The Importance Of The House Of Lords Considering Its Benefits And Harms

In theory the House of Commons is the dominant chamber as it is elected while the House of Lords plays more of a revising role, issues to be considered include the powers of each chambers, the fact the House of Lords is more independently minded and the impact of the whips. It will ultimately be argued that the House of Commons remains far more effective due to having greater powers in checking the government power.

Any proposed amendments by the House of Lords have to be approved by the House of Commons, as this is where the government dominates, which can mean no amendments go through.

The House of Commons, on the other hand, is a democratically elected chamber. The House of Lords and the House of Commons meet in separate chambers in the Palace of Westminster (the Houses of Parliament), in central London.

Parliamentary sovereignty and the rule of law are both concepts that are key to shaping the British constitution, however there is ambiguity as to which concept is the heart of the UK’s constitutional arrangement in the recent years.

A parliamentary government is a democratic form of government which operates on a party system. It is the most popular and widely adopted form of democracy. A state that operates on a parliamentary system is run by two executives, firstly the head of state who is either a monarch or president who then appoints a prime minister as the head of government. A parliament can be run by either a single majority political party or as a coalition government in which more than one party collaborate to form the government. In this essay I will be assessing the key strengths and weaknesses associated with a parliamentary government. In doing so I will conclude that whilst a parliamentary government has weaknesses its strengths outweigh these and therefore it is the superior form of democratic government.

Arguably, the scrutiny of Public Bills has depended more on the House of Lords than it has on the House of Commons in recent years. The term “scrutiny” means the critical observation or examination regarding the Public Bills. The “effectiveness” of the scrutiny could be measured in a variety of ways, such as the period of time the bill stays in parliament for, and whether parliament can take on board evidence from committees and implement the bills into legislation. In order to determine if the House of Lords has been more effective than the House of Commons in scrutinising public bills, it is crucial to compare and contrast the effectiveness of the procedures used in both houses.

Advocates of the parliamentary form of government suggested a few competitive strengths of this system of government. Since it has gained a stable parliamentary majority, the government is able to smoothly process its legislative project. In addition, the government is adequately furnished that it could still choose to adopt measures designed to support the national interests while many strong sectional groups oppose such measures (Dyck, 2012). The prime minister is the leader of this type of government, who is obliged to be responsive to all its people’s demands. Also, the people have the right to vote and replace the prime minister due to any incompetency of governance that does not address and fulfill their desires. This is known as the non-confidence vote; the government may be removed when it has lost confidence in the parliament, and cause the head of state to resign a new government (Dyck, 2012). An example of such measure occurred in Britain on March 28th, 1979. When James Callaghan’s labour government was defeated in the House of Commons just by one vote, it was forced into an early election that was won by the opposition leader Margaret Thatcher (Dyck, 2012). In this case, it can avoid or at least reduce the period of legislative gridlock, because of its flexibility in elections and the power is centered in the country’s prime

For many years it has been argued that parliamentary sovereignty has, and still is, being eroded. As said by AV Dicey, the word ‘sovereignty’ is used to describe the idea of “the power of law making unrestricted by any legal limit”. Parliamentary sovereignty is a principle of the UK constitution, stating that Parliament is the supreme legal authority in the UK, able to create and remove any law. This power over-rules courts and all other jurisdiction. It also cannot be entrenched; this is where all laws passed by the party in government can be changed by future parliaments. In recent years sovereignty of parliament has been a

The House of Lords is the second chamber of the UK Parliament and is independent to the Commons although it complements the work of the Commons. Members of the Lords play a vital role in scrutiny, there are two main reasons for this, the first being that they are independent to the Commons and in many ways have increased power which they often use to stand up to the Commons by blocking reforms. Lords also have a better balance of parties so no government has a majority. The Government however can override Lords by using Parliament Act; this was used when the fox hunting ban was being put through under Blair’s government as there were too many in opposition of the ban in the House of Lords. The Parliament Acts, although rarely used, provide a way of solving disagreement between the Commons and the Lords. The Parliament Act of 1949 also prevents Lords from delaying bills for more than one year.

Within the United Kingdom, a recurring issue has been raised regarding the political position of Scotland and how the Scottish Parliament could better govern the country. To establish whether the quality of life could be improved for the Scottish people, key events, devolution, and the Scottish Parliament must be evaluated and analysed. The argument for greater power in decision making and the ability to implement change for the citizens of Scotland, has been central to Scottish politics for some time.

Reasons being that MPs are elected, the House is an elected body consisting of 650 members known as Members of Parliament (MPs). Members are elected to represent constituencies by first-past-the-post system and hold their seats until Parliament is dissolved. MPs are elected during an election by everyone eligible to cast a vote .The constituency selects one candidate to be their MP. The candidate who gets the most votes becomes the MP for that area until the next election.

There is also a large outcry about the pay given to members of the House of Lords when they are in session. Members are given an attendance allowance of three hundred pounds, if the member chooses to attend a session, but can be reduced to one hundred pound upon request (Members of Lords: Allowances, 2017). This amount totals to approximately 1.5 million pounds a year. Recall that the members of parliament are, usually, experts in their

I personally feel that the process of changing/creating laws is very redundant, and makes passing bills a slow and grueling process. I understand that the bill needs to be read over and changed several times before it fits all of the needs and wants of the many politicians present in the House of Commons, but I do not see the need for three readings of the bill, which can end up becoming shouting matches between the opposing parties because of their beliefs. Besides that, the system of creating laws is also lopsided in favour to majority governments, as if they have more than half of the seats then they can near pass or vote out whatever laws fit their agenda. On top of this, I do not see the need for the Senate to repeat the process over again,

The political apparatus has evolved in the knowledge that flexibility brings both strength and weakness. The importance of a clear separation of powers, respect to the rule of law and the observation of long established conventions is pivotal to maintaining constitutional balance within the UK. These lines that separate are much more blurred than that of other mature democracies. Walter Bagehot famously called this the ‘efficient secret’ to the strong UK Government. This view had more prevalence before the Constitutional Reform Act 2005, when the Lords served as the Second Chamber and in the highest court in the land.

“Parliamentary sovereignty is no longer, if it ever was, absolute” (Lord Hope). Discuss with reference to at least three challenges to the doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty. Parliamentary sovereignty is the concept that Parliament has the power to repeal, amend or create any law it wishes and therefore no body in the UK can challenge its legal validity. There are many people who would argue that this is a key principle to the UK Constitution, on the other hand, there are those who strongly believe that this idea is one of the past, and that the idea of the UK Parliament being sovereign is false. One of these people is Lord Hope, who said “Parliamentary sovereignty is no longer, if it ever was, absolute”. During the last 50 years there have been a variety of developments that have proved to be a challenge for the legitimacy of parliamentary sovereignty, and the ones which will be examined in this essay are: the devolution of powers to the Scottish Parliament; The United Kingdom’s entry into the European Union in 1973; and finally the power of judicial review. Starting with the devolution of powers, these challenges will all be evaluated when discussing whether or not the doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty applies to the United Kingdom. Westminster’s sovereignty has been gradually diminishing over time as varying amounts of power have been devolved to Northern Ireland, Wales and Scotland. In this essay, the devolution of powers to the Scottish Parliament will be