front and backbenchers, as well as the conflicting interests of government and opposition. Above all it requires careful preparation.
