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Are British constitutional reforms trivial or transforming?

To mark the twelfth anniversary of New Labour’s rise to power on 1 May, the College's Anthony Sampson Memorial Lecture 2009 will survey the Labour government’s legacy, and its impact on Britain’s political system.

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<div class="rxbodyfield"><p>Professor Robert Hazell CBE, of the School of Public Policy at University College London (UCL), will deliver &#8216;Britain&#8217;s Constitutional Reforms: Trivial or Transforming?&#8217; at Queen Mary, University of London, as part of Arts Week, on Thursday 30 April.<br /><br />The lecture charts the latest developments in New Labour&#8217;s controversial constitutional reform programme, and assesses its overall impact.<br /><br />&#8220;I am in no doubt that the constitutional reforms of the last 12 years will be seen as New Labour&#8217;s greatest single achievement. But it is not a view shared by all my political science colleagues,&#8221; explained Professor Hazell, who is founding Director of the Constitution Unit at UCL.</p><div class="rx_ephox_inlinevariant" contenteditable="false" inlinetype="rxvariant" rxinlineslot="105" rxselectedtext="" sys_dependentid="12063" sys_dependentvariantid="825" sys_folderid="7999" sys_relationshipid="47140" sys_siteid="378"><div class="inline_img_left" style="WIDTH: 150px"><img alt="Professor Robert Hazell (UCL)" class="box" contenteditable="false" height="150" src="http://cms.qmul.ac.uk/Rhythmyx/assembler/render?sys_revision=1&amp;sys_siteid=378&amp;sys_authtype=0&amp;sys_contentid=12063&amp;sys_variantid=506&amp;sys_command=edit&amp;sys_folderid=7999&amp;sys_context=0" unselectable="on" width="150" /><br contenteditable="false" unselectable="on" /><span class="sbcaption" contenteditable="false" unselectable="on">Professor Robert Hazell (UCL)</span></div></div><p><br />Professor Hazell will briefly outline the key criticisms of the reform programme, and respond to them, before exploring just how transformational the reforms have been to Britain&#8217;s constitution and political system.<br /><br />After briefly practising as a barrister in the early 1970s, Robert Hazell went on to be a senior civil servant in the Home Office for 14 years. He founded the Constitution Unit in 1995 as an independent think-tank specialising in constitutional reform after six years spent as Director of the Nuffield Foundation.<br /><br />&#8216;Britain&#8217;s Constitutional Reforms: Trivial or Transforming? will be held at 6.30pm on Thursday 30 April in the Skeel Lecture Theatre, People&#39;s Palace, Queen Mary, University of London, Mile End Road, London, E1 4NS.</p></div>
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