Introduction The British Parliament is bicameral, it means parliament is made up of two Houses, the House of Lords and the House of Commons. Through the ages, the House of Lords is always weak than the House of Commons, therefore, more and more people are talking about should the House of Lords be reformed. There are some Prime Minister try to do some changes with the House of Lords. Before 1999, there were 1210 Lords, including near 650 peers were Hereditary peers, however, there were only 19 peers Labour and more than 300 peers were Conservative. In 1997, the Labour Party gains a majority, Tony Blair became the new Prime Minister, Labour adopted a 2-step innovation, but it just about peers number change, after that, there were 690 peers in …show more content…
Truism, British has a representative democracy, it has two chambers in British Parliament, the House of Commons and the House of Lords, in the House of commons, which party gains a majority seats, it will be the new government, actually, if there are some Bill should have a vote, the government always win. However, when the Bill finish the Third Reading in the House of Commons, it will come to the House of Lords. Although Lords is weak than Commons, they still have the power to delay bill for one years, primarily, because of the existence of the House of Lords, the government cannot dictatorship in the …show more content…
In the other hand, the peers who works in the Lords, they do not have a general election, it is a vulnerability in a democracy country. In my opinion, I believe that the House of Lords should be reformed, first, the peers should have a General Election before they come to the Lords, it is significant step to help the House of Lords be more direct in the parliament. Second, for the Life Peer and the Hereditary Peer, all of the House of Lords member should have a term, and can not give this work to their the oldest child. When a people become a peers work in the Lords, they should have a work year, it signifies that the General Election for the House of Lords in every 5 or 10 years, they can not have this job all the life, job rotation will help the Lords work be more good. Certainly, it can change the number of people who work in in the House of Lords, after all, 817 peers work in the Lords is a huge number, it not only is a big number more than the House of Commons, cause that the House of Commons only have 650 members, but also can assure peers are excellent
This essay will address whether New Labour contained policies with which it wished to pursue, or was solely developed in order to win elections. It is important to realise whether a political party that held office for approximately 13 years only possessed the goal of winning elections, or promoted policies which it wished to pursue. If a party that held no substance was governing for 13 years, it would be unfair to the people. New Labour was designed to win elections, but still contained policies which it wished to pursue. To adequately defend this thesis, one must look at the re-branding steps taken by New Labour and the new policies the party was going to pursue. Through analysis, it will be shown that New Labour promoted policies in regards
Canada runs on a democratic model of governing based on the British parliamentary system. Its parliament is thus divided into two chambers: the House of Commons and the Senate. Elected politicians are seated within The House of Commons while the Senate occupies qualified citizens which are appointed by the Prime Minister. Parliament’s purpose is to hold responsibility for passing legislations and the choosing of government, referring to the political party with the largest amount of seats. Depending on the results of the election, Canada has the potential of having either a majority, minority or in the rare case a coalition government. Customarily, an election in Canada usually ends up forming a majority government. The party with more than
In this essay I will argue that British General Elections should be conducted using a system of Proportional Representation. First, I will argue that the system would be more democratic as every vote that is cast would be represented and this ...
