We have discussed that the Lords are unaccountable towards constituents, but there is another important group that the Lords are bound by: political parties. If the Lords are affiliated with political parties, have whips offices, party meetings within the House (Jones and Norton, 2014: 357), and even strong voting along party lines (Norton, 2003: 20), then how are they an effective institution? The answer: distribution of party allegiance. The current Lords consists of 253 Conservative peers, 199 Labour peers, 100 Liberal Democrat peers, and 180 crossbenchers (www.parliament.uk, 2017). There is no party that holds a majority in the House, and thus government policy is not simply pushed through. Thus, the most important or controversial policies …show more content…
If we are to assume, as the term abolish implies, that the House of Lords would be completely eliminated and not reformed, the House of Commons would be the only legislative body left. Let us consider that proposition. The House of Commons is an elected body, and thus responsible to its electorate. Popular opinion then, would govern much governmental policy, without any sort of check on popular opinion should it infringe upon the rights of minorities. The House of Commons would also face more pressure to pass legislation quickly, as currently the Lords may delay legislation up to a year, giving the Commons an excuse for why legislation is not yet passed. In many ways, it is like a spelling and grammar checker for a student trying to get an essay in on time. With access to this checker, the student may amend their essay multiple times in order to minimize mistakes and maximize their grade. Without access to such a checker, it is quite likely that the student, feeling pressures from a deadline, wanting to go out with their friends or go to sleep, will submit a poor essay that has not been proofread and will receive a poor grade because of it. There would be a distinct possibility that the Commons, feeling increased pressure, would pass unfit legislation, leaving bad policy affecting millions, or …show more content…
Had the Blair reforms never taken place, and no current precedent would have been set, abolishing the House of Lords would be a consideration. Hereditary peers were hardly guaranteed to be experts in any field aside from the life of the upper class, hardly a view that needs further expression in the House of Lords. They crippled the ability of the House to use its expertise, distance from consequences of public scrutiny, and attention to detail to improve bills. The separate judiciary somewhat limits the ability of the House of Lords to exert their soft power of influence, but this may be an even stronger argument for its preservation. A House that can only delay bills and exert power of influence based on legitimacy and authority derived from expertise and not democracy can hardly be argued to be too powerful. In fact, the only hard power the Lords may exercise is the delaying of bills, and even this delay is temporary. Should the government or Commons find the Lords thoughts wholly inapplicable or unacceptable, they may ignore them completely. The fact that they rarely ignore the suggestions of the Lords on any bill is a strong indicator that all parties involved find this to a workable, and perhaps even beneficial,
...s, be more representative, leading to policies that better reflect the average voter and smaller parties that actually have some influence in parliament. Voter apathy would likely decrease with a system that increased the value of every vote and my research has also concluded that many of the myths concerning the negatives of PR systems are unsubstantiated or are unlikely to apply in Britain. There are numerous Proportionally Representative democracies and numerous PR voting systems that have been developed, so Britain could choose that which would best suit it’s populace. The problem will be having to convince a government that has got in under the current system that the system needs to be changed, but given that one of the parties in power is pushing for a change , we may, if we’re lucky, be voting for a more democratic Britain come the next general election.
Party is an inevitable feature of the democracy and it is defined as ‘an autonomous group of citizens having the purpose of making nominations and contesting elections in the hope of gaining control over governmental power through the capture of public offices and the organization of the government’ (Caramani, 2011, p.220). Parties are ubiquitous in modern political systems and they perform a number of functions, they are: coordination, contesting elections, recruitment, and representation (Caramani, 2011). Political parties are the product of the parliamentary and electoral game, and party systems reflect the social oppositions that characterize society when parties first appear (Coxall et al., 2011).
In light of the recent Senate scandal, the public’s attention has been directed to the government’s credibility and its members’ discipline again. Mike Duffy’s 90,000 dollars scandal has put the Canadian government’s party discipline into the spotlight. While it is well-known amongst general public, there are other similar incentives and disincentives shared between the Members of the Parliament (MPs) and senators in keeping them disciplined, as well as some different ones that set them apart. In this essay, I am going to analyze the main levers of party discipline in the House of Commons and the Senate for their effectiveness. By comparing the similarities and differences, I will explain for the motivations behind the Senate, even if they have seemingly fewer incentives than the MPs, such as free of worrying about being re-elected.
In our Canadian parliamentary system there are many ideologies and practices which aid in the successful running of our country. One of the more important ideologies and practices in our political system is the notion of strict party discipline. Party discipline refers to the notion of members of a political party “voting together, according to the goals and doctrines of the party, on issues that are pertinent to the government” or opposition in the House of Commons. In this paper, I will be discussing the practice of party discipline in the Canadian parliamentary system as well as the ways in which a change in the practice of strict party discipline to weaker party discipline would result in more positive effects on the practice of Canadian politics rather than more negative ones.
