|
Site menu
Our poll
Statistics
Total online: 1 Guests: 1 Users: 0 |
Lecture 3 UK GovernmentBritish Government. The United Kingdom is a constitutional monarchy. It means that it has a Monarch (a king or a queen) as its Head of State. The monarch reigns with the support of Parliament. The powers of the monarch are not defined precisely. Everything today is done in the Queen’s name. It is her government, her armed forces, her law courts and so on. The position of the monarch is contradictory. On the one hand, the Queen has almost absolute power. As far as the law is concerned, she can appoint all the Ministers, including the Prime Minister and dismiss them. She summons the Parliament and dissolves it before the general Elections. There’s a principle of the English law that the Monarch can do nothing that is legally wrong. In other words, Queen Elizabeth is above law. On the other hand, however, the Queen has almost no power at all. As Britain is a parliamentary democracy, everything is done on the advice of the elected Government, the government is controlled by parliament elected by the people. So the monarch takes no part in the decision-making process. Although the Queen is no longer responsible for governing the country, she carries out a great many important tasks on behalf of the nation. ·
The word government usually has two meanings. It can be used to refer to all the politicians who are normally known as Ministers. There are about a 100 members of the government in this sense. The other meaning of the word is more limited. It refers only to the most powerful politicians, namely the Prime Minister and the other members of the Cabinet. There are usually 20 members in the Cabinet. The position of a British Prime Minister is in direct contrast to that of the monarch. The PM appears not to have much power but in reality has a great deal indeed. The queen is said to appoint people to government on the advice of the PM. But what actually happens is that the PM simply decides and makes an appointment. The strength of the PM’s power is seen from the modern phenomenon known as "cabinet reshuffle”. The PM chooses about 20 MPs from his or her party to become the Cabinet of Ministers and quite easily changes the members of the Cabinet regardless of anyone’s opinion. The most important ministers are called Secretaries of State and they form the Cabinet. The Secretaries of State are in charge of a Government Department (a ministry). Each minister is responsible for his department, and makes sure that his department applies the policy of the government. The most important Secretaries of State are:
The Cabinet meets once a week and take decisions about new policies and the running of the various government departments. Reports are made of the meetings and circulated to government departments. They summarize the topic discussed and the decision taken. To make a conclusion, we may say that the government runs the country. The Cabinet with the PM as its head represents the executive power. The British Parliamentary system depends on political parties. Britain is normally described as a "two-party system”. There’s one important feature that differs Britain from other countries. It is that its parties were first formed inside Parliament & were only later extended to the public at large. During the 18th century MPs tended to divide themselves into 2 camps, those who usually supported the government of the time and those who usually didn’t. The political parties choose candidates in election. The party which wins the majority of seats forms the Government and its leader usually becomes Prime Minister. During the 19th century it gradually became a habit that the party which didn’t control the government, the second largest party, presented itself as an alternative government, or the opposition. The leader of the party receives the title "Leader of Her Majesty’s Opposition” and even gets a salary to prove the importance of this role. He or she chooses "a shadow cabinet”.
As for the legislative branch, it is represented by the British Parliament. Parliament is where politicians (MPs) meet to decide laws and make decisions for the United Kingdom. It is not the same as the Government (which runs the country). One of the jobs Parliament does is to check that the Government is running the country properly. The main functions of Parliament are:
Parliament is made up of three parts:
·The Queen ·The House of Lords ·The House of Commons The Queen is the official Head of State. Britain has a constitutional monarchy where the Queen only rules symbolically; in reality, power belongs to Parliament. So, although the Queen 'opens' Parliament each year and laws are passed in her name, the Queen herself plays no part in determining decisions made in Parliament. The Queen has the final say on whether a bill becomes law. The last Monarch to reject a law that was wanted by both Houses of Parliament was Queen Anne. She died in 1715. The House of Commons is by far the more important of the two Houses & only members of the Commons are known as MPs. Each MP represents an area in England, Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland. MPs are elected either at a general election or at a by-election following the death or retirement of an MP. Parliamentary election must be held every 5 years. The minimum voting age is 18, and the voting is taken by secret ballot. General Elections A UK Parliament has a maximum duration of five years. At the end of the five year or before, a general election must take place so new members of parliament can be elected by the people. What is a General Election? The election of all Members of Parliament (MPs) for each constituency (local area) is called a General Election. In the UK people vote for the best candidate in their local area to represent them in the House of Commons. The UK system is not like the US system where you vote for the President/Vice-President, then your local representatives separately. In the UK, the winning candidate becomes MP and takes a seat in the House of Commons. The party with the majority of seats in the Commons gets to form the government. That party’s leader becomes Prime Minister. In the UK we have the House of Commons and the House of Lords. We can only vote for a MP to represent us in the House of Commons. The Lords are appointed or inherited. How often do General Elections take place? General elections have to take place at least every five years and are called by the Prime Minister (the leader of the Government). Who can become a MP? People are nominated as candidates to become MPs. Anyone over the age of 21 can be a candidate.
