Real life examples

• Party Whips

  • 2019 - Johnson faced rebellion over his brexit deal from his own MPs. He removed the whip from the 21 MPs who voted against him.
  • Example of party representation being important and the limitation of backbenchers.
• Free Vote example

  2014 - Nicky Morgan voted against the Marriage (same sex couples) Act due to her Christian faith. She also claimed that she had received more letter from consitutents asking her to vote against the bill than for it.
• Constituency representation example

  2022 - Mark Menzies gave a speech in Parliament critising the governments plans about fracking due to the impact it would have on his constituency.
• Functional representation example

  In 2019, the number of women elected to Parliament was at a record with 220 elected (34%), but this is far below the percentage of women in the national population (51%)
• Pressure group representation example

  2010 - Nicky Morgan took part in oral questions to ask about the building of a waste insierator in her constituency, something she and the pressure group CHAIN stood against.
• PMQ Question dodging

  17th January 2024 - Rishi Sunak was asked several times by Keir Starmer about the 4,250 asylum seekers that were lost in the system and instead of taking about that, Sunak repeatedly highlighted the fact that the government had cleared the backlog of asylum seekers coming into the UK.
• PMQs opposition using all questions on 1 area

  17th January 2024 - Keir Starmer used all six of his questions on Rwanda and immigration.
• Ministerial question time

  2022 - Priti Patel faced questions, including a request to disclose the cost of the plan to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda for processing.
• E-petitions

  • A petition to end child food poverty was signed by 1.1 million people and was debated in parliament on the 24th May 2021.
  • The government said it had provided funding for the scheme to cover school holidays in 2021. However, it had not previously committed to continuing the programme beyond the end of the year.
• Select Committees

  2017 - David Davis said to the Brexit Select Committee that Parliament would get a vote on Brexit but it might be after the UK had left. This lead to his departtment issuing a clairfication that Parliament would get a vote.
• Public Accounts Committee success

  2020 - Gambling regulation and problem gambling. Recommended that the department commission should investigate the patterns and impact of problem gambling, producing plans on how to tackle the problem. In 2020, the government announced proposals to ban the use of credit cards on online gambling sites.
• Liason Committee Success

  • In 2016, the chair of the committee wrote to David Cameron urging him to provide oral evidence on the EU referendum.
  • Called Cameron into account, making the media pick up on the fact the PM had not given the public the facts and arguments about the EU.
• Backbench Business Committee Success

  2011 - an e-petition had been held to order the publication of all documents relating to the 1989 Hillsborough disaster. It was debated in parliament and as a result, the government was forced to release previously secret papers about the disaster.