...e a lot of parties are going to be running for office. However, for the fringe parties this creates a major advantage for them. With the load of political parties in the House of Commons, there would be a wider range of interests for people but there would be a lot of indecision and coalitions.
If the parties in our governmental system would openly discuss about the difference in positions and in point of views within the groups in realizing these controversies will minimize the unnecessary troubles greatly. Another possibility of improvement would be following the great examples of other countries with the Westminster governance system. For example, in countries like Australia and New Zealand have already a well-established party discipline rules that are less strict than the ones in Canada and way more effective than the ones we have. In an article, it was said that” Australian parties are considerably more discipline than those in the UK an even those in Canada, although the degree of discipline in the latter has been the subject of much critical comment. Parliamentary votes in the UK are subject to varying degrees of party discipline, with the most rigid being the so-called” three-line whip’ votes. Neither Australia nor Canada has such gradations. In New Zealand party discipline has increased under its mixed Member proportional (MMP) electoral system and, unless party leaders have agreed to a conscience vote, standing orders require a party vote to be taken rather than individuals casting their votes in the chamber. “(Sawer, Abjorensen and Larkin
middle of paper ... ... d therefore the smaller parties can be considered to have very little effect on the overall political situation. In conclusion, the UK can still best be described as a two party system, provided two considerations are taken into account. The first is that Conservative dominance victories between 1979-97 was not a suggestion of party dominance and that eventually, the swing of the political pendulum will be even for both sides. This can perhaps be seen today with Labour's two landslide victories in 1997 and 2001.
Paun Akash, Robert Hazell, Andrew Turnball, Alan Beith, Paul Evans, and Michael Crick. "Hung Parliaments and the Challenges for Westminster and Whitehall: How to Make Minority and Multiparty Governance Work (with Commentaries by Turnbull, Beith, Evans and Crick)." in Political Quarterly Vol 81, Issue 2: 213-227.
The most significant and challenge to the traditional view of parliamentary sovereignty was Britain’s membership of the European Community in 1972. The European Communities Act 1972 brought with it the requirement that European Law be given priority over domestic courts over conflicting issues of national law. This notion was a direct affront to parliamentary sovereignty, which required that if a later statute, contradicted and earlier statute, which sought to incorporate European Law into English Law, then the later statute should impliedly repeal the earlier statute. Therefore the European Communities act imposed a substantive limit on the legislative ability of subsequent Parliaments.
importance." (Loades 93) But the Parliament did also have its faults. It had a separation between the House of Lords and the House of Commons. The House of the Lords was closer to the court, highly spiritual, and made themselves to the hand of the monarch.
Exploring To Which Extent the Parliament is Supreme There are two sides to this argument, one obviously defending that Parliament is Supreme in the law making process, and has utmost authority, the other stating the constraints on Parliament and there it is not supreme. Within Britain, parliament is the supreme law making body. The idea behind this is that the people select parliament and, therefore, the people make the law. We describe this as PARLIAMENTARY SOVEREIGNITY, That is to say that Parliament is the highest power in the land, and shall not be challenged. An example that shows parliamentary supremacy is Cheney .vs.
Parliamentary sovereignty is a vital principle in the U.K constitution, which demonstrates that there are no legal limitations for parliament when creating/ending any legislation. The extent of impact Parliamentary sovereignty has is that nothing can override the legislation of parliament and it is impossible to bind future parliaments. However, these principles put forward by a constitutional law theorist Dicey, arguably do present political limits to parliamentary sovereignty. When the European law was incorporated in the U.K, parliamentary sovereignty was abdicated to the EU which prioritised European law. Thus, parliament had abdicated its power to another body which is referred to as the transfer of powers. To overcome the issue of EU Supremacy and parliamentary sovereignty the European Communities Act 1972 was passed in order to avoid conflicting views.
It is made by 'the Queen in Parliament', i.e. the House of Commons, the House of Lords, and the Monarchs. Proposals for legislation Bills are presented to debate by and voted upon by the House of Representatives. Common and the House of Lords, finally receiving the assent of the Monarch and thus becoming Acts (Statutes) of Parliament. Public Bills are intended to alter the general law and be generally applicable to the aforesaid. Bills can be introduced by the government as a part of its legislative programme or by a Member of the Parliament as a Private.
Although Parliament does not usually make law, it has the important role of scrutinising Bills. This involves close inspection and proposed amendments made by both the House of Commons and the House of
is the House of Commons a law-maker in the true sense of the word. The