2. Parliament

Question 1

What is Parliament?

Answer 1

The British legislature (law-making body), made up of the House of Commons, House of Lords and monarch

Question 2

What is the House of Commons and House of Lords?

Answer 2

• HofCs - The primary chamber of the UK legislature, directly elected by voters
• HofLs - The second chamber of the UK legislature, not directly elected by voters

Question 3

What are ‘backbenchers’ and their man role?

Answer 3

• MPs who don’t have a ministerial or shaw-ministerial or shadow-ministerial position. They occupy the necessary in the debating chamber behind their leaders.
• Their man role is to represent their constituencies. They are also expected to support the leaders of their respective parties

Question 4

What is an ‘Opposition’?

Answer 4

• The official opposition is usually the party with the second-largest number of seats in the Commons
• It’s role is to criticise the government and to oppose many of its legislative proposals
• It also seeks to present itself as an alternative government

Question 5

What is the structure of Parliament?

Answer 5

• It is Bicameral (2 chambers legislature)
• The House of Lords (The Upper House)
• House of Commons (The Lower House)
• Housed at the Palace of Westminster which is an officially designated royal residence

Question 6

What is the structure of the House of Commons and how does the selection of members work?

Answer 6

• It’s the Lower House
• 650 elected members (reviewed from time to time)
• Elections must be held every 5 years
• Members represent parties and the Prime Minister and cabinet are usually members (although Lords CAN serve in cabinet too)
• Can override the Lords in cases of disagreement
• Sovereign power
• The majority of MPs of the Commons are backbenchers and the rest of frontbenchers, who are sub-divided into members of the government, and ‘shadow’ ministers, who are members of the opposition, occupying the front bench that faced the government. The Shadow Cabinet is headed by the leader of the opposition.

Question 7

What is the structure of the House of Lords and how does the selection of members work?

Answer 7

• About 760 members. Not fixed
• Appointed for life (Life Peers)
• Mixture of party members - Government and Opposition are mirrored in the Lords, ‘crossbenchers’ - who don’t sit with parties, 26 Archbishops and Bishops of the C of E and 92 elected ‘hereditary’ peers
• The king performs the state opening of Parliament here
• Can delay bills from becoming law, but cannot prevent bills from becoming law
• Unlike HofCs with benchers in the HofLs everyone is of equal status

Question 8

What are the three main functions of Parliament that both the Commons and Lords perform?

Answer 8

• Passing legislation
• Scrutiny of the executive (including debating)
• Providing ministers
• (Only the Commons has the function of representing the electorate. This section outlines each of these roles in turn, with some assessment of how well they are fulfilled)

Question 9

How does the function of passing legislation for Commons and Lords work?

Answer 9

• Most important function of Parliament. Parliament is the supreme legislative body in the UK, with authority to pass or amend laws on any subject. The HofCs has exclusive power to give consent to taxation - as the elected chamber it represents the public, and the Lords is not allowed to interfere with the passage of what are known as ‘money’ bills. The Lords has the right to amend non-financial legislation
• Most legislation is initiated by the government and there is limited opportunity for backbench and opposition MPs to propose measures of their own. Parliament mostly reacts to measures put before it by the executive, rather than developing its own legislative proposals, and it is rarely able to defeat or significantly amend legislation. To succeed, this requires solid opposition from the opposition parties combined with rebels on the government side. E.g. David Cameron’s defeat in March 2016 on plans to extend Sunday trading, when Labour and the SNP joined with Conservative dissidents
• The adversarial nature of the party system, in which the opposition constantly confronts and challenges the government, is reinforced by the work of the party whips
• Governments can use the argument of overriding necessity to push through legislation. The 2005 Prevention of Terrorism Act, which introduced control orders for individuals suspected of terrorist offences, completed all its stages in just 18 days. On the other hand, only a small number of bulls are so poorly drafted that they are virtually unworkable. The usual example given is the 1991 Dangerous Dogs Act, which passed in response to a series of tabloid stories about dog attacks. Critics argued that, instead of prohibiting certain breeds of dog, it should have targeted irresponsible owners. A review by the RSPCA, 25 years later, showed that of 30 deaths caused in that period by dogs, 21 involved breeds that were not specified in the act

Question 10

What are party whips and government whips and how do they work?

