Andreas Whittam Smith: A measured response that bodes well for the future

Something has changed already. Immediately following the terrorist attacks in the capital, Jacqui Smith, appointed Home Secretary only the day before, gave the Government's first response rather than the Prime Minister, Gordon Brown. Mr Brown's own statements have been short and dignified. At Scotland Yard, Deputy Assistant Commissioner Peter Clarke has provided fluent briefings while the Commissioner, the accident-prone Sir Ian Blair, has kept out of the way.

Where Tony Blair's team was hyperactive, Mr Brown has instilled calm. Allowing the Gay Pride march to go ahead in central London on Saturday also demonstrated unflappability.

Related articles

• Miles Kington: A government of all the talents needs a man like me
• Carpeting over cracks in Cherie's feud with Brown
• Tories will stay in the mainstream, says Osborne
• Bruce Anderson: Mr Cameron needs a narrative of his own
• Charles Nevin: Who can ever replace his boyish charisma?

Here is another novelty: by tomorrow evening the new cabinet will have met three times in four working days, with each session lasting about two hours. That is as much time as Mr Blair needed in a month. In future, cabinet meetings will be held on Tuesday mornings instead of Thursdays to allow more space for discussion. Cynics may say that this change is more apparent than real, for Mr Brown is likely to be dominant. Let us wait and see. Making a reality of cabinet responsibility for Government decisions, if that is what happens, would be to erect a barrier against overweening prime ministerial power.

Mr Brown is to announce proposals for reforming more of Britain's constitutional arrangements this afternoon in the House of Commons. The first test of his intentions will, paradoxically, have been completed by the time he stands up. Has the material already been leaked to the media? If it has, then any statements about restoring the authority of Parliament will need to be treated cautiously. With this in mind, I scrutinised the weekend press carefully. Only the Sunday Times had what appeared to be a well-sourced story.

Whatever else is included in the Prime Minister's statement, two subjects seem to me to be essential. The first is to complete the unfinished business of the 1997 reforms. This would require settling the composition of the House of Lords and its method of appointment. And it would mean dealing with an issue that is beginning to appear scandalous: devolution. For it looks as if the Scottish Parliament is providing more generous social services than are available to people living in England solely because English taxpayers supply a cash subsidy to Scottish taxpayers. In other words, the impression is that the Scots are sticking their hands into English pockets. It would be dangerous to let this go uncorrected.

The second essential is to repair the machinery of government. No more departments of state should have to be declared unfit for purpose, as the Home Office was said to be by its then Secretary of State, John Reid. No longer, to take another example, should the Treasury, as it did in Mr Brown's time, both underpay and overpay tax credits to poor families and then seek to make good the mistakes, causing untold misery in the process. Some £6bn has been lost in this way since 2003. Never again, to take a recent instance, should a well-tried system for selecting doctors for training be replaced by an online form-filling exercise in which their academic records and experience count for very little - which the Secretary of State was forced to withdraw after defending unworkable plans.

Constitutional arrangements, with their many moving parts and varying relationships, are like the engine of a car. So long as the vehicle is running along nicely, few people are interested enough to lift the bonnet and study the pistons and valves. But once the car begins to splutter, or even develop a tendency to swerve off the road, then dealing with mechanical faults becomes a priority. Mr Brown understands this. And that is why constitutional reform is the subject of his first statement as Prime Minister to the House of Commons.

At the same time, the malfunctioning of our government and political system has stimulated an enormous number of private initiatives. On the internet, I keep in touch with OpenDemocracy, a website on global current affairs, (www.opendemocracy.org.uk) and its useful offshoot, OurKingdom. Various campaign groups, including the Electoral Reform Society, Unlock Democracy and Make-It-An-Issue, have taken out full-page advertisements in newspapers to highlight their cause. A Citizens' Convention Bill, published last week, attracted cross-party sponsorship.

MyForeignPolicyToo asks who should decide when it comes to war, peace and diplomacy. The Conservatives, led by Ken Clarke MP, have published their own reform proposals and so have the Lib Dems. The Power Inquiry has been in the field since 2004. It explores how political participation and involvement can be increased and deepened in Britain. Its recommendations spring from its view that a healthy democracy requires the active participation of its citizens.

In his statement, Mr Brown is likely to range much more widely than the few issues I have marked as essential. If he does embrace the drawing up of a bill of rights, the transfer of the old royal powers from the prime minister of the day to Parliament, including the decision to go to war, the confirmation by MPs of appointments to key public posts, then, by his fifth day in office, the Prime Minister would have taken decisions that would command a permanent place in the history books. Something would indeed have changed and, for my taste, very much for the better.

More from Andreas Whittam Smith