Constitutional Covention In United Kingdom

The legal sources of United Kingdom constitution could be trace back to the Magna Carta 1215, the bills of right 1689 and more recently the Human Rights Act 1998.The legal sources of United Kingdom constitution could be said to more strictly followed compared to the non legal sources. Since in a country where there is an unwritten constitution the courts are not able to question any act of Parliament, in line with Parliamentary Supremacy, thus if there is a conflict between the legal sources and an act of Parliament the act of Parliament prevails. For the non legal sources, the United Kingdom has the constitutional convention as their source. Constitutional convention are practices or tradition which is followed for so long that breaching it would cause implications to those bound by it. Some examples of constitutional conventions are the appointment of the Prime Minister by the queen where the Prime Minister should comes from the House of Commons, the dissolution of Parliament by the queen with the advise of the Prime Minister and Ministerial Responsibility.

The reason why there is a need of constitutional convention is because since there is no written constitution in United Kingdom, there is no clear separation of powers in United Kingdom as for this it can lead to an abuse of power. As for if there is an overlapping in the separation of powers then it would could lead the United Kingdom being ruled by a tyrant. As for one of the most important constitutional convention which is Ministerial Responsibility, this has lead to members of the executive being accountable for their actions, such as the Arms to Iraq scandal and the Cash for Question Affair. Since the judiciary usually do not get involved with political matters , it could be said that constitutional conventions regulates the conduct of ministers and making sure that they don't abuse their power ( In the case of David Blunkett where he abuse his power)

The Royal Prerogative which is the residue of arbitrary power left legally to the crown, could be abuse too since after the case of GCHQ the court could only review cases which is justifiable. This means the constitutional conventions is the only thing that regulate the crown on certain issues. For example if the Queen want to appoint a Prime Minister not from the House of Common or House Of Lords she could do so, but since constitutional convention regulates that the queen has to appoint the person who comes from the party that has won the election and sits in the house of common she could face serious repercussion if she does it. One could see the constitutional convention before 1911 where the House of Lords should pass through finance bills from the House of Commons, but since the House Of Lords fails to do this the Parliament Act 1911 was enacted. This shows that if a constitutional convention is not followed it could lead to severe consequences.

Since the courts do not recognize constitutional conventions, it could be said that since United Kingdom has an unwritten constitution the non legal sources of the constitution is much importance. If United Kingdom reform it's constitution and making it a written constitution then constitutional convention especially ministerial responsibility would not be as flexible as it has been now, and this could lead to a constitutional deadlock one would believe the unwritten constitution of United Kingdom where Parliament is the most supreme law making body, the constitutional convention acts to lubricate the workings of the government of the day.