How effectively does the UK Parliament carry out its functions
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.
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
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