Politics - Unit 2 - Parliament

• Legislative process – Bill, a legislative proposal, starts in HoC

• First reading – name of bill read aloud

• Second reading – main debate on the principle of the bill

• Committee stage – bills are sent to public committee where detailed scrutiny occurs.

• Report stage – amendments made in committee considered by the full house – may accept/reject

• Third reading – debate on amended bill – no further amendments permitted.

• House of Lords stages – follows same procedure in Lords

• Consideration of amendments, followed by Royal assent and the bill becomes an act as it enters law

• Public bills – affect the nation

• Government bills – seek to fulfill manifesto commitments

• Private Members Bills – introduced by an MP on any issue, rarely succeed without government support

• Private bills – affect a specified area of policy or a specified organization

• Parliament exercises a general scrutiny and oversight role. It scrutinizes the actions of the executive and ensures government accountability by requiring ministers to explain and justify their actions
• The convention of individual ministerial responsibility states that ministers are accountable to parliament – they must explain their actions. Ministers who mislead parliament may be required to resign

Methods that Parliament use to hold the executive to account or scrutinize them are:

• Question Time
• The Opposition
• Debates
• Select Committees

Yes

• High degree of expertise
• Decide which issues to examine
• Can question ministers, request access to papers
• Government is required to give a formal response

No

• Membership reflects that of the HoC - majority
• Membership influenced by whips
• Access to papers can be denied
• No power to propose policy - government can ignore

• HoC consists of 650 MPs, elected from single-member constituencies
• Descriptive representation - when a legislature mirrors the society it represents – resemblance theory
• Ethnic diversity – 27 MP’s – 4% yet 14.6% of the population are from an ethnic group
• Gender - Female - 143 MP’s – 22%, yet 50.8% of the population
• Male – 503 MP’s – 78%, yet 49.2% of the population

• Government ministers must be members of either HoC or HoL
• Parliament – a recruiting ground for government.

Need to fit in the following criteria;

• Have good communication skills – nowadays ambitious MP’s must excel on television
• Experience – managerial, leadership, organizational skills – proportion of MP’s who previously worked in politics prior to entering parliament was 20% in 2010
• Conformity – unswerving loyalty

• Government policies are scrutinized and discussed by elected MP’s who represent electorate
• Limits to legitimacy of parliament – HoL can revise legislation but limited because unelected
• In HoC – question time holds negative perceptions of parliament – public trust declined after ‘cash for questions’ scandal in 1990’s