The Scotland Act, Government of Wales Act and Northern Ireland Act created three devolved legislatures with referendum consent - the biggest dispersal of power from the centre since 1972, expanded repeatedly since (2012, 2016, 2017).
England was left out, and the asymmetry that resulted is the era's largest piece of unfinished business. The full settlement gets its own grid.
Each settlement rested on a popular vote: Scotland's 1997 referendum, Wales's 1997 vote, and Northern Ireland's 1998 approval of the Good Friday Agreement - consent built in before a single power moved.
That referendum foundation is what separates devolution from the era's imposed reforms and gives it the strongest democratic credentials of the programme.
Three new legislatures took primary law-making powers from 1998, and the settlements have expanded repeatedly since - 2012, 2016 and 2017 each moved more power outward, including tax and welfare powers for Scotland.
Nothing else in the post-1997 programme moved this much power this far: it is the dispersal column's anchor row.
Devolution redistributed where decisions are made, not what rights citizens hold - the rights work of the era belongs to the HRA row, passed the same year.
Keep the two 1998 reforms distinct in essays: one moved power across the map, the other moved it towards the courts.
The new legislatures were elected by the Additional Member System from the start - proportional institutions created inside a state whose own Parliament still uses FPTP.
A modernising design choice with a synoptic payoff: it links constitutional reform to the electoral systems content in any P2 essay.
England got nothing: no parliament, no settlement, and the asymmetry that resulted is the era's largest piece of unfinished business. The grid's filled note makes this the pattern - reform since 1997 transformed where power sits but finished almost nothing it started.
Three new tensions followed the settlement out of the box: the English Question (who speaks for the one nation without a legislature), funding rows between the nations, and a national platform from which independence could be argued.
The conservative case against grand reform draws its best evidence from this cell: every change wrote the next argument.
English devolution is the reform agenda's standing item - the gap every further-reform essay reaches for first - and the 2024 Labour programme includes devolved powers expansion, keeping the settlement moving.
For the has-it-gone-far-enough question, this row argues yes on direction and no on completion.
The era's central rights reform: Convention rights enforceable in UK courts from October 2000, with declarations of incompatibility as the courts' tool and sovereignty preserved.
Permanently contested ever since - the 2022 Bill of Rights Bill attempted replacement and the Safety of Rwanda Act 2024 disapplied parts of it.
From October 2000 citizens could enforce Convention rights in UK courts rather than taking the long road to Strasbourg - rights protection brought within reach of the people it protects.
A democratic gain delivered without disturbing sovereignty: courts interpret compatibly and declare incompatibility, but cannot strike down statutes.
Power moved towards judges - but by Parliament's own choice, through the section 3 duty to interpret legislation compatibly and the section 4 power to declare incompatibility. The judges' new role was statutory, not seized.
That by-choice quality matters in essays: it keeps the HRA inside the sovereignty tradition even as it redistributes influence.
The central rights reform of the era: the Convention made enforceable at home, the framework every rights case since 2000 runs through. No other post-1997 reform touches this column at all.
Its later career - contested, nearly replaced, partly disapplied - is what makes the entrenchment argument live.
Bringing the Convention home modernised the relationship between citizen and state: rights that had existed only at Strasbourg became part of ordinary UK litigation, applied by UK judges in UK courts.
The codification grid tests the same Act from the other side: modernised in delivery, it stayed an ordinary repealable statute.
Permanently contested rather than finished: the 2022 Bill of Rights Bill attempted replacement, and the Safety of Rwanda Act 2024 disapplied parts of the Act for removal cases. Cameron in 2014, Truss in 2022 and Sunak in 2023 all proposed repeal; Labour from 2024 reaffirmed it.
A reform still being argued over a quarter-century on cannot be called complete.
The Act set up the courts-against-Parliament argument that ran all the way to the Rwanda Act: once judges could measure statutes against Convention rights, every adverse finding became a political grievance.
The codification debate inherits this tension directly - it is the row's main synoptic link.
