The established settlement in financial policy, regulation, taxes and the markets of the last 30 years has been torn up and is in the process of being rewritten. The imposition of a higher-rate tax band in the pre-budget report with barely a whimper of complaint from the commentariat or the Conservatives shows just how far the consensus has shifted. Change in the constitutional settlement over the past 11 years has been no less significant but taken at a steadier pace in time and has been slower in being accepted by the public.

In this dizzying time it is worth taking stock of the changes that Labour has introduced which constitute the foundation, but not the completion, of what Jack Straw has called ‘a new constitutional settlement’.

The changes that are felt most directly by people are probably those associated with devolution in Scotland, Wales, London and, most of all, in Northern Ireland. All assemblies are through their third electoral cycle and, though some of us are not happy with some of those elected in charge, they are clearly coming of age.

The principle of the separation of powers, the linchpin of the American constitutional settlement, has been adopted in Britain after decades of this being called for by academic constitutionalists, with the role of Lord Chancellor now limited to being a member of government alone and not both Speaker of the House of Lords and an active member of the senior court of the land. This court is itself in the process of being given separate status as a supreme court with the law lords being removed from the legislature. Decisions over the appointments of judges have also very largely been removed from government to an independent Judicial Appointments Commission.

There have been two specific legislative interventions which have significantly altered the relationship of the citizen and the state. The Freedom of Information Act has increased transparency and the ability of citizens to hold those who govern us to account. Arguably the greatest constitutional achievement, however, has been the Human Rights Act. Far from being the ‘villain’s charter’ as so grotesquely caricatured by the Daily Mail and the ‘kneejerk’ brand of Tories, it has proven in operation to be a limited, proportionate and balanced way of incorporating the European convention on human rights (ECHR) into the British context. There is now virtually uniform acceptance and even approval of the act from the legal professions – even the lawyerly Dominic Grieve, the shadow home secretary, has in the recent past approved of and accepted that the act has conferred many benefits. No British government can restrict the applicability of the ECHR: to do so would place it in breach of international obligations, and would be incompatible with our membership of the EU. And if the ECHR is to continue to apply, the Human Rights Act is the best mechanism for achieving this, since by a neat British compromise it enables a court to declare that legislation is incompatible with the ECHR, while at the same time making it necessary for parliament to decide on the form and timing of any amended legislation.

So what is left to do? The constitutional renewal bill, a draft of which is currently under parliamentary scrutiny, contains some further reforms affecting such matters as the reform of prerogative powers and of the role of the attorney general.

The next stage should consider whether – as suggested by the joint parliamentary committee on human rights in its report, A Bill of Rights for the UK?, published on 10 August 2008 – we should legislate and embed in our constitution a social democratic model of society, providing for rights such as equality and to a healthy and sustainable environment, and the extent to which such rights would be justiciable. In addition, we should consider whether there is a need or scope to address responsibilities between citizens as well as the rights of the citizen against the state. Finally, a codification of our constitutional arrangements would enable the public at large to know and understand how they are truly governed.

The white paper on the bill of rights is widely anticipated and the Conservatives have set their stall on repeal of the Human Rights Act, but without detailing any practical positive – let alone progressive – policy. If policies are to be presented as part of election manifestos, it is time they were brought forward. We hope that all parties will join in an intelligent debate on further constitutional reform and, in particular, resist any temptation to pretend that the essential features of the Human Rights Act can or should be reformed. The weak initial public response to the Human Rights Act, which is still to date exploited for political ends, shows that good constitutional change must be argued for robustly and clearly. A long-lasting progressive constitutional settlement is in reach, but the debate must start now.