UK Government - The structure and role of Parliament Flashcards
What is the structure of the UK parliament?
- It is bicameral, consisting of two chambers - the House of Commons and the House of Lords
- However, unlike other political systems, the Commons holds virtually all real power
- By convention, all Prime Ministers and most government ministers in modern times sit in Commons, with the last member of the Lords to become prime minister, Sir Alec Douglas-Home in 1963 resigning his peerage and won a by-election to sit in the Commons as an MP
- The Lords are largely advisory in nature and can only really ask the Commons to ‘think again’ about a proposed law
What is the membership of Commons?
- The commons is comprised of 650 members of parliament, each of whom are directly elected by single-member constituencies using a first-past-the-post electoral system (plans in 2010 were abandoned that wold reduce the number to 600)
- Each MP represents on average 68,000 voters although despite the best efforts of the independent Boundary Commission, some significant differences remain in constituency size - the most populated seat in the 2019 election was the Isle of Wight with an electorate of 113,000, while Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Western Isles of Scotland) had just over 21,000 voters
What is the political party presence in Commons?
- Nearly all MPs are in a political party, along with some independents that have been elected over the years, including former war correspondent Martin Bell, representing Tatton from 1997-2001 and health campaigner Dr Richard Taylor representing Wyre Forest from 2001-2010
- Overall, Commons is dominated by party politics, which has important implications for scrutiny of government
The current Commons political party makeup as of 2021
- Conservative (MPs = 365, 278 men and 87 women)
- Labour (MPs = 200, 97 men and 103 women)
- SNP (MPs = 47, 32 men and 15 women)
- LibDems (MPs = 11, 4 men and 7 women)
- DUP (MPs = 8, 7 men and 1 woman)
- Sinn Fein (MPs = 7, 5 men and 2 women)
- Independent, including speaker (MPs = 5, 3 men and 2 women)
- Plaid Cymru (MPs = 3, 2 men and 1 woman)
- Social Democratic and Labour Party (MPs = 2, 1 man and 1 woman)
- Alliance (1 male MP)
- Green party (1 female MP)
What is the membership of the House of Lords?
- In contrast, the Lords consists almost entirely of unelected members and lacks any democratic mandate, which is correspondingly reflected in its lack of powers
- The size of its membership varies over time as there is no number fixed in law, but in 2021 it comprised around 800 peers; since the 1999 Blair reforms, the Lords have consisted of the following -
1. Life peers - appointed to peerage for their lifetime only, made possible by the Life Peerages Act (1958) - before this, the Lords was only hereditary peers, bishops and the Law Lords, the latter group’s presence ending in 2009 with the creation of a separate Supreme Court - most peers in Lords today are life peers, nominated by leaders of political parties
Membership composition of Lords continued
- 92 hereditary peers (reduced from 700 sitting in Lords before 1999 reforms) chosen from among the wider number of hereditary peers - when a vacancy occurs within this group (death or resign), a very small and select electorate undergoes an election and it is the only elected component of Lords membership
- Life and hereditary peers altogether are known as Lords Temporal
- 26 Church of England bishops sit in Lords, known as the Lords spiritual; selected based on seniority, with the bishops of the dioceses (York, Durham, Canterbury, Winchester and Lincoln) automatically getting a seat
- In contrast to the Commons, a large number of independents, or crossbenchers, sit in Lords, with no one party since 1999 enjoying a majority
- The House of Lords is a house of deliberation and discussion of laws, to approve or amend them, and is composed of experts in fields who can make up committees to assess laws and help Commons with their legislative decision making
What is the role of the Speaker of the House?
- Sits in the center seat
- Ensure rules of the house are observed, in accordance to Erskine May’s ‘A Treatise on the Law, Privileges, Proceedings and the Usage of Parliament’ which is continuously updated
- Has the power to discipline disruptive MPs and they have to wait for the speaker to call on them to speak, and so they have great power in deciding the balance of speaking and the time they have on topics - can suspend MPs and topics
- They also decide whether amendments to bills or motions before the House should be debated and voted on
- It is vital that they are completely impartial and must sever all ties with their previous party - it is a convention that the Speaker’s constituency votes for them consistently, and no one stands against them, to guarantee re-election
- They do not vote on motions unless to break a tie
- A new speaker is elected at the beginning of the parliamentary term or the death of the previous speaker, and once elected they stand until resignation - need 12 nominations, 3 from a different party
- They are voted through an exhaustive ballot (have to get 50%+)
What is the role of the opposition and whips?