Answer 10

• They’re responsible for ensuring that MPs attend parliamentary votes (divisions) and for granting leave of absence if their vote is not essential
• Appointed by each parliament to help organise their party’s contribution to parliamentary
• They issue MPs with a written instruction to attend, a whip, which indicates how important it is for an MP to be present
• A responsibility is making sure the maximum number of their party members vote, and vote the way their party wants
• The most important votes are underlined three times and these occasions are therefore known as a ‘three-line whip’. Less important requests for attendance may be underlined just once or twice
• Government whips may offer the prospect of ministerial posts in order to encourage and reward loyalty
• They can also impose sanctions on those who do not accept the party line
• Persistent rebels may have the whip withdrawn, meaning that they are effectively suspended from the party and have to sit as an independent. This can also happen in cases of misconduct where it is felt that an MP has damaged the party’s reputation. Smaller teams of whips operate in the Lords

Question 11

How does the function of ‘parliamentary scrutiny’ for Commons and Lords work?

Answer 11

• Parliament has a responsibility to exercise oversight of the executive’s actions. The opposition seeks to hold the government to account and to expose its errors. Ministers have a duty to explain and defend their policies in parliament.
• Most senior ministers sit in the Commons, where the main action of politics takes place. Theresa May’s first cabinet, appointed in July 2016, contained only one member of the Lords (the Leader of the Lords, Baroness Evans) which is typical of recent practice. However, most government departments are represented in the Lords by a junior minister, whose role is to oversee the passage of business through the upper house

The most important ways the function of scrutiny is performed are:
- Questions to ministers - May call for oral or written answers. Prime Minister’s Questions, a weekly question-and-answer session in the chamber of the Commons, has been criticised for being unduly theatrical and largely a point-scoring exercise dominated by the prime minister and the leader of the opposition
- Select committees - Shadow individual government departments in the Commons
- Debates - Which can be impressive set-piece events, such as the August 2013 House of Commons debate in which the Cameron was defeated on its proposal to undertake military action in Syria. Since 2010 the creation of the BackBench Business Committee has given MPs more power to shape the agenda by allowing them to choose the topic for debate on one day per week. Debates in the Lords are often given credit for their high quality, with participants commonly including recently retired individuals with expertise in a particular field, but they rarely influence the course of events

Question 12

How does the function of ‘Providing ministers’ for Commons and Lords work?

Answer 12

• In a parliamentary system of government, the convention is that ministers must sit in one of the two houses. Parliament acts as a recruiting ground for future ministers, with the whips making recommendations to the prime minister on suitable candidates for promotion. The prime minister possesses wide powers of patronage
• The award of a peerage can only be occasion be used to secure the services of a particular individual as a minister, if that person is not an MP, for example, following the 2008 financial crisis, Gordon Brown recalled Peter Mandelson from the European Commission, appointing him to the Lords so that he could serve as business secretary

Question 13

How does the function of ‘Representing the electorate’ for the Commons ONLY work?

Answer 13

• The Commons has a representative function since it’s the elected house. The Lords is representative only in the sense that it contains people with a wide range of professional backgrounds, although this aspect is not organised systematically. The Lords is dominated by a single party in the way that the Commons often is, as a consequence of the distorting effects of the first-past-the-post voting system. However, the Lords doesn’t reflect the composition of wider UK society. More than half of its members are over the age of 70, three quarters are male and only around 5% come from ethnic minorities
• The commons has a representative function as the elected house. By long-standing tradition, MPs are not delegates of their constituencies - they use their judgement on how to vote, rather than taking instructions from those who elect them. The first-past-the-post system means that there is a strong link between an MP and their constituency. MPs are expected to respond to issues raised by individual constituents and to stand up for local interests at Westminster. For example, a number of the 44 MPs who voted against plans for the London to Birmingham High Speed Rail link (HS2) in March 2016 represented constituencies that would be affected by the planned route. If an MP does not fulfil the expectations of the local electorate, the voters have a right to choose a different representative at the next general election

Question 14

How effectively does parliament perform its representative function?

