RR v Secretary of State for Work and Pensions: Empowering Tribunals to Enforce the Human Rights Act 1998

In RR v Secretary of State for Work and Pensions – follow-on litigation from the high-profile bedroom tax cases – the Supreme Court handed down a judgment which has significant implications for social security law, the interpretation of the Human Rights Act, the tribunals system, the judicial control of delegated legislation, and access to justice. Central, however, was the issue of the enforceability of human rights. We argue that the Supreme Court was not only justified in its interpretation of the Human Rights Act but that it has made the protections of the Act more easily enforceable.     

The power of “small business” as pending narrative: an ideograph in UK politics 2004–2013

This paper explores utilisation of the term small business in contemporary politics in the United Kingdom. First, the policy and practice implications of the term small business are examined, through the lens of political rhetoric. Use of the term over the period from 2004 to 2013 is examined, drawing upon the DataArt Guardian NewsTraces platform as both a method of initially visualising an overall pattern of the term’s use during the 10-year period, and a medium for facilitating data collection for analysis. The research question is: how is the term “small business” used in political rhetoric in the UK, in the identification of policy problems and solutions, and the creation of pending narrative? It is determined that the term small business is an ideograph with different and often competing meanings for various interest groups, and suffers from serious imprecision despite policy efforts which strive for legitimacy. Even with spikes in use reflecting election cycles and periods of economic stress, the term’s power is in its mutable but appealing vagueness, and its enduring quality as pending narrative. This leaves open obvious questions of both policy efficacy and the sufficiency of ideographic-laced rhetoric as a substitute for meaningful policy.     

Better Politicians: If We Pay,Will They Come?

While each election provides the Canadian House of Commons with a fresh batch of politicians, no consideration has been given to the question of whether the quality of politicians is improving. Yet improving quality has been the focus of several commissions urging increases in MP compensation. This article addresses the competence and compensation questions by asking whether changes in levels of compensation might make a difference to the educational qualifications of political leaders. We assemble a unique dataset of 1,291 federal politicians elected to the Canadian House of Commons from 1993 to 2011 and show that prime ministers do have a preference for more highly educated MPs when filling ministerial and other executive positions. Our findings suggest that certain subgroups of MPs, particularly educated women, may be attracted by upward shifts in compensation. We discuss the reasons for these effects and the relative importance of compensation in career decisions.     

A Tale of Two Leaders: Leadership and Cultural Change at the New Zealand Treasury

Differences in the transformational leadership exercised at the New Zealand Treasury (NZT) by two Secretaries – Henry Lang (1969-1973) and Graham Scott (1986-1996) – are related to differences in their paradigmatic situation rather than a shift away from a serial loyalist public service bargain that caused both to direct their leadership initiatives toward developing and maintaining the trust successive finance ministers placed in NZT advisors. Thus while Lang's leadership was directed toward expanding the reporting role of the NZT to the limits of what could be expected under a relatively stable market failure policy paradigm, the subsequent erosion of the authority of this paradigm meant that, under Scott's leadership, the NZT reinvented itself to avoid implication in a failure to contribute to the policy leadership required to advance a coherent reform strategy.