The Atlantic region, which is smaller in size and population than the western provinces, has more seats in the Senate. Representation in the Senate is very unfair and unevenly distributed. The House of Commons is representation by population and is fair. If The Senate were to be elected, the campaigning costs would cause a tax increase, resulting in unhappy citizens. Another thing about the Senate is that senators can stay in position until they are 75. This lowers the chance of different people having a seat in the Senate. Younger senators who might have different ideas than traditional elderly senators might not get a chance to voice their opinions. Times have changed and whereas I'm sure the elderly has more wisdom and experiences, many of the viewpoints and circumstances have changed than back then and we need people who have fresher ideas. However if we were to change how long the senators can stay in position, it would need a new set of rules and it would be a very complicated and unnecessary
So, what happens after a party wins? It has been observed, “Legislative seats almost always work to benefit the party winning the most votes” (Tufte, 1973). If the share of the votes increases, the share of the seats increases, and in most elections the winning party still will probably have less than 65% of the vote. The theory of the Cube Law says that the vote odds equal the seat odds, and that the outcomes of the votes to seats ratio will be predictable no matter what (Tufte, 1973). Although this Law has not necessarily predicted a correct outcome in every election since its birth, it should be noted that its accuracy around the whole world is higher than in just specific
A minority government allows for the Prime Minister to maintain several important resources that are essential for an effective government (Akash, et al. 2010, 217-218). The governing party is in control of the “budget process, delegate legislation and prerogative powers including the right to seek an early election” (Akash, et al. 2010, 218). The minority government is also in control of the Civil Service machine (Akash, et al. 2010, 218). By keeping these powers, the governing power still maintains a large amount of power within parliament and it does not hinder policy making or legislative processes. However, a minority government does slow down policy making and legislative processes because there is a greater demand for negoti...
The House of Lords is a functioning body that does good work and therefore the issues that it does have should be improved, rather than lead to the whole thing being dissolved. The previous steps to reforming the house have been successful in both making it less powerful and more legitimate. The 1911 and 1949 Parliaments Acts limited the House of Lords’ power to block government legislation and this means that although the Lords are unelected they don’t have enough power to challenge the government that much, as we have a system of asymmetrical bicameralism, and this means that the choices of the people are usually carried out with occasional changes to make sure the government is doing its duty properly. There is also the 1999 House of Lords Act, which removed all but 92 of the hereditary peers, and this made the house more meritocratic and representative, which increased its
Dinkin, M., and White, I.2008. Voting system in UK. Library of House of Commons: Parliament and Constitution Centre. http://www.ucl.ac.uk/constitution-unit/files/108_icpr_final.pdf (accessed November 20, 2010)
Benefits of the Appointment of Members to the House of Lords There are certain benefits to having appointed members in the House of
importance." (Loades 93) But the Parliament did also have its faults. It had a separation between the House of Lords and the House of Commons. The House of the Lords was closer to the court, highly spiritual, and made themselves to the hand of the monarch.
The most significant and challenge to the traditional view of parliamentary sovereignty was Britain’s membership of the European Community in 1972. The European Communities Act 1972 brought with it the requirement that European Law be given priority over domestic courts over conflicting issues of national law. This notion was a direct affront to parliamentary sovereignty, which required that if a later statute, contradicted and earlier statute, which sought to incorporate European Law into English Law, then the later statute should impliedly repeal the earlier statute. Therefore the European Communities act imposed a substantive limit on the legislative ability of subsequent Parliaments.
Taylor, H. (1910). The constitutional crisis in Great Britain: Bicameral system should be retained with House of Lords reorganized on an elective basis. Concord, N.H: Rumford Press. 6th edition
The first country to establish Parliamentary Democracy was Britain and was adopted by the other former colonies. Israel also adopted this government system on May 4, 1948, which worked out really well. In Parliamentary Democracy, the party which has the most votes usually chooses the prime minister. Just in case the winning party is not the majority, the two parties unite and compromise on the issue to get things done. As a result, the party might grant an office 9 members of the cooperating party.
Due to the historical differences between the countries making up the United Kingdom, devolution has been applied in different ways, although the aims and benefits have
In parliamentary government, the people in a country elect members of at least one house of the legislature (by any variety of means: proportional representation as in Israel, single member districts as in Britain). The party or coalition of parties (coalition means a group working together) whose members together form a majority (more than one-half) of the legislature form the government. This means that they select the Prime Minister (the leader of the government) as well as members of the Cabinet (the PM and the Cabinet are known collectively as the government; the parties not in power form the loyal opposition). A key aspect of the parliamentary system is that the executive (the Prime Minister and the Cabinet) is elected by the legislature. This contrasts with our own system with its separation of powers. In the US, the president (leader of the executive branch) and Congress (the legislature) are elected separately by the people.