Louisa Hollely – Written Evidence (VUC0066)

I write as a member of the public concerned about where we find ourselves today. I am a solicitor and worked within the Criminal Justice System for some 21 years. I have not been practicing since 2021.

This call for evidence asks about the safeguarding of our constitution, and who are the guardians of the constitution. The thing is, the ‘constitution’ to which I believe you refer, cannot be safeguarded. It could have any number of guardians, but nobody would be able to protect it. This is because the constitution to which you refer is an overlay which gains credibility from its borrowing aspects from, and hiding behind, the true constitution, whilst, at the same time, obfuscating and denying the true constitution. This overlay constitution cannot be protected since it contains within it the seeds of its own destruction, the destruction of the true constitution and, thereby, the destruction of the people of this land whom it should be protecting. The seed of this destruction is ‘parliamentary sovereignty’.

The notion of parliamentary sovereignty is diametrically opposed to the Rule of Law which is the true constitution as expressed in Magna Carta 1215 Articles 39 and 40 and which I spoke of in my evidence for your last Inquiry (https://committees.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/140734/pdf/).

The Rule of Law, that all are equal under the law, is defeated by parliamentary sovereignty for the reasons I gave in my previous submission. I should be grateful if you would re-read that document.

I was concerned that in your published findings from your last Inquiry, you said the following:

Whilst parliamentary sovereignty means that Parliament can make any law including those which could damage the rule of law, it must take its constitutional responsibilities seriously and exercise this power with due care, bearing in mind compliance with the state’s international obligations.

              https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld5901/ldselect/ldconst/211/211.pdf

This, I feel, Illustrates and further endorses the incremental destruction of the Rule of Law by parliamentary sovereignty.

Parliamentary sovereignty (the King in Parliament) with full checks and balances was one thing, but Parliament has already weakened or removed many of the checks upon itself. Here are some examples:

1. The Monarch (who makes the promise to uphold our laws and customs), it is said could refuse royal assent (to legislation agreed upon in Parliament), but he wouldn’t because of convention (convention, not law, not anything the people asked for, and even had they, you cannot change a legitimate constitution aligned with natural law, at the behest of a majority of people, since that would be mob rule). So, our overlay constitution purports to make our Head of State an order follower, and no longer a check on Parliament.
2. Parliament has weakened the power of the upper house by the Parliament Acts, and recently, the removal of the hereditary peers—those with the long-term interest in this land, who knew the reasons for the old ways, who upheld and protected the Rule of Law from “here today gone tomorrow” politicians, who helped the King to uphold his oath and held him to account if he did not—the peers of the realm. Now, the Lords can be populated with people appointed by the Government of the day.
3. The whip system preventing MPs from voting in the way they consider to be right.
4. A proliferation of Acts which enable secondary legislation.
5. And the pièce de résistance: attempted annihilation of Trial by Jury, the cornerstone of the true constitution, through the Courts and Tribunals Bill currently before Parliament. The Trial by Jury is the mechanism by which the people protect themselves from having tyranny enforced upon them:

Lord Bingham insisted that the right of the jury to return the verdict it ‘collectively believes is the true one’ must be inalienable – ‘even if the verdict might appear perverse or contrary to what an experienced judge or lawyer thinks.’ I have no doubt that when new legislation is being considered by Parliament, or decisions are taken by prosecutors, the inescapable, sobering, thought hovering in the minds of each is, or should be: ‘Could we ever get this past a jury?’ We should realise that under the new proposals if a Government wishes to whittle away at our freedoms, it only has to ensure that the maximum sentence for any transgression will be one of three years.

HH Geoffrey Rivlin KC
Substack - Red LionChambers

Please also see my submissions to the Justice Committee regarding this Bill:
https://committees.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/163731/pdf/

But what else is to be expected when the House of Lords green lights the notion that Parliament may legislate against the Rule of Law as long as ministers think carefully about it?

Instead of considering themselves bound by the constitution, the Government speaks of ‘Rewiring the State” (https://www.gov.uk/government/news/machinery-of-government-changes-fact-sheet), of writing a new constitution. The UCL constitution Unit speak, oh so relaxedly, of constitutional reform. They say that ‘the constitution is the rules of the game for politics, and getting those right really matters because it conditions everything else that happens’. They speak of developing consensus around the models you want to implement. (https://youtu.be/GzrfGVPF5aM?si=EW_hkBTsl51ALruI)

In the debates over the further removal of Trial by Jury, MPs and lawyers spoke of the proposals as removing the people from their rightful place in justice. The move was called tyrannous, but because everyone believes in ‘parliamentary sovereignty’, nobody can properly call out this wrongdoing. I wonder how heinous a proposal in a Bill would have to be before it would be called misconduct in public office to suggest it—Trial by AI maybe? Dicey’s philosophical dilemma of the killing of the blue-eyed babies? 

