News from the Centre for Citizenship

The degraded state of British democracy was highlighted today by a report in the conservative Daily Telegraph that the government had been forced to deny that it had a “republican agenda.” A government minister was quoted as defending the dropping of “Crown” from the name of the Crown Prosecution Service as intended to reduce public…

Chief Justice Woolf, the most senior judge in Britain, has tried to redrail government plans for democratic reform of the judicial system. He told a Cambridge University audience that creating a final court of outside the legislature would result in a “second class supreme court.” Woolf claimed that the separation of powers, widely regarded as…

Home Secretary David Blunkett has confirmed that the Crown Prosecution will soon be known as the Public Prosecution Service. This follows news that the Prison Service is also to be freed of its link to the feudal institution of monarchy.

The prison service is to be freed from its long association with monarchy when it is incorporated into a new National Offenders Management Service in July. Prison Officers will no longer be obliged to display a crown on their uniforms when what is now know as “Her Majesty’s Prison Service” is replaced by the new…

Publication of a bill to remove the remaining 92 hereditary legislators from the second chamber has been unexpectedly delayed. This follows the refusal of the Conservative and Liberal Democrat parities to join a joint committee of MPs to work on a plan for an indirectly elected House of Lords unless the government dropped the bill.…

The government has dismissed the recommendation by a Conservative party commissioned panel that viewers should no longer be required to get permission before watching TV or recording video tapes. According to the Financial Times Labour officials stated that the media giant, which sells permission to watch TV at £116 a year, would be undermined by…

Matthew Oakeshott, Liberal Democrat MP and member of the joint committee on house of lords reform, has come out against Peter Hain’s proposal for indirect election to the second chamber of the British legislature. In a letter to the Financial Times Mr. Oakeshott says that indirect election would still mean an all-appointed legislative chamber, not…

A panel of media experts commissioned by the Conservative Party has recommended that “the television licence fee be steadily reduced from 2007 onwards, and gradually replaced by a combination of subscription and indirect public funding.” The experts say that the tax “should be abolished completely when analogue television transmission is switched off.” The report also…

The Broadcasting Policy Group of media experts will recommend that the BBC should be funded by subscriptions instead of the licence fee, according to a report in the Financial Times. The groups says that that would be more equitable. The licence fee that provides most of the media giant’s massive funding has to be paid…

Recent opinion polls in Australia suggest that a substantial majority of Australians want Liz Windsor replaced as their head of state by an Australian. The polls also show a majority of Australians wanting the process to begin in 2004. A December 2003 poll by Newspoll and The Australian showed 51% of Australians wanting Australia to…