Parliament executive interactions understanding

Unit 2.2.4

A rare but effective method to scrutinise the government is the presentation of a humble address motion to the monarch. A humble address is a direct message to the monarch, skipping out the government as parliament’s messenger. If a vote is held on a humble address the result is …

binding on the house. In recent years the humble address procedure has been used to force the government to disclose documents they otherwise haven’t wanted to disclose to the parliament. 

Examples of successful humble addresses include in 2019 where a humble address calling for the publication of operation yellowhammer documents passed 311 to 301. Similarly in 2022...

a humble address motion was passed which called the publication of documentation relating to the advice given by the house of lords appointment commission on the awarding of peerage to Lord Lebedev

Backbenchers are limited in the extent to which they can individually hold the government to account. This is because they are very heavily whipped and are reliant on the support of their party to be re-elected. However,…

there have been an increase in the mechanisms in recent years that have seen an increase in the power of backbenchers:

• The formation of the backbench committee

• They may be elected to sit on select committees

the willingness of backbenchers to rebel has increased in recent years - particularly over the issue of Brexit. During the crisis Theresa May lost her first vote on her withdrawal agreement by a record of 230 votes. This figure included …

a rebellion of 188 Conservative MPs. This shows that backbench MPs can have a significant impact when they stand together.

Many individual MPs have specialist interests on which they’re able to scrutinise the government closely. However, backbenchers are overall extremely limited in their ability to scrutinise the government because …

 of the dominance of parties in Parliament. 

Britain is a parliamentary system. This means that the Government only holds power whilst it retains the support of the house of commons. Therefore, the ultimate way that Parliament can scrutinise the Government is by …

testing that support  through a motion of no confidence. If a government loses a motion they are forced to resign and call a new general election.

Motions of no confidence are an essential mechanism for ensuring that the government has a clear mandate from the elected representatives and therefore has the legitimacy to govern. However, there are some clear point of weakness as regards the:...

they are extremely rare. the last was in 2019 and before that 1995. the votes almost always The votes almost always go straight down party lines because MPs are unlikely to bring down their own government and face an election from a position of weakness, for example in the last 3 motions: in 2019 not a single Conservative voted against Theresa May, in 1993 not a single Conservative voted against John Major and in 1979 a single Labour MP voted against  James Callaghan. 

Unsuccessful motions include Theresa May in 2019 and John Major in 1993, surviving respectively with 325-206 and 339-229. Successful motions include …

James Callaghan in 1979, losing by 311-310, and Stanley Baldwin in 1924 by 328-251.

Explicit motions instigated by the government: Whilst it may seem strange, it is quite possible for the government to call a motion in itself. This might be done to proactively show that an embattled PM has the support of the house of commons. For example, in 1993 …

John Major threatened to call a motion of confidence so that his MPs would pass the social chapter of the Maastricht treaty. 

Explicit motions instigated by the opposition: These are by far the most common method in which a motion comes about. This means …

that the opposition lay  amotion in front of the house. For example, this happened on 16th January 2019 the day after Theresa May’s record 230 vote defeat on her Brexit deal.

There are a number of formal occasions where a vote against the government is seen to be an implicit motion of no confidence. For example …

 the vote on the queen's speech, the vote on the budget or a vote on a policy that is essential to the government agenda and a loss of which would indicate they could not continue to govern

However, parliamentary motions of no confidence are different to party motions of no confidence. Individual parties have mechanisms through which to test their own MPs confidence in their party leader. For example, in December 2018 Theresa May faced a motion of no confidence from Conservative Party MPs. she survived this by 200-117. It was in January 2019 that she faced …

 a parliamentary motion of no confidence table by then Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn. In the Conservative Party a confidence vote can be initiated if 15% of Conservative MPs submit a no confidence MPs submit a no confidence letter to the Chairman of the 1922 committee. In the Labour party a leadership can be triggered if 20% of Labour MPs support another challenger.

