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Revision: Parliament (What is parliament? (White male:
8% of MPs…
Revision: Parliament
What is parliament?
- Bicameral:
- Lower house: fully elected MPs.
- Upper house: Peers, 26 Bishops and 92 hereditaries (aristocrats).
- Sovereign:
- Can legally legislate on any topic which they see fit.
- No power can tell parliament what to do.
- No parliament can bind its successors.
(Dicey, A.V., 1885)
White male:
- 8% of MPs elected in 2017 were PoC.
- 32% were women.
- "Somatic norm"; women and black MPs are "space invaders" (Puwar, 2004).
Disconnected from the people?
- Can pass any law, but won't pass something unpopular. They derive authority from the people (Jennings, 1957).
- Just over 50% believe that Parliament is not working for them, and that it is not representative of the public (Kalitowski, 2009).
- But they care more about parliament reflecting their views rather than demographic.
- Little trust in claiming legitimate expenses (Allen, 2011).
Dominated by the government?
- Government legislation has a 95% success rate, compared to 7.5% for individual MPs (Kelso, 2011).
- The executive's tight party management and timetable control thwarts parliamentary supremacy (Flinders, 2002).
- Secondary legislation gives the government power, as parliament doesn't go into that kind of detail after passing primary legislation.
Legislative scrutiny
Laws and bills:
- Very little time is set for Private Members' Bills, so most bills are introduced by ministers.
- To become an Act, a Bill must be approved by both Houses of Parliament and given Royal Assent.
Readings:
- First reading: formal introduction.
- Second reading: a debate on the general principles. No amendments. If the vote is won...
- Committee stage: Public Bill Committee (a group of MPs for that purpose) or Committee of the Whole House (all MPs sitting as a Committee) debate the Bill line-by-line, considers amendments.
- Report stage: amendments approved in Committee are considered and voted on by the House.
- Third reading: general discussion with no amendments allowed (Commons) or minor ones (Lords).
- "Ping pong": back and forth between Lords and Commons, accepting, rejecting and further amending amendments.
- Royal assent.
Inequalities:
- 1911 Parliament Act: Lords cannot veto legislation concerned with taxes and public spending (money bills).
- 1949 Parliament Act: Lords can only reject a Bill passed by the Commons for one parliamentary session (a year). If the Commons passes the same Bill in the next session, it cannot be blocked.
- 1945-51 Salisbury Convention: Lords do not block legislation contained in government's election-winning manifesto.
- By convention, Royal Assent is given to all Bills passed by both Houses.
Power of parliament:
- parliament is, "much of the time, either peripheral or totally irrelevant" (King & Crewe, 2013).
- Parliament doesn't make law but gives assent to it (Norton 1993).
- Parliament exposes government legislation to scrutiny, to possible amendments, and to the potential to refuse assent (Kelso, 2011).
House of Commons:
- House of Commons legitimates legislation, giving assent as the people's elected representatives to the laws governing them.
- Allows for political argument and bargaining over the principle and content of legislation.
- Political and technical accountability:
- The former is about electoral support. Judged in the Commons: does it have support from elected representatives?
- The latter is about expertise. Tested for quality in the Lords, by the experts (maybe apolitical?)
Rebellion:
- 2010-2015: Government MPs rebel on 30% more votes than in 1945-1964.
- From 1970 onwards, every government has been defeated at least once by rebels.
(Russell & Cowley, 2016).
- Whips consult MPs, can withdraw the whip from rebels.
- Governments avoid defeat by changing course (anticipated reaction):
- Withdrawing legislation before being defeated.
- Accepting amendments without a vote.
- Offering a non-whipped vote. It's not the government's fault if MPs vote against them.
House of Lords:
- Scrutinises legislation.
- Unelected members are less worried about short-term gain (re-election).
- Expertise.
- No constituency responsibility means more time to devote to scrutiny.
Executive scrutiny
- Power to call for information.
- Power to remove individual ministers from office.
- Power to remove the government from office.
Demanding information:
- Asking questions of ministers in writing, Question Time or debates.
- Freedom of Information Act.
- Inquiries by Select Committees.