Three futures are still argued: entrenchment by special procedure, replacement with a British Bill of Rights, or leaving the Act alone. The repeal attempts of 2022 and the partial disapplication of 2024 are the standing demonstration that statutory rights can be unpicked by any later majority.
For the codification essay, this cell is the for side's strongest evidence: rights left as ordinary statute stay vulnerable.
Heredity removed in two stages a quarter-century apart: the House of Lords Act 1999 removed most hereditary peers, the 2024 Hereditary Peers Bill removed the rest. Powers never moved; composition reform stopped at stage one both times.
The classic unfinished reform - the full story gets its own grid.
Heredity in the legislature was removed in two stages a quarter-century apart: the House of Lords Act 1999 removed most hereditary peers, and the 2024 Hereditary Peers Bill removed the rest.
A genuine democratic gain - the chamber's least defensible feature gone - delivered without ever answering what does legitimise the chamber.
Both reforms changed who sits, not what the chamber can do: the Parliament Acts' delay powers, the Salisbury Convention and financial privilege all run on unchanged.
Composition reform without powers reform is why this row scores low on dispersal - power stayed exactly where it was.
Lords reform carries no rights content - its territory is legitimacy and composition. The rights column belongs entirely to the HRA row.
In essays, resist padding a Lords paragraph with rights material; the examiner rewards the legitimacy argument instead.
The result is an almost wholly appointed working chamber - life peers doing the revising work, the hereditary element gone. Modernised in membership, if not in mandate.
The 2024 Bill completes the membership modernisation the 1999 Act began.
No elected element was ever introduced, and bishops, the appointments system and the chamber's size remain untouched even after 2024. The 1999 Act was stage one of a plan whose stage two never came; the 2024 Bill is stage one again.
The textbook unfinished reform - cite it whenever the completed column needs its pattern proved.
The part-reformed chamber became more assertive with no settled legitimacy basis behind it - a second chamber confident enough to defeat governments but unable to say what authorises it to.
That mismatch between confidence and mandate is the standing problem two rounds of reform created and neither solved.
Every option remains on the table - elected, hybrid, or an appointed chamber with a capped size - because neither 1999 nor 2024 closed the question. The 2024 Labour programme reopened Lords reform as a live agenda item.
For the gone-far-enough essay, this row argues the reform programme's direction was right and its stamina was not.
Created the Supreme Court (open 2009), ended the Lord Chancellor's triple role and put judicial independence into statute with a Judicial Appointments Commission.
The era's one clean completion - and the reform that gave the constitution a visible court for politics to argue with.
The Act restructured the senior judiciary - a change voters barely noticed and never voted on. Its democratic value is indirect: a visibly independent court underpins the rule of law that democratic politics depends on.
Score it honestly in essays: structural, important, and invisible to the electorate.
Judicial independence was separated from the executive and the legislature in statute: the Law Lords left Parliament for a new Supreme Court, and a Judicial Appointments Commission took selection out of ministerial hands.
A clean dispersal of power between branches - the separation-of-powers reform the UK had never formally made.
The CRA built the courtroom, not the rights argued in it - the rights framework is the HRA's work. What the CRA added was a visibly independent final court for those rights cases to reach.
The Brexit grid's Miller rows show what that court then did with its independence - the same institution, examined through a different question.
Three modernisations in one Act: a Supreme Court physically and institutionally separate from Parliament (open 2009), a Judicial Appointments Commission, and the end of the Lord Chancellor's triple role as minister, legislator and judge.
The clearest before-and-after of the whole programme.
The era's one clean completion: the Court opened in 2009 and the argument moved on to how it should behave, not whether it should exist. Few propose reversing it.
In the completed column this is the single plus - use it as the benchmark the other rows fail to meet.
A visible court became a political target: once the Supreme Court had a building and a profile, rulings like the Millers made it a front-page actor in the era's biggest fights.
The codification debate picks this up directly - critics argue entrenchment would deepen exactly this politicisation, on the US model of contested confirmation fights.
