How effectively does the UK Parliament carry out its functions

How effectively does the UK Parliament carry out its functions

1. The main role of parliament is to support the government and to hold it to account. it also gives legitimacy to the proposals of government.

   • --both houses of parliament have the duty to approve legislation, call the government to account, scrutinise legislation and propose amendments to legislation. they also debate key political issues.

2. HOUSE OF LORDS

   • checking government power
     • as the government can not control members of the lords, the house does, from time to time, acting in a very independent way
     • utimately, the government has several ways of bipassing obstruction by the lords. the elected government and house of commons will win out over the unelected lords
   • Legislating
     • laws must be passed through the lords to legitimate them. people can be confident that legislation has been fully scrutinised.
     • as a non electing body, the lords cannot provide legitimation to legislation
   • Deliberation
     • the lords has two great advantages, in deliberating on important issues. first, it has more time to do so than the commons. secondly, the lords contains evast well of knowledge and experice among its members.
     • the fact that the lords have very weak legislation powers means that the debates may be largely symbolic

3. HOUSE OF COMMONS

   • Checking government power
     • the commons retains the power to veto legislation and this represents a discipline upon governments
     • partly loyalty and discipline means that many MP's are reluctant to challenge the government. the government very rarelt looses a major vote in the commons
   • Legislating
     • it is a key role of the commons to make legislation legitimet. this effectively means granting concent on behalf of the people. on the whole this operates well and the laws are generally respected because they have been legitimised in parliament. the commons does retaiin the power to block legislation that is against the public interest of represents the abuse of power
     • the procedures of parliament in respect of passing legislation are ancient and considered to be inneficient and ritualised
   • Deliberation (and debate)
     • sometimes, the commons is seen at its best of the great issues of the day: for example, on the war in iraq, how to deal with terrorism or the funding of higher education
     • the commons has relatively little time to debate legislation as its programme is crowded. furthermore, debates on legislative proposals tend to divide along party lines and so lose their authority