The formal mechanisms via which the House of Lords scrutinises the executive a similar to the house of commons:

debates, question time (known as private notice questions in the lords), select committees, legislationhaving no in-built majority and having more bipartisanship

Unlike the House of Commons, the house of lords spend a significant amount of time going through bills in detail. They are often said to go through a bill ‘line by line’. in the commons, the 2020 agriculture act totalled …

10 hours and 3 minutes of time, whilst in the House of Lords it spent exactly 96 hours of scrutiny. When it reaches the committee stage in the house of lords, the bill is considered by a ‘committee of the whole house’ rather than as in the commons, a group of MPs selected by the party whips

Members of the Lords are appointed for life. They therefore don’t need to please their party whips in order to keep their position. Although there is party whipping in the lords, it is far weaker. In addition, there are currently 189 crossbenchers in the Lords who have no party whips to control them. As a result of these factors …

 the lords shows much more partisan independence than the commons. This can be seen in the number of government defeats suffered in the house of lords compared to the house of commons. Between 2015 and 2023, governments suffered 51 defeats in the commons, but 443 in the lords.

between the 2015 general election 452% more defeats occurred in the lords than the commons. One of the benefits of the lords is that it is full of people who are experts in their chosen field. For the most part…

people are appointed to the lords following significant achievements in their professional lives. This same level of expertise simply doesn’t exist in the house of commons. 

Whilst members of the commons may build up political expertise, they are best characterised as generalists - they try to manage an interest in many different policy areas. Peers, however, on the most part can best be described as specialists. Many peers will only debate and contribute to issues they have some level of expertise in. For example …

Lord West became a peer in 2007. Prior to this he had been the first sea lord. As of october 2021 and looking at his last 10 contributions to the lords, 6 had been directly related to military matters, 2 about manufacture and particular points were raised about shipbuilding and one was about intelligence matters. Only one was about something in which he could

the house of lords has a significant expertise in scrutinising statutory instruments. Unlike the commons, the lords have a specific committee through which they scrutinise statutory instruments. This is called the secondary legislation scrutiny committee.  Whilst the general public might not know about them …

 most legislation is delegated and this makes the lords an essential part of the legislative process. Following the EU Referendum the government was criticised for using so-called ‘Henry VII’ powers to push through the conversion of EU law into UK law. These powers would be exercised via statutory instrument, making the Lords essential in keeping a check on the government. If either house rejects a statutory instrument it cannot become law.

SIs cannot be amended. However, since 1950, only 16 statutory instruments have been rejected of which …

 just 5 were rejected by the house of lords and a total of 0.01% since 1965.

The term ‘elective dictatorship’ was coined by Lord Hailsham in 1976. It refers to the idea that Parliament is completely dominated by the government of the day to the extent that …

despite being popularly elected, the government can act like a dictatorship.

Hailsham was writing in the 1970s, during the government of James Callaghan. He argued that Britain was an elective dictatorship for two key reasons …

The lack of separation of powers and the control of parliament by the PM (majority party and party discipline), once elected, the PM was in effect a dictator and The PM has little need to listen to others for the next 4-5 years, with powers to alter the constitution and the british political system. No other body could check the PM.

Most British governments are created with a clear majority. The FPTP voting system makes this likely.

Since 1945 there have been 19 general elections. They have produced: 17 majorities, 2 minorities and 1 coalition. The average majority in parliament since 1945 has been 57.4 seats.

MPs rely on their political parties for their position, without it, they are unlikely to be elected

Since 1950, only 9 MPs have been elected as independents. The only current sitting MP as an independent is Sylvia Hermon. Only 4 minor political parties have had MPs in Parliament: UKIP, Respect, Green and Democratic Labour. So far, only 3 minor parties have successfully won an election to the Westminster parliament.

The PM is unmistakably the most powerful person in his or her political party, managing their personal influence is large. The most obvious example of this power of patronage is that the PM …

appoints his own government ministers. For an MP to advance in their career, they therefore need the personal support of the PM and are unlikely to do anything to upset him or her

There are few checks and balances in the constitutional system. The government …

largely dominates the parliamentary agenda.