The CPA Benchmarks – an effective tool for parliamentary self-assessment
T
he Commonwealth Parliamentary Association’s “Benchmarks for Democratic Legislatures” attempts to improve parliamen-
tary performance, but to do it in a way that breaks away completely from one of the most fundamental characteristics of politics: competition. At least, that was the idea.
While the competition of ideas, methods, people
and parties is at the heart of parliamentary democracy, the Benchmarks encourage Parliaments to do what the Australian Capital Territory (A.C.T.) Legislative Assembly has done: compare its practices and processes with an international standard to see if it can do better – better than it has been performing, not better than another House. As former Speaker Mr Wayne Berry writes here,
the A.C.T. reckons that, although it did very well against the Benchmarks, it could do better and the Benchmarks helped it to clarify the areas in which it could improve and what it could do to enhance its representation of the people of Canberra in their ter- ritorial governance.That was precisely the purpose of the 2006 CPA Study Group which produced the Benchmarks in partnership with the World Bank Institute, the United Nations Development Programme and the National Democratic Institute. The Group, which met in November-December 2006 in Bermuda, sought to set standards which could be used by Parliaments and Legislatures, and by parlia- mentary strengthening organizations and donor agen- cies seeking to help them to improve. The A.C.T. is the first Commonwealth Assembly to assess itself against the Benchmarks, and Mr Berry was its Speaker at the time the self-assessment was car- ried out just before he stepped down from politics at the general election earlier this year.The CPA is encouraging as many other Parliaments and Legislatures as possible to conduct their own self- assessment. It is hoped that this will lead to regional variations on the Commonwealth-wide Benchmarks, such as those now being developed by the Southern African Development Community Parliamentary Forum. It is also hoped that the Benchmarks will lead individual Parliaments and Legislatures, both develop- ing and developed, to take a close look at the way they work to see if they can enhance their parliamentary democracies.
But with the A.C.T. rating itself so highly as an A-,
one wonders if the competitiveness of politics and politicians won’t re-assert itself as other Houses try to conduct as rigorous a self-assessment as the A.C.T. – or even a more rigorous assessment – to see if they can surpass a small Legislature that has been around for not quite 30 years. The leading article in this issue, by Hon. Dean O.
Barrow, MHR, Prime Minister of Belize, describes the far-reaching constitutional and parliamentary reform programme introduced by his government fol- lowing its February 2008 election. But it also illus- trates another aspect of the CPA Benchmarks and of parliamentary democracy: their ability to evolve, con- tinuously. Several of the reforms, including such measures as
the right of voters to recall MPs and the appointment of an upper House which does not have a government majority, are not now among the Benchmarks. Whether they should be could be determined in the future when the CPA and its partners, along with other organizations which have their own sets of stan- dards, look again at the Benchmarks to see if they too should evolve. Prime Minister Barrow makes a forceful case in this issue for his government’s reforms in the context of the politics of Belize.Their acceptance for wider Commonwealth application is a matter for his parlia- mentary colleagues whose experiences in other juris- dictions may or may not lead them to different con- clusions.
A different conclusion is what some Members of the United Kingdom Parliament have reached in Westminster’s review of an ancient parliamentary and legal position, that of Attorney General. Lord Tyler is among those who have called for a radical change in British practice by taking the position’s role as chief legal advisor to the government out of the political realm where it has long resided. Based on the long- held legal principle that a member of the Bar or the Bench can wear two hats without one role conflicting with another, Lord Tyler makes a case here for taking the role of chief legal advisor out of the political arena.The British government has yet to take a final view on this and other questions concerning the office, although a case has been made for the benefits of continuing to have the Attorney General as a politi-