How does an MP get a seat in Parliament? When an MP gets the most votes for his constituency (local area) he gains a seat. This means he has a place in Parliament. When did the last General Elections take place? On the 6th of May, 2010. Who won the Elections? The Conservative party. The leader of the party is David Cameron. He is now the 75th Prime Minister of the UK. The election campaign lasts about 3 weeks. The election is decided on a simple majority – the candidate with most votes wins. The House of Commons is made up of 659 elected members. It is presided over by the Speaker. MPs sit on 2 sides of the Hall, one side for the governing party & the other for the opposition. The first 2 rows of seats are occupied by the leading members of the both parties (called "front-benchers”), the back benches belong to the ordinary (rank-&-file) members ("back-benchers”). In fact there aren’t enough seats for all MPs, there are only 400, Mps don’t have their own place to sit, they sit wherever they can find room. The main function of the House of Commons is to deal with proposed laws. A proposed law, a bill, has to go through 3 stages in order to become an Act of Parliament. These stages are called readings. MPs have to vote for or against the proposal and afterwards make a resolution which either accepts or rejects the proposal. But the resolutions of the Commons are only part of its activities. There are also Committees. Some Committees are appointed to examine particular proposals for laws, but there are permanent Committees whose job is to investigate the activities of government in a particular field. Such Committees are becoming a more and more important part of the business of the Commons. The other House in Parliament is the House of Lords, members of which are known as peers. They are not elected. They have inherited family titles or they have been given titles because of their outstanding work in one field or another. There are 675 members of the Lords, although only about 250 take an active part in the work of the House. The Chairman of the House of Lords is the Lord-Chancellor and he sits on a special seat called the Woolsack. The House of Lords is a relic of earlier times, it has been allowed to survive but it has had to change, losing most of its powers. The main job of the House of Lords is to 'double check' new laws to make sure they are fair and will work. The members of the House of Lords debate a bill after it has been passed by the House of Commons. The modern House of Lords is a forum for public discussion. Because its members do not depend on party politics for their position, it’s sometimes able to bring important matters that the Commons has been ignoring into the open. What is more important, it’s the place where proposals for new laws are discussed in great detail – much more detail than the busy Commons has time for – and in this way irregularities and inconsistencies in these proposals can be removed before they become law. This can be said to be the role of the House of Lords. Let’s see how a bill becomes a law: A graphic representation of the legislative procedure. A draft piece of legislation is called a bill, when this is passed by parliament it becomes an act and part of statute law. There are two types of bill and act, public and private. Public acts apply to the whole of the UK or a number of its constituent countries - England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Private acts are local and personal in their effect, giving special powers to bodies such as local authorities or making exceptions to the law in particular geographic areas. In the United Kingdom Parliament, each bill passes through the following stages:
Political Parties.The Labour Party is a centre-left political party in the United Kingdom. Founded at the start of the 20th century, it has been seen since 1920 as the principal party of the Left in England, Scotland and Wales, but not Northern Ireland, where it has only recently begun to organise again. Labour first surpassed the Liberal Party in general elections during the early 1920s. Since then, the party has had several spells in government, at first in minority governments under Ramsay MacDonald in 1924 and 1929-1931, then as a junior partner in the wartime coalition from 1940-1945 and ultimately forming majority governments under Clement Attlee in 1945-1951 and under Harold Wilson in 1964-1970. Labour was in government again in 1974-1979, first under Wilson and then James Callaghan, though with a precarious and declining majority. The Labour Party won a majority in the 1997 general election under the leadership of Tony Blair, its first general election victory since October 1974 and the first general election since 1970 in which it had exceeded 40% of the popular vote. The party's large majority in the House of Commons was slightly reduced to 167 in the 2001 general election and more substantially reduced to 66 in 2005. Labour is the leading partner in the coalition Welsh government and the main opposition party in the Scottish Parliament. It has 13 members in the European Parliament. The Labour Party is a member of the Party of European Socialists and the Socialist International. The party's current leader is Prime Minister Gordon Brown. Party ideology The party grew out of the trade union movement and socialist political parties of the 19th century seeking workers' representation, and describes itself as a "democratic socialist party". However, since the "New Labour" project began, a larger proportion of its support has come from middle-class voters and many perceive this support as key to Labour's electoral success since 1997. Historically the party was broadly in favour of socialism, as set out in Clause Four of the original party constitution, and advocated socialist policies such as public ownership of key industries, government