How effective is the House of Commons as a check on the executive?

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How effective is the House of Commons as a check on the executive?

        What is meant by the effectiveness of the commons check on the executive is basically, how able is the house of commons to prevent the Government (executive) from getting its own way or forcing its will upon the people of Britain.  In theory the commons level of effectiveness is constant as each Member of Parliament has an opinion on every bill or motion that is put forward that is based on conscience. This is not practicable, however, as the party system and the party whips change this. The whips tell MPs which way to vote and can impose sanctions upon those MPs who rebel against the government.

        Therefore when considering the effectiveness of the commons as a check on the executive one must consider how that effectiveness can change with each general election. For example, John Major was extremely limited in the power he could exercise as Prime Minister as his the Tory party was the biggest party by only twelve seats and so he could easily be outvoted if a policy was widely opposed.

        The opposite of this would be the first of Tony Blair’s terms in office. With over four hundred New Labour Members of Parliament Blair could afford to push almost any policy he wanted and expect it to be passed with a comfortable majority. Gradually the number of New Labour dissenters has grown and there have been a number of backbench rebellions against Blair. He has, however, survived all of these by virtue of his huge parliamentary majority.

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        Many commentators have suggested that in the coming 2005 election Blair will be returned to office with a majority reduced by thirty to forty seats. If this is the case it is likely that Blair will be forced to operate as if he were heading a minority government as Major did. Should this happen then the commons will be more effective at controlling the executive.

 

        As I have hinted, in New Labour’s first term 1997 to 2001 the Labour party was accused of having too much cohesion. There were few backbench rebellions and most Labour MPs were toeing ...

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