- Parliamentary privilege
- MPs and Peers cannot be prosecuted for sharing information in debates. They would avoid invoking this privilege where national security is concerned.
Select Committees:
- Monitor individual government departments. Some cover cross-cutting issues (i.e. the constitution, public spending...).
- Backbench Business Committee decides what gets debated in non-government time.
- House of Lords Committees look at cross-cutting themes (i.e. Science and Tech, the EU...).
Commons Select Committees:
- Min. 11 members.
- Membership divided among parties in proportion to share of MPs in the House.
- Parties negotiate over who gets chairmanship.
- Before 2010, chairs were appointed by the whips. Since then it's been elected by MPs.
- Committee members are elected by their party colleagues.
- Committee chairs paid extra £15.2k.
- Before this, the only extra pay was to be promoted to minister via being a loyal backbencher. Chairs incentivise rebellion.
- Oversee administration, expenditure and policy of government departments.
- Take written and oral evidence from government, parliament, and beyond. Appoints speciality advisers.
- Conduct (non-binding) pre-appointment hearings with candidates for public appointments.
- Have (theoretical) legal power to compel outsiders to give evidence (generally not used).
- Protected by parliamentary privilege.
Benton & Russell (2012):
- 44% of Select Committee recommendations get implemented (14% for major policy change).
- Influence how MPs vote (2005 Health Committee on smoking ban).
- Identify new issues of public concern (2005 Treasury Committee on the end of free ATMs).
- Influence government legislation (2001 Public Administration Committee on the civil service code).
Classic Ministerial responsibility:
- Individual ministers are responsible to Parliament for their own conduct and that of their departments.
- 1832-1867 Reform Acts meant ministers had to work hard to keep confidence of MPs:
- 1832 Act removed Crown influence from elections.
- From 1867 modern, disciplined parties formed (1870 formation of Conservative Central Office).
- Ministries make peace and war at the pain of instant dismissal by parliament from office. Parliament makes or unmakes ministries (Hartington, 1893, quoted in Flinders, 2002).
Modern Ministerial responsibility:
- Strong parties protect ministers from individual scrutiny, unless they lose party support.
- Governments use procedural powers to prevent debates about competence of individual ministers.
- Ministers resign in cases of personal fault, or more rarely for departmental fault (Woodhouse, 2004).
- Ministerial resignations generally repair damage to government popularity by ministerial failure (Dewan & Dowding, 2005).
Classic Confidence in the House:
- Convention was that retaining confidence meant winning:
- explicit confidence votes: "this House has no confidence in Her Majesty's Government."
- implicit: approve Queen's Speech, the Budget, or major policy.
- designated: any issue the government identifies as a matter of confidence.
- Defeat on any of these means a government is expected to resign. Can then recommend a new PM or call an election.
Modern confidence in the House:
- Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011:
- Originally the government planned to keep the conventions on confidence as they were.
- During the legislative process, the Lords pushed for the government to specify the rules for confidence votes.
- PM defeated on implicit or designated votes can still resign, but cannot call a fresh election.
- Only defeat on an explicit vote allows the PM to call an election.
Confidence votes...
- provide a means for MPs to remove a government if it loses support.
- Unlikely in a majoritarian system. Last happened in 1979.
- Underpin parliamentary bargaining.
- Explicit or implicit threat of confidence votes changes government behaviour.
- Discourages rebellious MPs.
- Parliament's ability to punish or constrain the government depends on these powers.
- There is some legislation constraining government power, but conventions and no confidence votes matter more.
- Courts interpret and apply legislation, but parliament interprets and applies conventions.
- What happens if the government and parliament disagree over powers governed by convention depends on specific circumstances of the case (i.e. Brexit).
- Are MPs willing to use their powers against the government? And is the government willing to take the risk of going all the way to a non-confidence vote?
- Parliament is theoretically sovereign, though subject to political, practical and legal constraints.
- Its key role is in legitimising the government, keeping it in power, supporting its legislation.
- Plays lesser roles in shaping legislation, monitoring executive action, constraining government conduct.
- Holds government to account in theory.
- Government uses partisan advantage and procedural power to influence parliament in practice.