Structure of Parliament understanding

Unit 2.2.1

The UK parliament is made up of three parts:

the House of Commons, the House of Lords and the Monarch (known as the Crown-in-Parliament). This means the UK system is bicameral, as it has two chambers of parliament. A parliament that only has one chamber is known as unicameral.

examples of unicameral parliaments are israel and new zealand, whilst bicameral parliaments exist in …

australia, the USA and germany

Some countries have experimented with a tricameral legislature.

. An example was South Africa in the 1980’s. However tricameralism has been widely seen as a failure when attempted.

advantages of bicameralism inlcude that…

Second chambers can act as a check upon first chambers, particularly if there is a dominant executive, the executive can be checked more effectively, there is a broader basis for representation, more time for a close examination of legislation and constitutional checks and potentially more specialists involved in making and scrutinising legislation.

disadvantages of bicameral systems include that …

they can be costly, second chambers sometimes have no purposeful role, they can slow down government, lead to constitutional gridlock and reduced accountability of elected officials with someone else being offered for blame

Parliament has 5 key roles …

representation, offering government ministers, legislation, legitimisation and scrutiny, remembered as ROLLS

MPs in the commons serve a constituency. One of their duties is to represent …

 the views of their constituents within the chamber.

Parliament provides the recruitment pool from which ministers must be drawn. Unlike the USA and other countries …

government ministers in Britain must be either a member of the Lords or the Commons.

One of Parliament’s primary functions is to make laws: to legislate. Although most of the bills proposed will be proposed by…

by the government, they still must go through both houses of parliament to become laws.

The government of the UK is not directly elected. Therefore, its legitimacy rests on having the support of the House of Commons. If the House of Commons passes a motion …

of no confidence, the government will be dissolved and a new election may need to be called.

 One of parliament’s roles is also to scrutinise and question the work of the government. There are a number of ways that it does this, for instance …

 through question ministers and having its members serve in committees.

Both chambers of parliament have roles that are distinct to them and roles that they share with the other chamber. Roles distinct to the commons include:

approval of money bills and taxation, the ability to block government legislation entirely, to remove a government through a vote of no confidence or to represent constituents.

roles shared by both house include …

to debate legislation, suggest amendments, debates on issues of national security and scrutinise actions of the executive. The role distinct to the lords is to examine secondary legislation in detail. 

The house of lords, although still informally called the ‘upper chamber’, has much less power than the commons. This is because of…

democratic legitimacy and the fact the commons id democratically elected, giving it greater legitimacy, statutes that help to enforce the dominance of the commons such as the Parliament Acts that meand the lords can only delay and not block legislation, the several conventions limiting the lords power such as the salisbury convention and the financial privilege of the commons. the lords don’t vote against money bills

procedural changes since 1997 include …

The sitting times of the commons. This was changed to become more ‘family friendly’, More office space was provided through the £235 million building of portcullis house, the commons liaison committee made up of all the chairs of the commons committees, has been able to regularly call upon the PM to answer questions on the behalf of the select committees and more time has been set aside for pre-legislative scrutiny of bills to make sure they are more carefully considered.