How Representative Is The UK Political System

Unfortunately the Houses of Parliament can claim to be truly socially representative of the nation as a whole. If we look at the representation of people of different groups in the, Houses of Parliament, we can see that there is high and low numbers of certain minority’s. For instance the % of woman in the House of Commons is 23.1% and the % for men is 76.9%.  Whereas 56.2% are over 50 and 43.8% are below 50, 19.2% with business backgrounds, 2.3% of ethnic minorities and 39.0% with all professions. This shows that there is not a fully representation for all people. For instance men will be voting on topics which if it’s a woman’s topic they will have a say on behalf of woman when it will never affect them.

      Nowadays media and pressure groups can be part of peoples way of representation. The media plays a massive role as it can get feedback from its readers to see what they really want. Then the MP’s will read this in their paper and will want to look popular with the people so will take into consideration there point. Whereas if there was not any paper then the MP’s would just hear from a few certain groups.

      So my judgment with representative is that it is not all its made up to be. For instance you vote for your representative but then what happens after that? Yes he will take into account what his constituency say but at the end of the day he will do what he wants to. This is the problem, in my opinion, with representative democracy, unless they do what you want there not really representing you but that’s the risk you take because they are still entitled to there opinion. But you can look at the benefit that at least you have someone there that you can write to with your concerns and they can help you in some cases with what to do and can give you information on certain subjects.