Parliament

• House of Commons:

  • 650 members
  • elected through FPTP
  • 1 MP per constiuency (roughly same size in population however 110,000 in isle of white and 22,000 in west Scotland)
  • Most MPs are from political parties however do not have to be (Richard Taylor who campaigned against hospital closure)
  • MPs elected for cabinet or shadow cabinet are front benchers and the rest are backbenchers
  • Conservatives have tried to reduce MPs to 600 to equalise constuencties but has not happened yet (under may)
• House of Lords selection:

  • appointed not elected (currently around 800 members)
  • three types of lords ( lord spirituals (Church of England) life peers and hereditary peers
  • number of hereditary peers has been reduced but still 92 (2 hold royal office, 15 are elected by the whole house and 75 are connected to a party or are cross-benchers)
  • when a hereditary peer dies they are replaced by someone with similar values in order to keep balance
• House of Commons- passing legislation:

  • Bills are mainly initiated by the Government (MOST pass due to goverment majorities)
  • Parties use whip system to keep MPs voting in line with the party
  • if they need parties to vote a certain way they will invoke the three line whip (if MPs ignore it can cause whips to be withdrawn as seen with Boris Johnson who did it 21 times)
  • No secret ballot for MPs they walk through the corridor 'aye or no' openly
• House of Commons- main functions:

  • providing ministers- have to sit in either the House of Lords or the commons but most are in the commons. PM has patronage power to decide who the ministers are, the whips can also hold some influence by making recommendations to the PM
  • REPRESENTING THE ELECTORATE: 1 MP per constituency and normally from a party. Delgate model: has seen some people voting against party values in order to work in favour of their constieunct such as over issues like HS2 and new runway at heathrow. Women still massively under represented 225 female MPs out of 650
• House of Lords Passing legislation:

  • can hold up bills for a year
  • cannot block a bill that comes from a party manifesto or financial bills
  • there are whips in the lords but they're insignificant
• House of Lords- scrutiny of the executive:

  • questions to ministers
  • committees which are topic based and not department based
  • Debates: House of Lords has more experts so debates tend to be of higher quality, but the debate may have less impact
• House of Lords- providing ministers:

  • not a common occurrence
  • however, Boris Johnson promoted Nicky Morgan to the House of Lords after she stepped down from the commons so she could continue as Secretary of State for digital, culture media and sport
• how well does parliament fulfil these roles:

  • commons:
  • party system limits the effect of scrutiny for example PMQs more tribal scrutiny and similarly if gov has strong enough majority scrutiny has little impact (however BOJO even though had 80 seat majority at early parts of his leadership he had many defeats)
  • Lords:
  • Unelected
  • can only delay on certain bills
  • overall, most legislation is soundly written (rare examples of rushed legislation is the rare dogs act of 1991)