The overlay constitution is basically one which can change itself. How can such a thing be safeguarded from its own destruction?  

The overlay constitution was formalized at the so-called “Glorious” Revolution (actually a coup*) in the Bill of Rights 1688 and Coronation Oath Act, and has developed, incrementally, from there.

*Unlike the French Declaration of the Rights of Man, in 1789 and the American Bill of Rights, the Bill of Rights of 1689, in contrast, was less concerned with the rights of the individual as with the rights of Parliament. The American Declaration asserted rights for the individual which had not been secured in England in 1689.

…The committee drafting it dominated by Whigs and was greatly influenced by Somers. In this matter, as in others, however, Tories as well as Whigs were concerned, not to defend the royal prerogative as had been their traditional role, but to obtain as many concessions for Parliament as they could…

The Declaration sought to preserve the rights of Parliament rather than the rights of the subject. It gave no specific right to individuals and no constitutional defence against the power of the King in Parliament. It left the English as mere subjects with no basic rights of their own, hence the appeals from this country to the European Court today.”

Cruickshanks, Eveline: “The Glorious Revolution”, p. 42

The overlay constitution has gradually made the people conclude that they have no real power and believe that their head of state is an order follower (to Parliament), or that he performs a purely ceremonial role, whilst also telling them the opposite, that his role is constitutional—leaving them with no remedy due to their manipulated, confused and contradictory beliefs.

By “denuding” the power of the King, by putting Parliament in between us and our King, the people are removed from their own sovereignty by a complex web of silently established conventions and bureaucracy. It is no longer easy to reach our King to hold him to account. It is no longer easy to touch our own sovereignty.

              (https://www.commonlawconstitution.org/resources/facade?c=essays-and-articles).

Despite the overlay constitution, the legal power remains with the Monarch, hence why the Prime Minister must ‘borrow’ (advise (tell?) the King when to exercise) the Royal Prerogative. Some even sloppily call it “the Prime Minister’s prerogative” now. Under the overlay constitution, we hold the King out front to make the binding promise which we then claim he is, in effect, powerless to uphold. All other public servant oaths are to the King, promising to help him in upholding his oath to the people. If we are told the one who makes the promise is not allowed to keep it, because of convention, where does that leave us? How does the tree (hierarchy) of oaths make any sense if that is the case? The Monarch makes the solemn oath, and the politicians behave like a republic behind him:

On 22 January 1689 the House of Commons met and declared the throne to be vacant. They offered to elect William as king on certain conditions. This proposal abandoned the principle of hereditary kingship, and if accepted would have made the Monarch subordinate to Parliament, thereby establishing in effect a republican form of government.

Barton, Denis, ‘James II and the Glorious Revolution of 1688’,
Church in History Website, Part 4, Ch 10, d
http://www.churchinhistory.org/pages/booklets/king-james(n)-4.htm

Now, we see the UCL Constitution Unit suggests that the consent of the commons be required to dissolve or prorogue Parliament, which would be yet further denuding of the monarch. https://www.ucl.ac.uk/social-historical-sciences/sites/social_historical_sciences/files/2026-07/cu_217_recommendations.pdf

In his Coronation Oath, the King promised to govern us according to our “laws and customs”. This does not mean that he promises to govern in accordance with whatever laws parliament may pass and which he, according to the overlay constitution ‘could refuse to assent to, but he wouldn’t’.  It means the old common law, the Law of the Land, preserved most succinctly in Article 39 of Magna Carta:

No free man shall be taken or imprisoned, or disseised, or exiled, or in any way destroyed, nor will we go upon him, nor send upon him, except by the lawful judgment of his peers or [and/‘in other words’] by the law of the land.

A timeless re-iteration of the Golden Rule.

Any and all legislation should align with this.

Our true constitution is basically this: The people judge the justice of their community through Trial by Jury, which the King promises to uphold  and protect from those who would seek to destroy this way of life.

If we were to restore Trial by Jury in all cases, restore the hereditary peers, and educate the people about the true role of the Jury and the King, then we could begin to restore our true constitution, the one which is worth protecting, the one which stands to reason.

27 September 2026