Answer 14

• Once concern is that an MP’s loyalty to their party, reinforced by the desire to win promotion to the government, may come into conflict with the need to represent a constituency. However, skilful MPs are good at reconciling the two roles. The ministerial code, which regulates the conduct of ministers, advises them to take care to avoid conflicts of interest. But they’re allowed to make representations to colleagues in government, as long as they make it clear that they’re acting as their constituents’ representative and not as a minister. For example 2006 Hazel Blears, a member of Tony Blair’s Cabinet, supported protests against a planned closure of part of a hospital in her Salford constituency
• Another issue is that, although there has been considerable improvement since the 1980s, the Commons is still not truly representative of society as a whole. 29% of MPs elected in May 2015 were female - an increase on the 2010 figure, which was 22% - compared to 51% of the UK population. Similarly ethnic minority MPs make up 6% of the Commons, compared to 13% of the population. A patter has also been developing in recent decades in terms of the class and occupational background of MPs

Question 15

What does ‘Confidence and supply’ mean?

Answer 15

A type of informal coalition agreement sometimes used in the event of a hung parliament where the minority partner agree to vote with the government on key issues, usually in exchange for policy concessions

Question 16

What are the exclusive powers of the House of Commons?

Answer 16

• One part where the Commons has exclusive authority is the ability to give consent to taxation and public expenditure. Since the Commons represents the taxpayer, there is a tradition that although the Lords debates money bills, it cannot interfere with them. For this reason the chancellor of the exchequer is obliged to sit in the Commons, where the annual budget is always
• Another area where they can exercise power is the situation known as confidence and supply. This can occur in the event of a minority government, where the governing party does not join a formal coalition, but relies on a limited agreement with another party (or parties) to keep itself in office.
• E.g. The Conservative Party’s arrangement with the Democratic Unionist Party following the general election in June 2017, when the Conservatives were eight seats short of a majority, was a vote of no confidence, and will vote through the government’s budget (the ‘supply’ part of the arrangement). In return the smaller party will receive certain concessions. It is an agreement that is more flexible (and thus less stable) than a full coalition. Another occurrence was in 1977-8, when James Callaghan’s minority Labour government concluded the ‘Lib-Lab Pact’ with the smaller Liberal Party. There was talk of the SNP supporting a minority Labour government on these terms, had the 2015 election resulted in a hung parliament

Question 17

Why does the House of a Lords not have a lot of power and what has happened across time where the amount theyve had has decreased?

Answer 17

• When the UK started being more democratic in the early 20th century, its powers have been limited by both law and convention. It Is widely accepted that this is appropriate, since it lacks the democratic legitimacy of an elected chamber
• The Lords powers have had legal restraints provided by the Parliament Acts of 1911 and 1949. The first of these came about when the Lords broke with the convention, established since the late 17th century, that they should not interfere with matters of taxation. Aristocratic outrage at new taxes on land and wealth, proposed in the Liberal government’s ‘People’s budget’ of 1909, led the Lords to break with this tradition. By rejecting the budget they brought about a prolonged constitutional crisis, which was resolved by the passing of the Parliament Act two years later. This set out in law that: the Lords had no right to delay money bills, and it’s power to veto non-financial bills was to be replaced by a power of delay lasting two parliamentary sessions (equivalent to 2 years)
• Clement Attlee’s Labour government, faced with opposition from the Lords to its iron and steel nationalisation bill, used the 1911 act to push through a modification, halving the length of time that the upper house could use its delaying power. This was embodied in the 1949 Parliament Act
• The power of the Lords is also constrained by the 1945 Salisbury convention, a convention agreed shortly after the election of the Attlee government. Named after the Conservative opposition leader in the upper house, Lord Salisbury, the convention stated that the Lords would not oppose a bill that gave the effect to a commitment contained in the manifesto of the winning party at a general election. The convention was a response to the election of Britain’s first majority Labour government, which was committed to a radical reforming programme

Question 18

What is the Salisbury convention (1945)?

Answer 18

The convention whereby the House of Lords does not delay or block legislation that was included in a governments manifesto

Question 19

What distinctive powers does the House of Lords have?

Answer 19

• It acts as a revising chamber, proposing amendments to government legislation, which it is up to the government to decide whether to accept or reject
• It can delay non-financial legislation for one year
• The only scenario in which the Lords retains its veto is an extremely unlikely one: if a government were to attempt to prolong the life of parliament beyond its legal maximum term of five years, the Lords is legally empowered to force it to hold a general election

Question 20

What are the debates about the relative powers of the two houses in parliament?

Answer 20

• That although the formal powers of the Lords are quite restricted, as with so much else in British politics, what the upper house can actually do depends to a large extent on the particular circumstances of the time
• In recent years some commentators have argued that the Lords is becoming more assertive in its relationship with the elected chamber

Question 21

What are the different ways the Lords are becoming more important?

