ABOUT PARLIAMENT
Parliament - An Overview
When someone says Parliament, what do you think of?
Distinguished looking gentlemen sitting on green and red benches making the odd grunting noise? The huge fantastic building that dominates Westminster and the north bank of the Thames? In reality the British Parliament is more than these things. It is about the governance of the fifty nine million people that inhabit the United Kingdom.
Although being housed on the current site for hundreds of years, Parliament would carry on if its building was no longer habitable (as it did during the rebuilding of Parliament 1834-1870 and during the Second World War.) Two of the three tiers that create the British Parliament, the House of Commons and the House of Lords, meet in this building, the Houses of Parliament or the Palace of Westminster. The third, the Monarch, come to the House of Lords once a year for the state opening of Parliament.
The House of Commons (the only elected section of Parliament) has 659 members each elected in a "first past the post" system by the populous of geographical regions, constituencies. As the elected section the men and women (although mainly men with far too few women) are responsible for representing their constituents irrespective of the political party they voted for.
The Government is formed by the Leader of the political party which has the most members elected. As the leader of this party this person also becomes the Prime Minister. Under the present electoral system the number of seats won at an election is not proportional to the number of votes. Thus a Government can be formed by a party that, although has the greatest number of elected members, does not have the greatest number of votes. Although the Government is still officially appointed by the Monarch there has not been a case when they have not appointed the Leader of the party with the most elected members as Prime Minister. Members of the Government are then appointed by the Prime Minister from the members of both the House of Commons and the House of Lords. Most members of the Government will however come from the House of Commons.
For a piece of legislation to be passed it must pass through all three sections of Parliament. The House of Commons and House of Lords will debate and vote on it, then it will go to the Monarch for their approval. As we live in a Constitutional Monarchy the Monarch’s role is extremely limited, they only really ‘rubber-stamp’ the work of both Houses of Parliament.
Parliament is going through a period of reform at the moment. The removal of hereditary peers from the House of Lords is a symbol of this. The Commission on Electoral Reform chaired by Lord Jenkins of Hillhead recommended a new electoral system for the House of Commons based on a system of proportionality between votes and seats.
As we have seen the British Parliament is a living organism it should not be stagnant or tied to a building. Although it is the oldest Parliamentary system in the world, it can adapt to the changing world and needs to to remain at the forefront of international democracy.
By Ian Patrick, May 2000