intervention in the economy, redistribution of wealth, increased rights for workers, the welfare state, publicly-funded healthcare and education. Beginning in the late-1980s under the leadership of Neil Kinnock, and subsequently under John Smith and Tony Blair, the party moved away from socialist positions and adopted free market policies, leading many observers to describe the Labour Party as Social Democratic or Third Way, rather than democratic socialist. Party electoral manifestos have not contained the term socialism since 1992, when the original Clause Four was abolished, although the new version says: "The Labour Party is a democratic socialist party. It believes that by the strength of our common endeavour we achieve more than we achieve alone, so as to create for each of us the means to realise our true potential and for all of us a community in which power, wealth and opportunity are in the hands of the many, not the few, where the rights we enjoy reflect the duties we owe, and where we live together, freely, in a spirit of solidarity, tolerance and respect."The Conservative and Unionist Party, more commonly known as the Conservative Party, is a political party in the United Kingdom. Founded in its present form during the early 19th century, it has since been the principal centre right party in the UK. The Conservative Party is descended from the old Tory Party, founded in 1678, and is still often referred to as the Tory Party and its politicians, members and supporters as Tories. It added the moniker Unionist in the early 20th century, following the Conservatives' alliance with that part of the Liberal Party, known as the Liberal Unionists, who opposed their party's support for Irish Home Rule. The Conservative Party was in government for two-thirds of the twentieth century. Since losing the 1997 election to the Labour Party, as the second largest political party in terms of MPs it has constituted the official opposition. The current party leader is David Cameron, who acts as the leader of the opposition and heads the shadow cabinet. As of 2009, it has more councillors in local government, British members of the European Parliament and members of the London Assembly than any other party. The Liberal Democrats, often shortened to Lib Dems, are a centrist to centre-left social liberal British political party. The party was formed in 1988 by a merger of the Liberal Party and the Social Democratic Party. The two parties had formed the electoral SDP-Liberal Alliance for seven years before then. The party's leader is Nick Clegg. The Lib Dems are the third-largest party in the House of Commons, behind the Labour Party and the Conservative Party. There are 63 Lib Dem Members of Parliament (MPs)—62 were elected at the 2005 general election and one in a 2006 by-election. The Scottish Liberal Democrats formed a coalition with Labour in the first two sessions of the Scottish Parliament, and the Welsh party were in a coalition with Labour in the National Assembly for Wales from 2001 to 2003. Promoting social liberalism, the Liberal Democrats voice strong support for constitutional reform, civil liberties, and higher taxes for public services. The party president's book of office is John Stuart Mill's On Liberty, which defended individual rights while attacking the tyranny of the majority and the despotism of custom. Although the party objects to state limitations on individual rights, it does favour a welfare state that provides for the necessities and amenities of life. They support multilateral foreign policy, opposing British participation in the War in Iraq and supporting the withdrawal of troops from the country. The Liberal Democrats are the most pro-European Union of the three main parties in the UK. The party has strong environmentalist values—favouring renewable energy and commitments to deeper cuts in greenhouse gas emissions. Since their foundation, Lib Dems have advocated electoral reform to use proportional representation, hoping to replace the House of Lords with an elected chamber. The judiciary (also known as the judicial system or judicature) is the system of courts which interprets and applies the law in the name of the sovereign or state. The judiciary also provides a mechanism for the resolution of disputes. Under the doctrine of the separation of powers, the judiciary generally does not make law (that is, in a plenary fashion, which is the responsibility of the legislature) or enforce law (which is the responsibility of the executive), but rather interprets law and applies it to the facts of each case. This branch of government is often tasked with ensuring equal justice under law. It usually consists of a court of final appeal (called the "supreme court" or "constitutional court"), together with lower courts. The term "judiciary" is also used to refer collectively to the personnel, such as judges, magistrates and other adjudicators, who form the core of a judiciary (sometimes referred to as a "bench"), as well as the staffs who keep the system running smoothly. The Supreme Court of the United Kingdom is the supreme court (court of last resort, highest appellate court) in all matters under English law, Welsh law, Northern Irish law and Scottish civil law (the court has no authority over criminal cases in Scotland, where the High Court of Justiciary remains the supreme criminal court). The Supreme Court also has jurisdiction to determine devolution disputes — cases in which the legal powers of the three devolved governments or laws made by the devolved legislatures are questioned. The Supreme Court sits in the Middlesex Guildhall in Westminster, London, which it shares with the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. The Supreme Court was established by Part 3 of the Constitutional Reform Act 2005 and started work on 1 October 2009. |
Search
Site friends
|