Comprehension check

Exercise 1. Answer the following questions.

1. What is the legislative branch in the United Kingdom?

2. What is Parliament?

3. Of what is Parliament composed?

4. What is the main function of Parliament?

5. Who does the House of Commons consist of?

6. How do MPs get their offices?

7. Who is the House of Lords made up of?

8. What is the judicial function of the House of Lords?

9. Who is chairman of the House of Commons?

10. Who presides over the House of Lords?

11. What is meant by ‘a standing committee’?

12. What is meant by ‘a select committee?’

13. What do you think is the importance of select committees?

Exercise 2. Explain and expend the following statements:

a. In constitutional theory Parliament is said to have legislative sovereignty.

b. The committees of the House of Commons fall into two main categories, standing committees and select committees. Standing committees are appointed to deal with the committee stage in the passing of Bills. The departmental select committees are established to ‘shadow’ the work of the major departments of state.

Discuss

a. The main functions of Parliament and their importance.

b. Parliament legislative sovereignty and the role of the Court.

c. The importance of standing and select committees.

d. The difference between British and American legislative systems.

e. Parliamentary electoral system.

4.1. 2. The legislative process

The great majority of Acts of Parliament are introduced by the Government – these are initially drafted by lawyers in the civil service who are known as Parliamentary Counsel to the Treasury. Instructions as to what is to be included and the effect the proposed law is intended to have, are given by the government department responsible for it.

The first and most important step in most cases is for the Government to decide that it wishes the legislation to be passed. Once this decision has been taken, and so long as public opinion does not cause the Government to change its mind, the legislation will pass through Parliament and become law, because of the Government's effective command of a majority in the House of Commons. On some issues the Government will first seek the response of interested parties by the publication of a consultative paper. After considering the response, advance notice of the more definite proposals is given in a White Paper.

A formal requirement is that the bill must be approved by both Houses of Parliament, with ample opportunity for debate both in the Commons and in the Lords. In spite of Government control of the Commons, Parliament is not a mere rubber stamp, because it gives opportunities for members to question, criticize, publicize, explain and amend the detailed provisions or the bill, and few bills emerge without at least some amendments.

To become an Act of Parliament a bill must receive the Royal Assent, which today is never refused. A bill thereupon becomes an Act of Parliament and, unless otherwise provided, takes effect from the day of Assent. However there has been a growing trend for Acts of Parliament not to be implemented immediately. Instead the Act itself states the date when it will commence or pass responsibility on to the appropriate minister to fix the commencement date. In the latter case the minister will bring the Act into force by issuing a commencement order. This can cause problems of uncertainty as it is difficult to discover which sections of an Act have been brought into force. The Disability Discrimination Act 1995 is a good example of an Act where the sections are being brought in bit by bit. The part of the Act giving employment rights was mostly brought into force in 1996, some parts of the Act which give disabled people rights to access to services were not going to be law until the year 2004. Some parts which relate to access to transport may not be law until 2010.

It may be that some sections or even a whole Act will never become law. An example of this is the Easter Act 1928, which was intended to fix the date of Easter Day. Although this Act passed all the necessary Parliamentary stages, and was given the Royal Assent, it has never come into force.

It can be seen that with all these stages it usually takes several months for a Bill to be passed. However, there have been occasions where all parties have thought a new law is needed urgently and an Act has been passed in less than 24 hours. This happened with the Northern Ireland Bill in 1972.

So, the process by which an Act is passed is a long one. A Bill may start in either the House of Commons or the House of Lords, with the exception of finance Bills which must start in the House of Commons. All bills must go through the following stages: