Parliamentary Agents - Parliamentary Agents Today

Parliamentary Agents Today

As Private Bills make up for a very small proportion of contemporary legislation, with most legislation being sponsored by the government and thus drafted and supported by the Civil Service, the work of Parliamentary Agents has relatively diminished and there are now only six firms of Roll “A” Parliamentary Agents: Bircham Dyson Bell and Winckworth Sherwood, each employing four Roll A Agents, Eversheds LLP (formerly Rees & Freres), employing three Agents, and Sharpe Pritchard, Vizards Tweedie and Berwin Leighton Paisner, who each have one Agent.

It is also possible for any person to become a Roll B Parliamentary Agent for the purpose of opposing a single Bill in Parliament. Such a person must either be a solicitor or have "a certificate of respectability".

Much of the work of Parliamentary Agents, as experts in the legislative process and Whitehall and Westminster political culture, would now come under the profession of political consultancy, although the remaining Parliamentary Agents are now billed as Law firms first and Parliamentary Agents second. However, the largest of the six firms, Bircham Dyson Bell, has developed a political consultancy business within its legal practice, thus giving it the rare distinction of most of its political consultants also being qualified lawyers.