HOW WELL DOES THE PARLIAMENT FULFILL ITS FUNCTIONS? Parliament is the name given to the representative bodies in many states. Often known as the “legislature”, Parliament has important roles such as making law, calling government into account and representing the community. Recently, the extent to which the Parliament fulfilled its functions has been a controversial issue in the UK as some people claimed that the Westminster Palace had not operated well. In this essay, we will consider the performance of UK Parliament in 3 main functions: making laws, representation and controlling the Executive.
Assess the strenghts of the British constitution?- Marked essay with teacher feedback (25 Marks) A constitution is a set of rules relating to how a state is to be governed and organised. The primary function of a constitution is to provide legitimacy to those in power; however it also defines the limits of government power, protects freedom and distributes power within the political system. As such it could be said that due to the UK having an uncodified constitution there are many strengths and weaknesses, such as flexibility and adaptability, conservative pragmatism, executive power and domination and many more which will be further spoken about below. Some of these help to make the UK constitution a better one than other countries like the USA who have to stick to their constitution. A strength of Britain having an uncodified constitution is that its unentrenched nature is flexible and adaptable therefore easy to amend, meaning that the government is not limited with their ability to change governing arrangements by having to go through a lengthy and complex and procedure.
P4- What assistance and economic conditions UK businesses need to be able to flourish. Support from the European, National and local government European Government Ho does Europe help uk businesses The European, national and local government play a crucial role in supporting UK businesses through introducing different schemes addressing different business issues, offering grants, support and advice on opportunities available. An example of this is the Enterprise Europe Network, providing assistance on financial funding, informing businesses on programs & projects. The EU protects and maintains the UK economy through authorising businesses within the European Union to trade amongst, all members without any boarder restrictions, whilst maintaining similar import and export charges. This in turn protects the EU market internally.
Both Margaret Thatcher (1979-1990) and Tony Blair (1997-2007) have been described by some commentators as Prime Ministers who, whilst in office, had presidential-like characteristics. Thatcher was described as presidential because she was known to dominate cabinet discussions and was an example of spatial leadership. Tony Blair was known to avoid making discussion in cabinets, in order to avoid confrontation and instead discuss policy with a handful of close colleagues; this is known as ‘sofa politics’, which was similar to Harold Wilson’s ‘kitchen cabinet’. The UK Prime Minister is now effectively a President as the cabinet and key government departments have seen their role taken over by the prime minister and a small group of Downing Street officials and advisers. Thus the machinery of the central government has become increasingly similar to that of the White House machinery.
The Cabinet gives advice to the PM, and it consists of the Prime Minister and other ministers who have been chosen by the PM. However, certain Secretaries of State of principal government departments, such as Home Affairs and Foreign Affairs, are always members of the Cabinet. Most of the members are members of the Commons, but there are always members from the House of Lords as well. In 10 Downing Street, the PM’s residence, the Cabinet meets regularly to discuss important issues concerning the country. Due to the political development during the 20th century, the PM has increasingly gotten more and more power.
there are many functions and purposesof interest groups in our country. basically an interest group is a group of individuals who want to influence change within the government. these interest groups are for civil liberties, and this is one function. another function is that they want to change policies by directly dealing with people who have the authority to change these policies, or to put them into effect. they also build alliances, campaign assistance, as well as other forms of pressure as functions of their purpose.political parties on the other hand, want to run the government vs just influence it, and they want to make and enforce policies.
There are three branches of the federal government, the executive, the judicial, and the legislative. The executive branch consists of such people as the president, the cabinet, and the executive offices of the president. The executive branch is known for enforcing laws created by the legislative branch. The judicial branch entails the United States Supreme Court and the Federal Judiciary. The judicial branch must review the laws the executive branch is to enforce.
The very own bureaucrats have trouble interpreting the laws, but it is their job to interpret, implement, and prescribe the laws. For this, the bureaucracy has rules it creates to assist them and the process is as follows. Rule making is very important to the bureaucrats, these rules are extremely detailed and ultimately decide and state how the bureaucrats should go about enforcing the laws and what the policy will mean. Rule making is given power and defined in the administrative Procedure Act of 1946 which was enacted by Congress that Kerwin shows us. This act defines a rule as "the whole or part of a statement of general or particular applicability and future even designed to implement, interpret, or prescribe legislation" Rule Handout.
A reason that in the past may have supported the view that the limits on the PM are too few and too ineffective, and arguably the most important power that the PM had at his/her’s disposal up until recently is the ability to set the date of a general election. Before the Fixed Term Parliament Act was passed on 15 September 2011, the Prime Minister could call a general election at any time within the five year period. Usually the Prime Minister decided to call an election at a time when he or she was most confident of winning the election. However, this power has now been removed from the PM’s arsenal following the 2010 general election, and has subsequently limited the power on the Prime Minister. This is a very credible limit on the PM as it prevents ‘abuse’ of the law which may have kept leaders/parties in power longer than they should have.
This Governmental style has been used in the recent year in the form of Thatcher, Blair and Brown all of who practised this in some degree to get what they wanted. The idea of an elective dictatorship is derived from the fact that the UK Governments can do as they so well please until their next election. The main problem with the elected dictatorship of government is that the power will be concentrating into just one body of parliament allowing the majority party to do as they wish for their term. Also though as John Griffiths said the constitution is what happens in the country leading to the Governmental party doing whatever they had wished. An elective dictatorship would also have the power to overrule the entire parliament as they tend to have the majority resulting in extreme left or right views, such as the right to buy schemes under the Tory governments.