Ineffective

• Opposition is quite divided between parties and the Offical opposition party is further divided internally
• Government with large majority tends to limit scrutiny as it is harder for the opposition to get votes to defeat the governing party on any price of legislation - between 1997 and 2004 the labour government didn’t face a single defeat in the Hoc due to its majority
• There are limits to the House of Lords' scrutiny role, including the Parliament Acts, rules of financial privilege and the Salisbury Convention The fact that 'parliamentary ping-pong' was curtailed over the EU Withdrawal Act 2020 owed much to the unelected Lords' own awareness that they were challenging a government with a large Commons majority and a fresh mandate to 'get Brexit done'