The ‘promise’ of a Royal Commission

An eye-catching policy of the Conservative Party election manifesto is to re-introduce some form of National Service. The detail, so far, is sketchy. But voters will have to wait a long time before they can see how in practice such a scheme will work. That is because the Conservatives have said that they will establish a Royal Commission to work out how such a scheme would work, including the types of ‘service’ and the rewards or penalties for compliance or non-compliance. Two questions follow: is this the appropriate use of a Royal Commission; and, can the Conservatives be trusted with such a promise?

The backdrop

Voters might want to recall the last time that the Conservatives promised a Royal Commission before deciding whether this promise is worth the paper it is printed on. In 2019, the Conservative election manifesto promised a Royal Commission on Criminal Justice. It stated that, in addition to creating 10,000 more prison places, it would ‘establish a Royal Commission on the Criminal Justice process’ (fact check: the ‘usable operational capacity’ of the entire prison estate on the day after the 2019 election was 85,197, holding 83,376 prisoners; on 24 May 2024 it was 89,014, holding 87,089 prisoners). Readers will remember that the then Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, was returned to Downing Street with an increased majority. Despite frequent questions to successive government ministers in parliament and elsewhere as to when the Royal Commission would be established, and the assurance of justice minister Lord Wolfson telling the House of Lords in 2022 that that the government was ‘absolutely committed to the delivery of this key manifesto pledge’, the promise was quietly dropped in 2023, by Dominic Raab, then Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice. The reason a junior minister gave in parliament was that the government ‘recognises the opportunity that a royal commission could present to look at structural questions in the criminal justice system’ but ‘we think it is right that, following the pandemic and the [Criminal Bar Association]’s disruptive action, we focus on delivering recovery priorities over the coming months’. With the ever-increasing backlog of cases in the court system, the inability of the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) to find prosecuting counsel to prosecute rape cases, and the strain of prison overcrowding leading to the early release of prisoners in Operation Early Dawn, voters will have to decide for themselves whether the abandonment of the government’s promise to establish a Royal Commission to concentrate on ‘recovery priorities’ has worked out.

The use of a Royal Commission

A Royal Commission is now a rarely-used tool in the UK, although in parts of the Commonwealth, notably Australia, it is often used to good effect. It is an alternative method of finding solutions to a political issue from the now more common public inquiry or a report by a parliamentary committee. Its purpose is to establish a committee of specialists and experts with powers granted by royal warrant to conduct a detailed investigation and make recommendations to address specified issues raised in its terms of reference. The Domesday Book, commissioned by William the Conqueror in 1085, is said to be the first Royal Commission. The subject matter of subsequent Commissions has ranged from defence of the realm, capital punishment, the Poor Laws, the British Museum, the environment, trade unions and sewage disposal. It has been a tool of government used in successive centuries (most visibly in the 19th Century), sometimes cynically with a view to kicking an awkward political can down the road: on occasion the Royal Commission has not published its report before being disbanded, or, as with the Wakeham Commission into reform of the House of Lords, has not been implemented. But often there is a more positive result with the government accepting the recommendations and introducing appropriate legislative change. Examples of the effectiveness of Royal Commissions in the 20th Century can be seen in the Royal Commission on Criminal Procedure (established 1977), which prompted the introduction of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 and the establishment of an independent Crown Prosecution Service by the Prosecution of Offences Act 1985.