Governments since 1997 have gone thorough huge amounts of constitutional reform, including devolution, the human rights act, powers to the European Union (EU) and many others. However there has been a fierce argument whether this has reduced the power of the UK government, this has also been a big issue with the public and at the 2010 election the conservative party won support by arguing that the New Labor government (1997-2010) gave to many powers away and they would fight to claim them back. The coalition agreement focuses a lot on constitutional reform and in their 20 months and 20 days in power they have gone through a incredible amount of constitutional reform, heavily influenced by the lib dem side of the coalition.

             The Blair government was elected on a manifesto which included the promise of devolution. Devolution is a process of constitutional reform where power, but not legal sovereignty is distributed to local institutions in Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. Therefore setting up, the Scottish Parliament, Welsh Assembly and the Northern Ireland assembly Labor, this was seen as a very popular policy by the elector and helped them secure a majority of 179.

             New labor brought about this change because there was growing dissatisfaction with the Westminster government. It was seen by some as a defensive measure because the rise of the SNP threatened the parties' power in Scotland. By giving the SNP a Scottish Parliament it was hopped that they would move their energy from the Westminster elections so labor could win those seats and concentrate on the Scottish Parliament elections.

             It can be argued that the reforms of the Blair government went some way to reducing the powers of the UK government as the decision making process in certain areas moved away from the UK government. For example education is now run by the Scottish Parliament. At birth of devolution it was argued that hardily any powers have really moved as the labor party had a majority in all the devolved parliaments and was in government.