Constitution Committee
15 July 2026
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Constitution Committee House of Lords
00:06 - 02:02
Speaker 2
Welcome to this meeting of the House of Lords Constitution Committee. Today we're holding the first evidence session of the committee's new inquiry, which will look at the role of the UK's constitutional protectors and experts. We're delighted to be joined today by Lord Sedwill, former Cabinet Secretary, Head of the Civil Service, and National Security Advisor. Lord Sedwill, welcome back to the committee. You are very welcome.
I remind all members to declare any interests relevant to this inquiry or today's meeting the first time they speak. I have no relevant interests of my own to declare. We are looking at this subject. I mean, we haven't actually launched our inquiry and we're slightly toying with the idea exactly which direction it goes in and what it is that we're looking at. We started off thinking about the threats to the constitution, and we may well come back to that, but also who carries responsibility for advising, for knowledge, where they get that knowledge from, who are the people who best support our idea of a constitutional government and how it all hangs together.
So that is in essence what it is that we're looking for. And on that theme, we'll start off right into it. Who would you identify as those people who are the principal constitutional, some might call guardians, in the UK's political system?
02:02 - 02:47
Speaker 4
Well, thank you, Chair, very good to be here. I have, of course, as a member of the Lords, I should also just for the record, I have no relevant interests to declare. Mine are all on the register as are yours, nothing relevant to this inquiry. I think the, I mean, it's a really interesting question we might come to on guardians is who guards the guardians, the quis custodiet ipsos custodes question, because there are guardians distributed across the legislature, executive, and judiciary of our rather complex constitution, sometimes inaccurately described as unwritten. It isn't, of course, it just isn't written in a document called the constitution with capital letters, but it's written in all sorts of places.
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