As well as having a profound effect on the judicial workings of the UK constitution, EU membership also affects the political set up within the UK. Under the terms of entry, policy-making power in the various sectors of public policy passed to the institutions of the European Community. Subsequent treaties have served both to extend a range of sectors falling within the competence of the EC and also to strengthen the decision-making capacity of the institutions. The 1987 Single European Act affected a significant shift in the power relationship between the institutions of the community and the institutions of member states, strengthening EC institutions, especially through the extension of qualified majority voting in the Council of Ministers. Further shifts in both levels of power relationship were embodied in the Maastricht Treaty 1993.
This created and new Europe with three separate pillars of power; the European Community (foreign and security policy, Justice and home affairs), expanding the areas of public policy under the European Community's control, and created a co-decision procedure for law making, thus strengthening European parliaments already dominant position. Due to this entire new branch has been added to the UK's existing constitution, branch that does not hang well on an already fruitful tree. However, despite the fact that this factor limits the sovereignty of the UK Parliament, they could agree to withdraw from the EU and therefore demonstrate that parliamentary sovereignty still exists and that the UK constitution is alive and kicking. However, present Labour government seems in favour of moving towards Europe with issues such as the EU currency, therefore complete withdrawal from the EU seems very unlikely.
The UK constitution has four major principles:
1. Parliamentary sovereignty - these is the cornerstone of the British constitution. It is understood that Parliament is the Almighty law making institution within the UK. The UK constitution grants the absolute and unlimited power of Parliament in order to fulfil this principle. Although parliamentary sovereignty exists in theory, as we've seen above they are limitations on its existence in practice.
2. The belief that the UK is run as a unitary state where the formal power comes from a national level and all below fall before it. In the UK's case the formal power is seen as the Queen in Parliament has an omnicompetent body. Although, Parliament, can create and confer certain powers in other bodies such as the Welsh assembly and Stormont, these bodies remain subordinate to the Parliament, can be restricted or even abolished by Parliament.
3. 19th-century constitutional lawyer A.V. Dicey identified the rule of law as one of the twin pillars of the constitution and generally is accepted as one of the essential features of a free society. The application of the principle of the "rule of law" implies the existence of the orderly and just society; otherwise the constitution is likely to lack any practical significance. The features of the rule of law include a definitive statement of the rights and duties of the people. Offences are those prescribed by the ordinary law of land, or some legal authority and no one may be punished except for breach of law. Also, fair and consistently features are applied to the solution of all legal cases. Everyone is presumed to be equal before the law and nobody contained the "above" for law, regardless of his position in government or any other official body.
4. A parliamentary government under constitutional monarchy refers to the form of government established by, and developed since, the Glorious Revolution. In theory Parliament creates law under the supervision of the Queen and House of Lords. However, in practice, the Head of State and the Lords play a small part in today's workings of Parliament. In fact, Britain has a "party government", or as Lord Hallisham unflatteringly to as an "elected dictatorship".
Other principles of the UK constitution includes flexibility (allowing Parliament to amend constitutional laws through the normal process), the fusion half-judicial, executive and legislative powers and the absence of formal restraints on the executive.
Many countries around the world employ parliamentary government based on the Westminster model. The essential aspects of this model include:
1. An elected legislature representing various opinions expressed the multi-party or a two party system. The legislature has not govern, attacked as the source of authority for the executive where exerting a degree of control over it.
2. A parliamentary executive who requires government ministers to be members of the legislature and to be both collectively and individually responsible to it.
And the cabinet system whereby the effective head of this government is not the head of state but a prime minister presiding over a cabinet composed of ministers over whose appointment and removal he or she has control. The fusion of the "governing" and "democratic" spheres of political activity gives Parliament its importance.
In a Parliamentary system like the UK, the Prime Minister must control a majority within at least the House of Commons, however in a Presidential system such as the United States, the president need not have a majority, nor be a representative of the controlling party as the President is elected separately to the congress. As the President cant rely on a strong party majority to ensure the passage of legislation, therefore the President has to manage a balancing act between the demands of different interest groups in order to achieve his objectives and promises to the electorate. On the other hand the President has the power to veto any legislation passed by congress. In the UK the Prime Minister has no power of overrule in regards to Parliament. The American Cabinet contains the heads in chief from the main departments who are responsible to nobody other than the President; consequently the US cabinet has little power in comparison with it British counterparts.
Parliament is the legislative section of the British political system. It is an asymmetric bicameralist system (consisting of two unequal parts), the House of Commons and the House of Lords, of which the Commons is the most dominant. The House of Commons holds five fundamental roles; representation, legislation, scrutiny and influence of the executive, debate of contemporary issues, and recruitment to government. The House of Lords holds two extra roles as the highest court in the land and constitutional safeguards.
The principle function of the Commons can be grouped under four headings: those of Legitimisation, Scrutiny and Influence, Representation and Recruitment.
Legislation is the primary purpose for which representatives were brought together. The House as a whole is a legitimising body, by giving their assent to legislation put forward. Robert Packenham described this as the function of “latent legitimisation”, simply by meeting on a regular basis, they can give the government a moral right to rule. The House also gives “manifest legitimisation”. This is the conscious giving of assent, not only encompassed by the giving of assent to bills, but also the continued support of the government. If the House loses confidence in the government, then by convention, the government will resign or call for dissolution of Parliament.
The House subjects both the measures and actions of government to scrutiny. It does so through debate, questioning and committee deliberations. If the House does not like what it sees, it can influence the bill or policy. It can influence in one of two ways, either through force of argument or with the threat of withdrawing their assent. At the end of the day they might completely withdraw their assent. These two actions are central to Parliaments activity and do absorb most of its time. However, due to the growth of the party system, critics would argue that the government’s stronghold denies sustained and effective scrutiny. Even with limited scrutiny, Parliament nowadays has little chance of influencing the government.
