Parliament's Loss of Sovereignty

Parliament's Loss of Sovereignty

Parliamentary Sovereignty is defined in two terms. These are legal and

political. The legal term means that Parliament can do what they want

to for example making laws, which can’t be overruled by anyone, and

that Parliament has unrestricted powers. There are three elements to

the Parliamentary, which are the Commons, the Lords and the Monarch.

Another thing about the legal term is that no parliament can pass a

law which would affect successors. The political term to this makes

the Parliamentary Sovereignty seem misleading. This is because the

monarch is now just symbolic and has no normal powers, the Lords isn’t

elected and the Commons is dominated by the majority party which

usually has less than 50% of the seats. A second thing about the

political term is that even though Parliament is legally all-

powerful, when in practise it can be seen as restricted. An example of

this is when Margaret Thatcher was allowed to pass the unpopular poll

tax. In result to this, she lost the following elections which showed

that the people had power over the government, not physically, but

enough which pressurises the government.

There are three issues which question Parliamentary Sovereignty. These

are EU laws, HRA and Devolution.

EU laws have dramatically affected Parliamentary Sovereignty as the UK

are members of the EU. When UK and EU laws contradict, the European

law always overrules the UK law, which is seen, as that Parliamentary

Sovereignty is weak because one of the legal terms was that no one can

overrule UK laws but here we see that it does. So we can say that

Parliamentary has lost some Sovereignty, as there is a superior body

to the British Parliament. However on the other hand it can be see as

that only UK can change the law and also the UK could leave the EU if

they wanted. So here we can see that the legal term is still in effect

as here the UK is superior as they are the one’s who make the