former mayor of Greater Manchester<\/a> has made devolution of power to the regional authorities a focus of his administration.<\/p>\n\u201cIn the end, I think it does start to point towards a new constitutional settlement,\u201d the 56-year-old said of his devolution plans at the weekend.<\/p>\n
Calling for a \u201cnew clear set of principles about how this country should be run\u201d, he said there was a need for a written Constitution \u2013 something he has called for before he became prime minister.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s wrong that people are left arguing for things that are just fundamental… and the lack of a Constitution disempowers places in that situation,\u201d said Burnham.<\/p>\n
Unlike most countries around the world, Britain does not have a written Constitution, and is instead governed by a patchwork of statutes, common law judgments, and treaties.<\/p>\n
The push for a written constitution is fairly recent, with Labour\u2019s Gordon Brown, who was prime minister from 2007 to 2010, an early proponent of the overhaul.<\/p>\n
Burnham served as a minister in Brown\u2019s government.<\/p>\n
A parliamentary committee considered options for codifying the constitution in a five-year review, which concluded in 2015 that there was no clear consensus.<\/p>\n
Any serious attempt to codify the constitution by Burnham would be a years-long process likely requiring a major public inquiry and consultations.<\/p>\n
Burnham on July 31 announced plans to allow regional mayors in England to keep a share of taxes collected in their area, part of his drive to transfer power out of the highly centralised nation\u2019s capital.<\/p>\n
The United Kingdom \u2013 comprising England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland \u2013 saw significant constitutional reforms in the late 1990s that created devolved parliaments in Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast.<\/p>\n
But England itself remains one of Europe\u2019s most centralised nations, despite the creation of some regional mayors and other bodies in the last decade, experts say. AFP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LONDON \u2013 Britain\u2019s new Prime Minister Andy Burnham has signalled his support for a written Constitution for the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":724272,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-724271","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/724271","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=724271"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/724271\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/724272"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=724271"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=724271"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=724271"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}