The representative role of Parliament is the fundamental role it performs. It underpins all the other actions of Parliament. It is the body to which individuals are elected to represent the public it serves. It is the way in which the system is made democratic and legitimates the government’s rule of the country by holding it accountable. Parliament is representative in three ways, through party, interest groups and constituency.
The final role of Parliament is to recruit members to government. A majority of who are MPs, they serve an apprenticeship either in opposition or on the government backbenches and learn some of the skills necessary in running government and being able to defend policies to the House. It is the place where MPs attempt to make and then sustain their reputations as competent and able ministers.
People within Britain have a dismal view of Parliament. Over the last 20 years or so, that view has worsened even further. Even at its best, Parliament only has an approval rating of about 6 or 7 out of 10 and less than 1 in 20 people believe it is working well. So why the bad reputation? Below I have listed four reasons, which are responsible for this viewpoint: Sleaze, Partisanship, Executive Dominance and the introduction of new legislation creating bodies.
For many years during the 1970’s and 1980’s, political scandals were rife, with MP’s receiving large amounts of money in exchange for advice or insider information. In 1991 when MP’s for Hire was published 384 MP’s had 522 directorships and 452 consultancies. However the situation came to a head in 1994 when the “Cash for Questions” scandal erupted. The Guardian newspaper claimed that two MP’s, while backbenchers, accepted cash in order to table questions in the House. One of them promptly resigned the other; Neil Hamilton was eventually forced out of office. The after-effect of this scandal was that the then Prime Minister John Major established a committee on standards in public life. After grudgingly accepting the plans put forward the House went further by banning any paid advocacy by MP’s and also forcing them to disclose any private incomes from any outside bodies. The House also put in place a code of conduct and appointing a Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards to help enforce the Code of Conduct. The public’s view of the scandal was subsequent. A MORI poll shortly after the scandal showed that 64% of the pollees believed that most MP’s made lot money by using Parliament improperly. Scandal has tarnished the Houses reputation perhaps irreversibly.
The clash between the parties is a characteristic of British political life. It is a long-standing and understandable feature of the House of Commons. In recent years the public view has shown a belief that party point scoring has largely squeezed a genuine attempts to elicit information. More importantly, partisanship is now more publicly visible. The introduction of the television cameras within the House of Commons means that news broadcast's open up the workings of Parliament to more people that could sit in the public gallery. Although there is general support for broadcasting proceedings within the house it is tended to invoke a negative perception. And 1996 Mori poll revealed a very clear perception of politicians engaged in negative point scoring (see table below).
It if the capacity of the house to fill its functions is undermined not only by executive domination of the house, but also by the creation of other policy-making bodies. There are three principal bodies, which have an effect on the capacity of the house. They are the European Community/union, the courts and devolved assemblies. The European community/union causes problems as Parliament has no formal role in the law making process of the EU, meaning that Parliament can do nothing to prevent regulations have an a binding effect in the UK or to prevent the intention of directives being achieved. Due to British membership of the EC/EU courts have acquired new powers on top of powers incorporated from the European convention of human rights. Further powers have been granted as a consequence of devolution. Devolution is shrinking powers previously enjoyed by parliament. The courts have to enforce all regulations from the EU/EC in preference o those from Parliament.
It is the job of Parliament to keep the ruling body accountable. However, due to the rigid system of parliamentary discipline that exists, it is difficult for government openly or too frequently. This means that much of the traditional work of Parliament in exerting some control over the executive has devolved on the opposition. The first duty of the opposition is to oppose and criticise those measures and policies of the government that it believes to be against the national interest and to highlighting shortcomings in the proposed actions and legislation of the government. In addition, the opposition tries to protect individual rights against arbitrary actions of government by making sure that the government by making sure that it is aware of public opinion when forming its legislative proposals. Debates give the opposition an opportunity to focus criticism on the government and to exercise some control over the executive. This is one of the principal expressions of Parliament’s duty to oversee the workings of government.
The second function of the Opposition is to provide an alternative government. The existence of basically a two tier party system means that there is only the other choice if the government falls and there is no dissolution and subsequent election. The parties have recognised leaders and thus the monarch’s choice is limited to the Leader of the Opposition. The fact that the main opposition party has a chance of eventually forming a government makes its opposition far less extremist than some fringe minority parties. They will be careful not to make any outrageous claims, since they might be called upon to deliver them if the time comes. However it is able to make its own suggestions and present alternative policies to that of the government.
The extent of the influence of the Opposition on the government and vice versa is determined largely by what the Government needs from the opposition and by what resources the Opposition can bring to bear its relations with the other. The opposition’s votes become important to the government only on the rare occasions – usually during the committee stages of government bills – when rebellious government backbenchers and the opposition join together. This is one of the reasons that government backbenchers have influence simply because governments do not want to leave themselves in such a position.
Most of the time the opposition can only draw on two resources in its relations with the government – good reasons and time. The Opposition can try to persuade the government with the power of their argument, or it can consume time so as either to delay for delaying sake or to disrupt the government’s parliamentary programme. The opposition can apply certain sanctions against the government when feelings run high. In 1976 the Conservative opposition stopped pairing arrangements for voting, when the Labour government abused existing arrangements by Labour MP’s presumed absent suddenly appearing in the house to vote.
The strength of the opposition is only in relation to the make up of the government. If the government majority is large and the executive is dominant then the opposition can do little. However they can be all important if the government majority is small. The current opposition faces numerous problems due to the fact that the Labour government has a large majority, a dominant leader and as taken many neo-Conservative policies.
