The European convention on human rights says that the European courts have supremacy over the UK laws. Abuses of human rights investigated by the European commission of human rights and referred to European Court of Human Rights for trial in Strasbourg, this means that the UK laws will have no say in the out come.
The purpose of the constitution is to distribute power within the political system, but with sovereignty the power is taken from the UK and given for example to the European Courts. This could mean that the limits of the government are not defined, or the process that someone might have to go through if they broke the Human rights act would take a much longer period of time. The overall factor of the European courts is that it replaces the entrenched UK constitution. Entrenchment is the set of rules that governs the way the elections operate and how the votes are counted to choose elected representatives and the government. It has been argued that the fact entrenchment has been established with the use of referendums and their effect on parliamentary sovereignty. Although constitutionally possible, it is politically unlikely that parliament could reverse a decision previously authorised in a referendum. For example the UK’s membership with the European Union.
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The UK has an uncodified constitution, and whilst this has many advantages, it also has many disadvantages. The constitution is not always clear, because it is uncodified, it has been compiled from many sources and it is not always certain if the government is acting constitutionally or unconstitutionally. This is a disadvantage because citizens cannot make a definition between what the constitution says and what the government does. This can be contrasted to the constitution of the United States of America, the constitution of the USA is a codified constitution and this means that the whole constitution is contained within one document and this is much more accessible to the citizens of the state, this means that citizens can tell when the government is acting unconstitutionally. This could not be the case in UK because the constitution is compiled from so many sources it isn’t possible to make it available to the citizens and they cannot tell when the government is acting unconstitutionally.
Conventions are a weak source of the constitution, which is a weakness of the constitution. Because the constitution uses convention as a source a government can chose to follow or to not follow the conventions from before, because Parliament is sovereign. For example, the convention of Ministerial responsibility states that Government ministers are responsible to Parliament and the policy of their department and for the conduct of themselves and their civil servants. If this convention were strictly enforced then it should lead to the resignation of the minister if their actions or the actions of their department were irresponsible.
Due to the uncodified constitution, the rights of citizens are not safeguarded. There are Human Rights Acts but these are just acts of Parliament and can be taken away almost as easily as they were brought in. No citizen can be assured that they have rights in the state because by following the correct procedure through Parliament. Human Rights are enforced through the European Convention on Human Rights that consequently brought around the Human Rights Act of 1998. Even this does not assure citizens of their rights because the Human Rights Act can be repealed. For example women campaigned for women to have the vote for many years but it can be taken away from them in less than 2 months.
The constitution can also be criticized because the power is over-centralized. The doctrine of Parliamentary Sovereignty creates an extremely strong government and the government that is created can be said to be too strong. You could even go as far to say that the power of this nation rests with the Prime Minister and that they have ultimate control due to their powerful role in Parliament created by the electoral system. Some may even argue that the UK is an elective dictatorship. The power at Westminster can be used to take away rights, powers and laws. There are no safeguards at all on the power that the Westminster government has.
Pre-democratic elements still exist in the constitution of the UK. There are the House of Lords and the Monarchy. The House of Lords is an unelected body, which is chosen only by hereditary links. The Monarchy do not have such political importance nowadays but there is still a certain amount of it which the Monarchs of the country have. The fact that the Monarchy is fundamentally sovereign (not realistically) in the UK and it is completely unelected is very undemocratic. For it to be democratic, the people should have a say in who is in the House of Lords and who is to become the Monarch of the country.
