parliament 2 Flashcards
What are the main responsibilities of parliament?
The main responsibilities are too make laws, debate issues, to scrutinise the government and vote for taxes
What are the different types of parliamentary questions?
Oral- An opportunity for MPS to question ministers on subjects they are responsible for. MPs question time is for an hour between mon-thurs and MPs have to table their question 3 days in advance.
Written- written questions are often used to obtain detail about a particular question, these can be in the form of a ordinary question, which means it will be answered within 7 days or this can be a named day which means the MP specifies a date for an answer.
Urgent question- Requires a minister to come to the chamber to answer the question without no prior warning, the mp raises the question with the speaker, the speaker approves the question and then can ask the question at the end of the day.
What is the responsibility of the PM?
The prime minister answers questions from 12-12:30pm every Wednesday from MPS.
It usually starts with a routine question about the prime ministers engagement and then leads to an open question when MPS can ask a supplementary question on any topic.
After this the speaker normally calls the leader of the opposition to ask up to six questions.
The speaker then lets the second largest party ask two questions.
There are 15 questions on an order paper but because there are more MPs who would like to ask questions there is spaces to available the questions are randomly shuffled.
how does the passage of a bill work?
first reading- bill title is read out and an order is made for it to be printed out
second reading- the general principles snd read out and debated and voted on for the first time
committee stage- scrutiny of the main clauses by a public bill commitee
report stage- committees report is referred to the commons, chance for MPs to consider amendments in the chamber
third reading-final chance for the commons to debate the bill- can be a formality. at the end commons has a final vote to approve the third reading.
House of Lords- bill goes to the lords where similar stages follow, report back the commons where any amendments must be agreed before the bill can proceed and get royal assent.
