One way in which parliament can be seen to be representative is that its members try to be representatives of their constituencies’ beliefs. The way they do this is that most MPs hold regular ‘surgeries’ in which the constituency puts forward ideas and opinions to the MP to put forward to parliament. For example Andrew Rosendale the MP for Romford holds weekly surgeries in different parts of Romford and made a speech about the environment in parliament after it had been raised in one of said surgeries. Also constituents can go to Westminster and lobby their MP to raise points which makes the MP Representative politically for his area. Petitions are also able to be submitted to the MPs which make the MPs aware of the constituency’s problems and every year there are nationwide petitions and the most popular ones are voted on in parliament i.e. the Hillsborough disaster petition will be voted on later this year entitling the release of information relevant to the disaster. This makes parliament representative of the nation’s views and current feelings.
Another way in which parliament is unrepresentative is that the house of lords is unrepresented of the public’s political opinions due to the power of patronage. The Prime Minister has the prerogative power of patronage which allow him/her to choose the peers in the house of lords so is able to establish another political majority in the houses of parliament to support the PM which stops the HOL being representative as it is just representative of the allies of the PM for example after the 1997 leadership election Blair began to remove the conservative peers from the house and replace them with labour leaning peers which gave him more support in the house and as a result allowed him to pass more laws unopposed by the house such as the music license law which faced stiff opposition from the conservatives and would have been unlikely to have been passed under a conservative dominated HOL. This shows the HOL to be unrepresentative as it is only representative of the party that controls it. Whilst the house of Lords perhaps reflects the specialists in certain industries it can be seen that any advice or scrutiny given would have their own political spin on it so if say Lord Sugar a Lord with labour affiliations was asked his advice on the current economic climate he would probably suggest something in line with labours policies. This shows the HOL to be further unrepresentative of the specialists in industries as they all have political affiliations.
Another way in which parliament can be seen to be representative is that it is representative of current events and public feelings. It can be seen that modern politics is very much reactionary to crisis and current opinions which shows parliament to be representative of commonly held views. For example whilst Parliament is very socially unrepresentative, civil rights bills and voting rights bills were all pushed through when the support for them grew enough, this shows parliament to listen to the people and to act on those majority views. It also acts on crises for example after 9/11 the 90 day terror laws were introduced, the expenses scandal and the phone hacking scandal was also investigated after public outcry. Perhaps the biggest show of public representation was when there were considerations about going into the euro but the public feelings against it were so great it caused the government to scrap all plans for the euro. It can also be seen through governments reactions to pressure groups such Friends of the earth had influence on the climate change bill, petitions as noted in an earlier paragraph also plays a part and through new found public agreement on certain issues like the environment influences policy in the HOP. This shows the HOP to be representative in terms of current affairs.
Another way in which parliament is not representative is that it isn’t representative to all parties fairly due to FPTP. It could be argued that Parties are represented in a disproportionate manner under FPTP, since 1979 it has largely been the case that parties have no gained seats in the HOC in proportion to the popular vote. The liberal democrats and other smaller parties have been hit harder than most in this respect for example in 2005 they had 23% of the votes and only got 10% of the seats, in 97 they had 25% of the votes but only got 23 seats. More recently however, the conservative party have also found themselves to be under-represented in their seats in proportion to their percentage of the vote i.e. in 2005 they received 33% of the vote but, only got 31% seats whilst not a large number of difference it shows that there was inadequacies in proportionality in voting , FPTP also prevents some seemingly well supported parties such as the green party and UKIP from being represented at all in the HOC as they are not supported all in the same area with spread out support unlike the SDP, Plaid Cymru and Sinn Fein due to their intense regional support. This shows parliament to be unrepresentative of the votes of the people and the political parties they vote for.
In conclusion, in some respects parliament is representative such as through current affairs and such but it seems unless there is mass reform of the electoral system parliament will continue to be unrepresentative of minor parties’ votes and unrepresentative of the people’s political opinions constantly favouring the majority. There also needs to be mass reform of the HOL as it is unrepresentative politically of the country and is merely used as a tool by the PM to further influence policy. This is why parliament is unrepresentative.
