"The House of Commons is a highly effective parliamentary chamber" to what extent do you agree with this view? (40)

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"The House of Commons is a highly effective parliamentary chamber" to what extent do you agree with this view? (40)

        The House of Commons is without a doubt the dominant chamber within Parliament , with huge influence and supreme power in UK politics. It consists of 650 elected MPs, each one representing the interests and concerns of a particular region of the country, known as a constituency. It has three very important main functions; legislation, scrutiny and representation, but it is often questioned how effectively it carries out these functions. I do agree that it is a highly effective parliamentary chamber, but also think there is evidence for this view to be contradicted.

        Parliament is Britain's Legislature, where legislation, the process of passing new laws, takes place. It is mainly carried out in the House of Commons and there are many different types of it, with the two most important being; government bills and private members bills. For a bill to become law is must pass through a number of parliamentary stages, which involves a lot of close reading, amending and debating in both the parliamentary chambers, however the House of Commons has far more legislative power, as the Lords can only suggest amendments or delay bills from becoming law (which the House of Commons can actually override anyway). It can be said the Commons fulfil the function of legislation effectively for various reasons, one being; because its large majorities makes it very efficient. Party's can rely on their loyal MPs to vote in favour of their bills, for example; from 1997-2005 Blair's government didn't lose a single vote in the House of Commons because he had such a high majority. The efficiency of this majority also means the government is able to act quickly and decisively  in an emergency, where as if there was no single party with popular support, legislation could be chaotic and it would be difficult to come to a decision. For example, the Terrorism Act of 1999 was passed in just 48 hours, which shows how efficient it can be as it can often take months and months to pass a bill. However, the large majorities in the House of Commons can be looked at in another light and some argue that it shows the Commons is not an effective parliamentary chamber. The reasons for this view are that, even when people don't agree with a bill, they usually do, as there is an incredible amount of pressure for them to vote with their own party. So in relation to this people often say the legislative process is too efficient. An example to back this up would be when Blair had such a big majority, laws introducing tuition fees and foundation hospitals were passed, despite many concerns about them.

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        Another strength of the legislative system is that it provides lots of good opportunities for scrutiny of bills. Which means, although it contradicts my first point, governments do not always get their own way. The committee stage is a particularly good opportunity for detailed line-by-line scrutiny of a bill, where anomalies in the bill can be identified and amendments suggested.

        Private Members Bills are also a big strength of the legislative system, as they provide an excellent opportunity for ordinary backbench MPs to introduce bills on issues they personally feel strongly about. These can often be moral or ethical matters ...

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Here's what a teacher thought of this essay

4 Stars - Overall a thorough, analytical and well organised piece of work. Strong subject knowledge and understanding is evident throughout, and supporting examples are deployed skillfully. Where this could be improved is with more careful evaluation of some points - in places a point was thoroughly explained and then dismissed as unimportant in a way that lacked subtlety and nuance. The conclusion failed to adequately recapitulate the range of points and the evaluation that had taken place in the rest of the essay. Overall though, a thorough piece of work.