Mackintosh's the Government and Politics of Britain by Peter G Richards

Author:Peter G Richards [Richards, Peter G]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Political Science, General
ISBN: 9781134998098
Google: vaMNP1Yd9gQC
Goodreads: 17509053
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 1988-09-22T00:00:00+00:00

How the Executive Gained Control of Parliament

Before joining battle on the value judgements in the theses of Fairlie and Butt, both of which agree basically with the assessment given here of the powers and role of the House of Commons today, it is worth establishing the facts, both historical and contemporary. In the period from 1832 to the 1880s, the number of party issues (nine-tenths of one party voting together) fell to 25 per cent of all divisions under a Liberal Government in 1860 and 31 per cent under the Conservatives, this low level of party cohesion being much the same from the 1830s to the early 1880s. The House could and did sack governments (such as Russell’s first Cabinet in 1852, Aberdeen’s ministry in 1855, Lord Palmerston in 1858, Russell again in 1866 and Gladstone in 1885) without having to face a general election. It could and did reject, revise and remake legislation on the floor of the House (such as the 1858 India Act or the 1867 Reform Act). Individual ministers were censured and driven from office by the House, examples being Russell in 1855 and Ellenborough in 1858. The House controlled a large part of its own timetable, it had a corporate spirit and it could force information out of the government, the best example being the stream of diplomatic Blue Books in which the Foreign Office had to reveal the course of its negotiations with foreign powers almost as soon as the events had occurred. Select committees were set up by the House with full powers of investigation. Sometimes they did more than just report, and drafted legislation which could be adopted and introduced either by the government or by a private member. There can be no doubt, then, that the loose nature of party discipline, the small electorates, the relative security of the private MP against the executive, all gave the House not merely much greater power than it enjoys nowadays but powers which altered its entire role and position in the system of government. Under these circumstances the House had an independence and authority which would be utterly alien and unfamiliar to MPs accustomed to contemporary conditions.

During the Victorian period, in order to exercise these functions of controlling, scrutinizing, appointing and removing the executive, the procedure of the House was adapted to suit these tasks. It is generally accepted that in order to watch over an executive, the system of supervision has to be constructed in parallel so that information about the salient issues is extracted at the right time and the process of scrutiny is based on this information and takes place when the decision is still open. In the nineteenth century, the first step in legislation was a motion asking leave to introduce a bill. At this stage the bill was not printed but the sponsors explained why they felt legislation was necessary and the lines on which they were planning to draft the measure. This gave warning to the outside interests

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.