Answer 21

• The removal of most hereditary peers from the Lords in 1999 meant that the upper house was now dominated by life peers, who had mostly been appointed for service in different walks of life. This increased the Lords’ sense of legitimacy. Life peers were also more likely to play a regular part in the work of the House, whereas many hereditary peers rarely appeared at Westminster. As a result the reformed House was more inclined to challenge the government
• Another consequence of the departure of most hereditary peers was that the traditional dominance of the House by the Conservative Party came to an end. No party now has overall control of the Lords and so careful management of the House has become more important for governments. Liberal Deniocrat peers demonstrated growing independence during the period of the New Labour government. E.g. after the 2005 general election, they opposed Tony Blair’s proposas for identity cards, even though this policy had been announced by the Labour Party in advance. They argued that the Salisbury convention no longer applied because the government had been re-elected on a very low share of the popular vote (only 35.2%). The formation of the coalition government in 2010 cast further doubt on whether the Sallbum convention stil applied. This was because the government programme was based on a coalition agreement - between the Conservative and Liberal Democrat leaders - that had never been put to the voters
• Cross-bench peers also began to play a more important role in holding the goverament to account. As neutral figures, they are more likely to assess a bill on its merits and to decide accordingly whether to support or oppose the government. E.g. the cross-bench peer Lord Owen, a former doctor, played a leading role in opposing the coalition government’s controversial Health and Social Care Bill. The measure was passed in March 2012 after the goverment accepted all the amendments proposed in the Lords.

Question 22

How does the Commons maintain its supremacy?

Answer 22

• Although the Lords is clearly more assertive, the Commons remains the dominant house. The two houses are not always in conflict with each other - in fact, many amendments in the Lords are sponsored by the government itself, on occasions when it belatedly notices flaws in its own legslation. But when clashes occur, the government can usually make use of its majority in the Commons to overturn critical Lords amendments if it chooses to do so. In February 2012, e.g, the coalition government rejected seven amendments to its Welfare Reform and Work Bill, arguing that only the Commons was entitled to take decisions with large financial implications.
• A bill can go back and forth between the two houses in a process known as ‘parliamentary ping pong’. An extreme example of this was the debate between the two houses on the 2005 Prevention ol Terrorism Bill, which introduced control orders, This entailed a marathon sitting of 30 hours. The Lords wanted the bill to include a ‘sunset clause’ - in other words it would automatically expire after a year unless further legislation was passed to renew it. In the end it is up to the government to decide whether to accept or reject any changes proposed by the Lords. In the case of the Prevention of Terrorism Bill, the Lords backed down following a compromise - the government promised a review a year later
• If the upper house maintains its opposition to the Commons, as a last resort the government can use the Parlament act to force a bill through. This is rare, but it was used three times by the Bair government for the following:
• Changing the voting system for European parliament elections (1999)
• Equalising the age of consent for gay and heterosexual people (2000)
• Banning hunting with dogs (2004)
• In practice, the Lords wil usually drop its opposition after making its point, recognising that it lacks the democratic legitimacy needed to push its case further. The following case study illustrates the willingness of the Lords to take a stand on an issue, but also the self-restraint that usually prevails in clashes between the two houses

Question 23

What is a legislative bill?

Answer 23

Proposed laws passing through parliament

Question 24

What is the difference between a legislative bill and an act of parliament?

Answer 24

• A legislative bill is a proposed for a new law, or a change to an existing law, which is brought before parliament. A bill can be introduced in either the Commons or Lords
• An act of parliament is a bill that has completed all its stages in parliament and has become law

Question 25

What are the main types of bills?

Answer 25

• Government bill or public bill
• Private bill
• Hybrid bill
• Private members bill

Question 26

What is a government bill (or public bill)?

Answer 26

• The most important type of proposal that can be debated in parliament.
• These are brought forward by government ministers to change public policy, e.g. the reorganisation of the NHS which was brought about by the 2012 Health and Social Care Act

Question 27

What is a private bill?

Answer 27

• Much less common
• It’s sponsored by an organisation such as a company or a local authority, with the intention of changing the law as it affects that organisation
• A group affected by such a bill has the right to petition parliament against it
• E.g. the 2013 London Local Authorities and Transport for London Act, which introduced new powers for dealing with obstructions caused by builders and road users in the capital

Question 28

What are the stages of a bill becoming law (from a Commons pov in this question)?