Few propose reversing or extending the CRA - its quiet success is itself an argument in the further-reform debate, cutting both ways: proof that structural reform can work, and proof that the reforms which worked were the modest ones.
Fixed election dates and removed the PM's dissolution power; produced the 2019 deadlock of a government that could neither govern nor dissolve; repealed by the Dissolution and Calling of Parliament Act 2022.
The era's failed experiment - and the strongest argument for caution about clever constitutional fixes.
The Act promised electoral stability - fixed dates, no more elections called at the PM's convenience - and delivered the 2019 deadlock instead: a government that could neither govern nor dissolve.
A democratic promise inverted by events, and the column's clearest failure.
The Act took the dissolution power from the Prime Minister in 2011 and the Dissolution and Calling of Parliament Act 2022 gave it back - an eleven-year loop ending exactly where it began.
Net dispersal of power: zero. Use the round trip itself as the analytical point.
The FTPA was machinery-of-government reform with no rights dimension - it scores in the flexibility argument, not the rights one.
Its essay value lies in what its repeal proves about the uncodified constitution, covered in the completed cell.
Fixed terms looked like modernisation - most codified systems fix their election dates - but the design failed on contact with events in 2019, when the fixed term trapped a government that had lost control of the Commons.
The cautionary case for importing other systems' features piecemeal.
Completed in the one sense available: repealed by the Dissolution and Calling of Parliament Act 2022, ending the experiment cleanly. The repeal itself showcases the uncodified constitution's flexibility - a failed reform undone by ordinary statute, no amendment procedure required.
That double reading makes this the grid's most quotable cell in a codification essay.
The 2019 paralysis is the era's cautionary tale: a statute designed for coalition stability left a later Parliament unable either to sustain a government or to replace it.
Cite it as the strongest single piece of evidence that clever constitutional engineering can misfire.
The FTPA's repeal is the standing argument against clever constitutional fixes - the caution side's anchor in any has-reform-gone-far-enough essay. Reform succeeded most where the design was structural (the CRA) and least where it touched political incentives, and the FTPA touched the sharpest incentive of all: when to call an election.
The reform agenda reopened after a decade of Brexit dominance: the Hereditary Peers Bill, a proposal to lower the voting age to 16, and devolved powers expansion.
A programme in progress - its existence is the proof the 1997 settlement is still unfinished.
Two democratic measures lead the programme: the Hereditary Peers Bill removing the remaining hereditary peers, and the proposal to lower the voting age to 16 - relevant after turnout fell to 60% in 2024, the lowest since 2001.
Both extend the post-1997 logic: widen who participates, narrow who inherits power.
Further devolved powers expansion is in the programme - the dispersal of power that began in 1998 resuming after the Brexit years had pulled in the opposite direction through the Internal Market Act.
For essays, it shows dispersal is the era's one consistent direction of travel across governments.
The programme has no rights centrepiece: Labour from 2024 reaffirmed the HRA rather than entrenching or replacing it, leaving the rights settlement exactly as contested as the 2022 repeal attempt and the 2024 Rwanda disapplication left it.
The omission is usable evidence in a codification essay - even a reforming government left rights as ordinary statute.
The reform agenda reopened after a decade in which Brexit had crowded out everything else - Lords composition, the franchise and devolution all back on the table at once.
The first broad constitutional programme since the Coalition's 2012 Lords plan collapsed.
A programme in progress: the Hereditary Peers Bill moving, votes at 16 proposed, devolution expansion promised - nothing yet finished, and on the era's record (stage-one Lords reform twice, England still without a settlement) completion is the test it has yet to face.
Too early to say - the era's pattern is that each reform generates its tensions only after it lands, as devolution did with the English Question and the HRA did with the courts-against-Parliament argument.
In essays, hold this cell open rather than forcing a verdict the evidence cannot yet carry.
The programme's existence is the proof the 1997 settlement is unfinished: a quarter-century on, a government is still working through the same list - the Lords, the franchise, devolution.
That is the AO3 line for the gone-far-enough question: if the reforms were complete, there would be nothing left to legislate.