How effectively does the House of Commons perform its functions?

The House of Commons has six main functions that they must carry out. There are six main functions; Legislative, Deliberative, Scrutiny, Recruitment, Legitimation and Representation. This essay will discus what these functions entail and whether they are performed effectively.

Firstly, the House of Commons must fulfil its legislative function. This is the means by with parliament passes the government’s legislation. Parliament is almost the only source of legislation. The exception is GCHQ that can authorise the imposing of taxes. When a party wins the general election, which will be in May 2010, a government is formed consisting of various parties. This government then makes laws that become acts of parliament, the legislation thus having been passed by parliament. Most bills that are passed by parliament are government bills, however, some bills that are passed through parliament are private members bills, for example, the abolition of hanging in 1967 by Sydney Silverman. There are also private bills which normally only affect certain private interests and can be introduced by MPs, usually on behalf of a company. These are not usually matters of public policy but are usually for matters such as road building. Unfortunately, bills through parliament can take a lot of time to become legislation. This is because there are many stages which the bill must go through which includes the House of Lords stage by which the bill may be rejected or amended (this may only occur three times). The final stage in the Royal Ascent is the process by which the queen signs the bill. The Act of Parliament has now gone into the statute book and must now be obeyed by all citizens of the UK.

Due to the large amount of time it takes to pass bills the House of Commons does not fulfil is function effectively. As well as this, through instrumentality, the leading party will always have the majority in parliament, meaning it will almost always be able to push through its legislation. Therefore bills can be passed which are not necessarily good pieces of legislation.

Next, the Commons has a duty to fulfil its deliberative functions. Through this function, parliament debates certain important issues of the day. The setting is usually peaceful and there is an exchange of views between the government and opposition. Through this debating, for example, parliamentary issues can be resolved. Recently, however, there has been a serious problem with the deliberative function of parliament. It is now unnecessary for MPs to attend the House of Commons every day and to debate every topic. However, MPs do still have to attend and debate in the Commons in order to debate important issues and bills which are in the process of being passed. Through the MPs not attending parliament, as was done so well in days of old when MPs used to give long and enthusiastic speeches, the House of Commons is not fulfilling its deliberative function well.

The third function of parliament is scrutiny. This is the process by which the government is held to account by parliament. Parliaments therefore must react to the actions and policies of the government and then deem whether they are lawful or not. The Whips office carries out part of this process. Their simple aim is to keep parliament under control. The whips office is said to have a little black book that contains all of the MPs sins that they have committed. This, though good in keeping the MPs in check, also gives considerable power to the Whips. They are therefore able to have power over the MPs through slight blackmail. They can therefore influence them to vote for a certain bill for example. In that respect the House of Commons does not effectively carry out its scrutiny function. There has also been the huge story of MPs expenses over the summer. It was brought to the public’s attention through a military personnel working on MPs expenses claim. The fact that these MPs were able to get away with the false expense claims shows the scrutiny function of the Commons is not performed effectively.

The House of Commons must also carry out its recruitment function. This is the process by which, for example, potential MPs are recruited by a party to stand for their constituency. This is also the means by which a political leader is selected, the door to which is very small. An MP is not able to become a political leader unless he or she is a similar member of the governing party. An

example of political recruitment is the selection of the Conservative candidate for Corby and East Northamptonshire, Louise Bagshawe. Currently there are only 17 female Conservative MPs which is around 9 per cent of the party's total number of MPs which is 192. In contrast with this, 94 of the 349 Labour MPs are female, 27 per cent. Ms Bagshawe has no particular attribute which make her a good candidate. It can therefore be argued that the reason why she has been selected as a candidate is predominantly because she is a woman due to the fact that the Conservative party are currently attempting to increase the number of female MPs in the party. Through this the recruitment function is not carried out effectively.

The fifth function is legitimation. This function is very important the parliament and the government as it give authority to any law that is passed by parliament and we as a nation must therefore obey that law. Though a law may be given authority, it does not necessarily mean it can be enforced. For example for the Hunting Ban was a piece of legislation which was poorly written, above all, it is unenforceable. It is not possible to have police regularly watching to see if the hunt obeys the law. The Commons does give authority to laws, however, its authority is consistently disobeyed.

The final function of the commons is that of representation. MPs have a duty to represent their constituency in the House of Commons. Clearly, no single candidate will have 100% of the vote, other people will have voted for the opposition. It is therefore necessary for the successful candidate to represent everyone in the constituency regardless of whether they voted for them or not, in essence, the MP represents the interests of their constituency. There has been much controversy over what the representative function of parliament actually means. There is one view that every kind of person in society should be represented by one of their “Own”. Therefore there would be a gay representative for gays etc. However, this clearly separates society. In all, the representative function is performed well. The MPs do listen to their constituents, no matter who they voted for. In some cases though, MPs do take a different stance, for example Phil Hope was quoted as saying that he

“represents the Labour party in Corby and East Northamptonshire”; thus not representing all.

To conclude the above six functions are key to the success of parliament. Without one, the system would not function correctly. Every function is not performed perfectly and some are clearly far less effectively executed than others, for example, the function of scrutiny where MPs expenses were not moderated or controlled well enough.