Answer 28

• Origin - A bill may originate as a Green Paper and/or a White Paper (but the whole stage isn’t compulsory)
• First reading - Firsy compulsory stage. The bill is made available to MPs but is not debated or voted on at this stage
• Second reading - Principle of the bill is debated and a vote may be taken if it is contested
• Committee stage - Bill is scrutinised in detail by a public committee, formerly known as a standing committee, whose membership reflects the strength of the parties in the Commons. Amendments may be at this stage if the government is prepared to accept them
• Report stage - Whole House considers amendments made at the committee stage and may accept or reject them
• Third reading - Amended bill is debated and voted in by the whole House
• House of Lords stages - Bill goes through the same stages in the Lords, with the exception of the committee stage, which is carried out by the whole House. The Lords can propose amendments. The Commons has to decide whether to accept, reject or further amend these. The bill can go back and forth between the two Houses for up to a year before it becomes law, in a process popularly known as ‘parliamentary ping pong’
• Royal assent - Monarch signs the bill, making it law. This stage is a formality as the sovereign is a constitutional monarch, who would not get involved in politics by refusing to sign a bill

Question 29

What is a ‘Green Paper’ and a ‘White Paper’ in relation to the legislative process of making a bill?

Answer 29

• Green Paper - A document setting out options for legislation and inviting consultation
• White Paper - A more detailed statement of the government’s intentions

Question 30

What are Public bill committees?

Answer 30

Committees responsible for looking at bills in detail

Question 31

What is parliament privilege?

Answer 31

• The right of MPs or Lords to make certain statements within parliament without being subject to outside influence, including law
• This includes immunity from being sued for libel
• Doesn’t mean that they cannot be prosecuted for criminal activity e.g. In 2009 seven MPs and peers were jailed as they made false claims for parliamentary expenses
• The role of parliamentary privilege is to ensure that MPs and peers enjoy their historic right to freedom of speech

Question 32

What are 3 pieces of evidence that support the claim that backbench MPs are playing an increasingly significant role within parliament, especially scrutinising government activity and holding the executive to account?

Answer 32

• The creation of the Backbench Business Committee in 2010, which is allowed to choose the topic for debate on 35 days in each parliamentary session. Some of these subjects are chosen in response to e-petitions signed by members of the public; 100,000 signatures are required to qualify. This has led to the holding of debates on some subjects that might not otherwise have been chosen. Some of these take place in Westminster Hall, the oldest surviving part of the Houses of Parliament, in order to ease the burden on the Commons chamber. Examples of such debates include one in 2015 that led to the introduction of Harvey’s law, which obliges the Highways Agency to notify the owners of pets who are killed on the roads. The Backbench Business Committee responds to proposals that command cross-party support, and so there is an incentive for MPs to work together in requesting a debate.
• A rise in the number of backbench rebellions against government measures, even if the average number of MPs Involved in particular rebellions has declined. Political scientists Philip Cowley and Mark Stuart have calculated that coalition MPs rebelled in 35% of divisions during the 2010-15 parliament; the equivalent figures for government rebellions under Labour in the 2005-10 parliament was 28%. Note also that if a government is not certain of getting its business through, it may choose not to proceed rather than risk an actual defeat in the Commons. The coalition government’s dropping of its House of Lords reform bill after the second reading in 2013 is an example of this.
• An increase in the use of ‘urgent questions’ - a device that, subject to the approval of the Speaker of the House, allows an MP to raise an important matter requiring an immediate answer from a government minister. A study conducted during the coalition government found that Speaker John Bercow allowed a total of 3547 urgent questions in 2009-13, while his predecessor, Michael Martin (2000-09) presided over only 1234 in a much longer period. An example is the summoning of Work and Pensions Secretary Damian Green in February 2017. He was summoned to answer an urgent question put by Labour MP Stephen Timms regarding changes to Personal Independence Payment, a benefit paid to disabled people

Question 33

What are the important limits on the influence of backbenchers?