All MPs in the governing party that have ministerial positions sit on the front benchers, and other MPs sit on the backbenchers, with the same being mirrored on the Opposition side with shadow ministers and shadow backbenchers, formed of the non-governing party (opposition = left side, governing party = right side) - dominant opposition party forms the shadow cabinet
- The role of the opposition is to scrutinise laws produced by the governing party, with shadowing ministers scrutinising policies of their counterpart in the government - they question, enforce the wants of their party on policy and act as the main check and balance on the governing party
- Front benchers can be confident of backbench support, but they enforce whips who are responsible for enforcing discipline (carrots and sticks) within the party (chosen MPs) and they issue weekly instructions to backbench MPs making it clear how party leaders would like them to vote in upcoming votes
- Particularly important votes are underlined three times ‘three-time whips’ and also they feedback views gom backbenchers so that party leaders are aware of any concerns
- To do their job, whips can use reward and threat to enforce behaviour to help them behave loyally to the party and can expel MPs that do not act in accordance with the party
Examples of a Committee
1922 Committee - Conservative backbench MPs that meets weekly to discuss forthcoming business; the chair feeds back the committees views to party leaders
Since 2010, frontbench Conservative MPs have been able to attend but they cannot vote in committee matters - controversial
The peerage appointments in the House of Lords
- Peerage Creations by the Prime Minister can introduce more political majority in the Lords by creating new peerage, such as David Cameron introducing 55 Labour peers but 110 Conservative peers to have the Lords be more under their influence
- It is a convention or the PM to ask the other party leaders if they want any peers appointed
- Many Lords or Life Peers are non-political, drawn from a range of backgrounds
- The House of Lords Appointments Commission also scrutinises the political appointments and since 200 they appoint the non-political appointments, and ensuring there is no financial concern over the appointments
- This ensures the appointment s fair and the decision is not made because of donations provided, such as Michael Spencer under Cameron
- Lords Spiritual - 26 members
- Many members of the Lords are apolitical and join the crossbench parliamentary group and elect a convenor to stand as their head, even if they do not vote as a parliament group
- The current size of the Lords is an issue for space and resources - however, the HoLRA 2014 allows retirement, which has helped with the issue
The role of the Queen
- The Queen opens and dissolves parliament around elections, and she declares the legislative aims of the governing party in the Queen’s Speech, and invites the leader of the majority party to become Prime Minister
- She also gives Royal Assent to new laws, and the last monarch to refuse this was Queen Anne in 1707 - she has an important, but ceremonial role in parliament
The role of the Prime Minister
Boris Johnson - Conservative
- The most important person in Parliament; as leader o the largest single party, they nearly always command an overall majority in the Commons and form coalitions to create this where needed and therefore can command and control most of the business and outcomes of the Commons
- In theory, parliament is meant to scrutinise and check the government, in reality the PM with a large majority can rely on the HoC voting the they want as the executive (government) dominates the legislature
The role of the Speaker of the Commons
Lindsay Hoyle -
- The speaker is the chair of Commons, maintaining order and ensuring as many MPs as possible from across a range of parties are allowed to speak in debates
- They administer the rules of the HoC and can suspend MPs who break them for varying periods of time; among the rules is a ban on calling a fellow MP a liar, or insinuating that they are lying or are corrupt
- E.g. John Bercow suspended Labour MP Dennis Skinner for calling David Cameron ‘Dodgy Dave’ and refusing to retract or apologise for his comments
- The speaker is voted or by their fellow MPs in a series of exhaustive ballots, with Hoyle being elected speaker on the 4th ballot in November 2019, and unanimously re-elected following the general election that December
- By convention, the speaker renounces nay party allegiance they had to ensure impartiality and at election time the major political parties do not oppose them and they stand as ‘The speaker seeking re-election’ - in recent years, the post has become more controversial after Michael Martin, the speaker from 2000-2009 was effectively forced to resign due to the expenses scandal and growing dissatisfaction over his performance
- John Bercow also faced growing criticism, especially from government benches due to his supposed favouritism of opposition MPs and his lack of cooperation on progression of the Brexit bill following the 2016 referendum, along with being accused of bullying by members of his staff
The role of the Leader of the Commons
Mark Spencer
- This is a cabinet post, where the person in the position acts as the government’s business manager, seeing that from the Executive’s perspective the Commons runs smoothly and that its bills are properly timetabled
- On Thursdays for example, the leader of the House tells the Commons about the business scheduled for the following week and usually provisional business for the week after that - their job also involves close liaison with the government’s chief whip
The role of whips in Commons
Conservatives - Chief Whip (Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasury) - Mark Heaton-Harris MP
Labour - Alan Campbell
- Are in charge of party discipline and ensuring as far as they can that MPs stay local and vote the way they leaders dictate - a lot of their time is spent using gentle persuasive techniques and explaining the reasoning behind the Prime Minister’s stance
- There are also junior whips along with opposition whips
- Each week, whips issue a set of instructions on how their party’s MP should vote
- A three-line whip indicates the party leadership expects all its MPs to turn up and vote a certain way
- The whip may be withdrawn from an MP, meaning that they are suspended from the party, usually a temporary sanction and is a likely response to MPs bringing party disrepute as opposed to defying the whip in a particular vote e.g. Nadine Dorries, a Conservative MP. went on I’m A Celeb. And didn’t inform her party, leading to her suspension although she was later restored and joined the government bench
- The whip can also be withdrawn, on rare occasions for political disloyalty, such as in 2019 when Boris Johnson removed the whip from 21 Tory rebels who defied instructions not to support the motion to take control of parliamentary business during the Brexit bill saga - 10 MPs subsequently had the whip restored and 5 of the remainder decided to stand as independents or LibDems in the next general election, with all losing their seats
- A more unusual reason for the loss of a whip took place in July 2020 - Tory MP Julian Lewis had been elected as chair of the Intelligence and Security Committee by securing the support of opposition MPs; in doing so, he defeated fellow MP Chris Grayling, the government’s preferred candidate
- A government source accused him of ‘working with Labour and other opposition MPs for his own advantage’, clearly collaborating with the political enemy can be seen as a serious political crime
- Use carrot and stick method to control backbench MPs and ensure majority is used correctly to complete the party manifesto
The role of frontbenchers
- This term applies to members of the governing party/parties who are also ministers in the government and also to opposition MPs who are shadow ministers - the term derives from the fact that these members sit on the front rows in the Commons chamber
- The role of the shadow cabinet is to scrutinise the work of their government counterpart, ensuring policy is fair and that work is being carried out correctly
- Individual ministers have roles specific to their departments
