The Westminster Parliament Flashcards
What are the essential fact about the British constitution?
- Uncodified Constitution
- Not (wholly) unwritten - just not in one place
- Parliamentary Sovereignty
- Every aspect of the constitution can be changed by parliament
What are the core institutions of the UK constitution?
Core institutions - parliament, executive, bureaucracy and judiciary
Where is the UK constitution?
- Statutes (Acts of Parliament)
- Trumps all others
- Case Law (Judge-made law)
- e.g. Civil Liberties
- Convention (custom)
- ‘Understanding’
- Cultural interpretation
- Authoritative commentary
- Institutional rules (e.g. Erskine May)
- Treaties
- European Union Law
How can representation be defined?
- Symbolic Representation
- Substantive Representation
- Descriptive Representation
- Burkean Representaiton
What is symbolic representation?
- The embodiment of the country; where it comes together
- Statements and speeches made
- Heads of States’ Addresses
- Opening of Parliament - The Monarchy
What are the roles of the legislature?
- Legislating
- Oversight and Accountability
- Representation
What is substantive representation?
Delegate of their Nation, Constituency, Party, Gender, Race, Class
What is Descriptive Representation?
- Should the parliament be perfectly representative of the ethnic, gender etc demographics of the country
- Should their be an equal number of men and women necessarily in order to best describe the country
What is Burkean represnetion?
“Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgement; and he betrays, instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your opinion”
What is the House of Commons?
- Elected based on single-member constituencies
- First-past-the-post electoral system - A plurality voting system
- Parties with widely dispersed support (UKIP) can receive less seats (1) than those with concentrated support (SNP, 56 seats), in spite of the popular vote (3.8 million UKIP vs 1.4 million SNP)
- Currently 650 members
- Governments rise and fall based on numbers in the House of Commons
What have been the key events in the history of the House?
- Universal suffrage - 1928
- Creation of an extensive committee system (since 1979) - select and legislative
- Wright Committee 2009
- Some recommendations introduced in 2010 - election of select committee chairs (decreasing the role of whips) and creation of the Backbench Business Committee
- Boundary redistribution - reducing the commons from 650 to 600
- Blocked in 2013, set to go ahead 2018
- Would benefit conservative party greatly
What is the House of Lords?
- Evolution to the role of the secondary chamber
- Unelected: Appointed, Hereditary, Bishops
- Vast majority are appointed for life
- Debate about whether its role is to act as an advisory chamber
- Expert committee system and scrutiny seen as its strengths, unrepresentativeness seen as its weakness
- 805 members
- Government has no overall majority - government avoids doing so (b/c/ can appoint whoever it wants!)
- Role of the Crossbench peers (178 members without a party)
What have been the important events in the History of the Lords?
- Equal legislative rights with HoC till 1911
- 1911 - can only delay (not veto) for 5 years
- 1949 - can only delay 1 year
- Life Peerages Act 1958
- Peerages Act 1963; women hereditary peers and allowed disclaiming of titles
- House of Lords Act 1999
- Removed all but 92 of hereditary peers
- House of Lords Reform Act 2014
- Allows peers to retire
What have been the results of Lords reform?
- Increased professionalisation
- Increased diversity of backgrounds
- Issues with size
- Remains unelected
What was the post-war consensus?
- c 1945 to Thatcher
- Consensus on a big role for government
- Heavily debated as to whether it existed
- End? - Labour’s Winter of Discontent - 78-79 (& night of 28 March 1979)
- Or did Thatcher create a consensus from chaos?