Answer 33

• MPs can use various methods to draw attention to issues in which they are interested, but this does not mean that they will succeed in getting any action taken. One example of this is an adjournment debate. After the official business of the House is over, there is an opportunity to raise an issue and a minister will reply. Another option for backbenchers is the 10-minute rule. This allows MPs to speak for 10 minutes on their chosen subject before the beginning of official business on certain days. However, in both cases, the only result is likely to be an airing of the MP’s concern in debate.
• Public bill committees give MPs an opportunity to propose amendments to legislation, and each
clause of a bill is scrutinised. However, the government has a majority on these committees and often it will use its position of strength to introduce its own amendments, rather than listening to proposals from opposition MPs.
• The power of patronage and ties of party loyalty, reinforced by the party whips, remain important factors in the Commons.

Question 34

What functions does different select committees have?

Answer 34

• There is one that scrutinises the policy, administration and spending on each government department
• The Public Accounts Committee - Exams government expenditure, seeking to ensure that value for money is being obtained
• The Liaison Committee - Which consists of the chairs of all the select committees, questions the prime minister twice a year across the whole field of government policy
• The Committee on Standards oversees the work of the parliamentary commissioner on standards, an official who is in charge of regulating MP’s conduct, including their financial affairs

Question 35

What are the key factors of each departmental select committee including what members do?

Answer 35

• Each departmental select committee consists of a minimum of 11 backbench MPs. Their composition reflects the balance of party strength in the House of Commons. E.g. the Education Select Committee, chaired by Conservative MP Neil Carmichael following the 2015 general election. Of the ten other members, a further five were Conservatives, four were Labour and one was a member of the SNP.
  
- Following a reform introduced in 2010, chairs are now elected by their fellow MPs rather than chosen by the party whips, a move which has increased their independence. Members are chosen by secret ballot within party groups
  
- The members of a select committee decide on the areas that they will investigate. They have the power to gather written and oral evidence and to summon witnesses, including ministers, civil servants, experts and members of the public with a relevant interest. Select committees may appoint specialist advisers - possibly an academic in the field they are investigating - to assist them in their work. They produce a report, to which the government is expected to respond within two months.

Question 36

Why are Select committees important?

Answer 36

• Their work is respected because it is evidence based. Their hearings are televised and reported in the media, which increases their influence. They air issues of public interest. The Transport Select Committee, e.g., held Transport Secretary Patrick McLoughlin to account for the controversy over the West Coast Main Line rail franchise in 2012.
• The scope of the committees’ work has widened in recent years to include the scrutiny of legislation. They also hold pre-appointment hearings, in which they interview candidates for some public roles. The Treasury Select Committee, e.g., has the right to veto the chancellor of the exchequer’s choice for the head of the Office for Budget Responsibility
• Long-serving members can accumulate more knowledge of a particular policy area than a minister, who may stay in a government department for only two or three years. Some experienced chairs of select committees have become considerable public figures, and this role is now recognised as an alternative career path to the ministerial ladder. E.g. Margaret Hodge, chair of the Public Accounts Select Committee from 2010 to 2015, who has said that she had more influence in this role than as a government minister earlier in her career.
• Select committees can have a direct influence on government policy. For example, in 2014 the Home Office took the Passport Office back under ministerial control, following a critical report by the Home Affairs Select Committee. The chief executive of the Passport Office, organised as an executive agency at the time, had been criticised for a large backlog in applications that had caused considerable public anger during the summer

Question 37

Why should the influence of select committees not be exaggerated?

Answer 37

• A majority of select committee members will be drawn from the governing party/ies (if coalition) and there is a tradition that MPs from the government side chair the influential Treasury, foreign affairs and defence committees
• Although the resources available have increased, the committees can cover only a limited range of topics in depth and there is a tendency to avoid investigations into more long-term, strategic issues.
• There is still a high turnover rate for membership of committees, and some MPs do not attend regularly.
• The government accepts an estimated 40% of select committee recommendations, but these rarely involve major changes of policy.
• Committees’ power to summon witnesses is considerable but not unlimited. E.g. in 2013 as home secretary, Theresa May blocked the Home Affairs Select Committee from Interviewing the head of MI5, Andrew Parker.

Question 38

How does the House of Lords select committee operate differently to those in the Commons?

