British Parliament Case Study

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Introduction
A parliamentary system of government is one in which government governs in and through the assembly of the parliament, thereby fusing the executive and legislative branch of government. Heywood (2000:313). Although they are formally distinct, the assembly and the executive are bound together in a way that violates the doctrine of separation of power. The British Parliament is one of the oldest parliaments in the world. This study is concerned with understanding the efficiency and effectiveness of the parliament in producing legislation.
It should be noted that the United Kingdom operates an unwritten constitution which implies that its laws are contained in Acts, conventions and legislation; this made the parliament the supreme …show more content…

This implies that the laws are made by the parliament and suggests parliamentary supremacy. Recently, there has been argument that the British parliament are inefficient and ineffective in legislative duties this was born out of the fact that the European Union have over shadowed the activities of the many European countries such that EU laws override that of the individual nations.
The members of British parliament refer to the two chambers made up of the popularly elected House of Common and non elected House of Lords. In the view of Almond et al (2000: 136), within the British parliament, the prime minister occupies a unique position sometimes refers to as Primus inter pares i.e first among equal. But to become a prime minister, a politician must first be elected leader of his/her political party, which qualifies him/her to be prime minister if his/her party wins the majority seat in the …show more content…

The is some logic in this, as in some areas of law, European law over-rules British law, even if it is not ratified by the supposedly sovereign parliament or even by an elected body. A good example of this is the so-called; Metric Martyr, case, in which a Sunderland market stall holder was successfully prosecuted for not following an EU directive over selling goods in metric as well as imperial measurements Blackburn and Andrew (2003) . Still, this raises questions over the need for a British parliament when it does not have complete control over British

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