To what extent does Parliament control executive power?

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To what extent does parliament control executive power?

There are arguments for and against the idea that parliament’s controls executive power. Some of the main arguments for this idea are parliament has the power to veto legislation and the House of Lords can delay legislation. A couple of the main arguments against parliament controlling executive power are that government normally has a majority and mps are unlikely to go against their party.

Due to the UK electoral system being first past the post the government formed normally has an overall majority. The only case where this hasn’t been the case in recent elections was for the May 2010 elections. By the government having an overall majority it means that they are likely to be able to pass any legislation they want to as they are likely to get a majority voting in favour of the legislation due to mp’s voting with their party. Mp’s are likely to be loyal to their party and vote in favour of the legislation that they want to pass as they will most likely want to be seen as loyal to the prime minister. This is because the prime minister has the power to promote mp’s to higher positions.
However, even when the government has an overall majority parliament still has the power to veto any legislation they don’t agree with. Although this rarely happens there are occasions when this has taken place. An example would be in 1986 when the Second Reading of the Sunday Trading Bill got vetoed due to a large group of mp’s opposing it on both religious grounds and the need to protect workers’ rights. A more recent example occurred in 2006 when the government’s plans to extend the period during which terrorist suspects could be imprisoned without trial to 90 days was vetoed by parliament.

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Another argument that goes against the idea that parliament controls the executive is that the House of Lords is unelected. This means that it lacks democratic legitimacy which makes it particularly easy for the government to put down any suggestions made by the House of Lords due to the government being able to claim that they were elected as the public wanted to them to implement these pieces of legislation. Another problem the House of Lords faces is that it isn’t allowed to have input on financial legislation. This means that if the government can link any legislation to being ...

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