Answer 38

• They do not shadow government departments, but instead scrutinise legislation and investigate particular issues.
• E.g. is the Constitution Committee, which examines public bills For their constitutional implications and investigates broad constitutional issues.
• Lords committees deliberately seek to avoid duplicating the work of their counterparts in the Commons.
• Thus a Treasury Select Committee is to be found in the Commons, which examines the work of the Treasury and HMRC.
• The Lords has an Economic Affairs Committee, which looks at wider issues, such as the economic case for the HS rail link.
• Lords committees can draw on the services of a range of well-qualified experts in different fields. E.g., former Chancellor Lord (Nigel) Lawson was a member of the Economic Affairs Committee.
• Yet, however learned and thoroughly researched the reports of these Lords committees may be, their wider impact is usually limited.

Question 39

What is the role and significance of the opposition party?

Answer 39

• Opposition parties are not in a strong position to hold the government to account in parliament tess its majority is small. Even a leader of the opposition who is judged to be an effective performer in the Commons, such as William Hague in the period of Tony Blair’s first government, may make little real impression on the general public, as his defeat in the 2001 general election showed. Opposition leaders may choose instead to concentrate on attacking the government through the media, where they reach a larger audience. They have a constant dilemma in that they need to criticse ministers, while also projecting themselves in a statesmanlike light as a government in waiting. The leader of the opposition does, however, have certain opportunities to hold the government to account. They take the leading role in responding to the government programme, as set out in the annual Queen’s speech, and replies to the chancellor of the echequer’s budget speech
• The opposition parties are allocated 20 days a year to propose subjects for debate. Of these, 17 days are at the disposal of the leader of the official opposition - the largest opposition party - leaving the other three days to the second-largest opposition party. The SNP, for example, used its allocation in November 2015 to instigate debates on the Trident nuclear defence system, to which they are strongly opposed, and on the closure of HMRC offices. These occasions are of only symbolic importance, allowing opposition parties to register their views on aspects of government policy. The government will usually table an amendment to the opposition motion, cancelling it out by commanding its own policy. With an in-built majority it will usually have no difficulty in carrying the amendment
• Assistance is available to help opposition parties carry out their parliamentary business, in the form of ‘Short money’. The fund also provides help with the running costs of the leader of the opposition’s office. The purpose of Short money is to compensate for the fact that, unlike the government, opposition parties do not have access to support from the civil service. It is supposed to be spent on policy research and the salaries of staff who work for the opposition in parliament, rather than in their party headquarters. The Conservative government cut the amount available after the 2015 general election, on the grounds that opposition parties should make sacrinces at a time when Whitehall departments’ funding was being reduced

Question 40

What is the purpose and nature of ministerial question time and PM questions as well?

Answer 40

• Prime Minister’s Questions is one of the regular set-plece events of the parliamentary calendar. It Is held once a week, at 12 p.m. for half an hour each Wednesday when the Commons is sitting It attracts considerable attention in press and television reporting. Its defenders argue that It obliges the prime minister to engage with the opposition on a range of topics, and the intensive preparation that goes on inside Number 10 suggests that it is a significant event. Tony Blair later described it as the most nerve-racking, discombobulating, nail-biting, bowel-moving. terror-inspiring, courage-draining experience’ in his political life.
• Critics, however, point to the ‘gladiatorial’ nature of the encounter between the prime minister and the leader of the opposition, which tends to reveal more about their respective personalities than It does about the detail of government policy. Clashes between David Cameron and Jeremy Corbyn for example, were notorious for their displays of prime ministerial scorn, with Cameron on one occasion attacking his opposite number’s choice of suit. There is considerable stage management with MPs on the government side deliberately asking ‘planted’ questions to present the prime minister in a good light. E.g. in 2012 it was revealed that Cameron’s parliamentary private secretary, Desmond Swayne, had orchestrated heckling of the Labour leader, Ed Milliband, and had asked Conservative MPs to create a ‘protective wall of sound’ around the prime minister when he faced opposition criticism.
• Better scrutiny of government activity is arguably provided by the rota on which ministers answer questions about their own departments. This usually entails more detailed questioning and ministers are given notice of oral questions so that they can prepare with the assistance of civil servants. MPs can also submit written questions that are answered by civil servants. This allows opposition MPs to inform themselves about government policy, and individual members can raise issues of interest to their constituents. This is, of course, much less well-known than the highly theatrical verbal duels between the prime minister and the leader of the opposition.

Question 41

What is opposition?

Answer 41

The second largest party in the House of Commons constitutes His Majesty’s Most Loyal Opposition. The opposition front bench shadows the government front bench and scrutinises its decisions. It uses its role in Parliament to persuade the electorate that it is a potential government in waiting