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UK Parliament to be Made Redundant?

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the politics-the-same-the-world-over dept.

caluml writes "The Guardian is reporting that the current UK government is trying to sneak a new law though in an innocuously named bill called 'The Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill,' which would get rid of that pesky, interfering need to put laws to the Houses of Commons and Lords to approve. There is already the Parliament Act that can be used to force laws through, which was used recently for the hunting bill. " The original coverage is a bit old but the bill is still being tossed around in parliament. The text of the bill is also available via the UK Parliament website.

27 of 607 comments (clear)

  1. The Parliament Act. by Blapto · · Score: 4, Informative

    This wasn't snuck in, it's been around for quite some time now. It actually serves a valid purpose as well. Basically, the part that this article refers to allows a government to bypass the House of Lords (an unelected body) after a certain number of tries in a certain time period when trying to pass a bill.
    Anything that goes through the parliament act will generate enough publicity for the public to kick up a fuss about it if they don't like it anyway.

    1. Re:The Parliament Act. by user24 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      You see, the thing is, the Lords (at the moment) have a birth right to be there. They can say whatever they want without fear of parliamentary whips putting pressure on them to to stop conflicting with the current party's views, without fear of being kicked out, and without fear of losing their next election. That's why they're a good thing, because they have the chance to oppose laws even when the majority of parliament is for them. Apart from the Queen (who needless to say only perform a cursory duty), they are the only impartial group in the government. I agree that they are definately more conservative, and generally represent only the upper class white citizens (as seen in their rejection of the anti-hunting legislation), but that's better than their not being there at all. imho. ianal.

    2. Re:The Parliament Act. by (negative+video) · · Score: 4, Insightful
      I realise it's a legacy of centuries past, and I realise that it's 'historically important', but create a 'house of lords' museum and get yourselves a proper senate for the love of democracy.
      Democracy consists of you and your neighbors deciding most of what government does to you. An elected senate dictating tiny details of everyday life to people hundreds of miles away is not democratic. Every matter being a national winner-takes-all battle is not democratic.
    3. Re:The Parliament Act. by techno-vampire · · Score: 4, Insightful
      Impartial? Nonsense. They're only accountable to their own interests.

      Well, yes, of course. However, as they don't have to worry about being re-elected, they can say what they think and vote for what they really think is in the nation's best interest instead of pandering to lobbyists and campaign contributors. In that sense, at least, they're more likely to be impartial than an elected official.

      It's the same idea as the Romans used in having members of their Senate (Their "conscript fathers" as they were sometimes called.) serve for life. By taking away the need to curry favor for re-election, they were expected to be able to put themselves above the special interest groups and work only for the good of the state. To some extent, it worked, because the senators took their responsibilities seriously.

      --
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    4. Re:The Parliament Act. by DavidTC · · Score: 4, Informative
      No. England is the opposite of a theocracy, which happens to look identical to one if you aren't paying attention.

      In a theocracy, the church runs the government. In England, the government runs the church. As these both have the same entity running both the church and the government, it is easy to confuse them.

      With England, however, the government runs the church because the church that used to claim authority (The Catholic Church) was asserting too much authority, so they got rid of it. And then, because it was expected at the time, they made their own church, which they have then continued to basically ignore.

      --
      If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
    5. Re:The Parliament Act. by TheRaven64 · · Score: 4, Informative
      Okay, I know the Brits don't have an official constitution and so the rules on this may not be carved in stone, but that still seems kind of unlikely

      Actually, we do have a written constitution. What we don't have is a codified constitution (our constitution is drawn from many sources). The grandparent poster is half right. The prime minister does have to be an MP, however they do not have to be a member of the House of Commons. The procedure for selecting a PM is roughly as follows:

      1. The Queen selects someone and invites them to form a government.
      2. This person must gain the support of half of the house of commons.
      3. If so, they become prime minister. If not, then the Queen goes back to step 1.

      Since the creation of Lords is one of the Monarch's Prerogative Powers, it is quite possible for her to select someone completely random, create them a peer, and then ask them to form a government. For the last couple of centuries or so it has been traditional for the monarch to invite the leader of the party with the most seats to form a government, since they are usually guaranteed support of the majority of the house.

      If, at any point, the PM ceases to have the support of half of the house then a vote of no confidence can be passed. If this happens, a general election must be called and a new government elected. This can happen, for example, if they have a narrow majority and one of their members resigns or dies. At this point a by-election will be called, and their seat contested again. If someone from the opposition takes it then the government can lose its majority.

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    6. Re:The Parliament Act. by Kadin2048 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Oh yes, because OUR system works so well, with those Senators getting down on their knees and puckering up to any large corporation with a few million bucks every six years. (Granted, they don't seem to be as blindly bad as some members of the House, but that's a pretty low bar these days.)

      The UK system of government undoubtedly has its share of problems, but the House of Lords isn't it.

      Except for the fact that it's not a sort of thing that you can just create (it's more something that you can only have, if it's been in existence since before the rest of the government formed) I'd say that it wouldn't be such a bad idea to do something like that here, in my more exasperated moments. In theory, it's a pretty good idea -- a bunch of people who aren't subject to the whims of fat-walleted corporate/PAC pimps and who have no other function in the government aside from taking the longest possible view. (Arguably this is the function of the USSC here, I suppose.)

      The purpose that our Senate was originally supposed to serve, namely to be a brake on the other half of the Legislature, it seems to regularly fail to do; each party's House and Senate contingents seem to be in lock-step on all but the smallest details (you generally have to get down to the wording of particular bills to find differences between Senate and House versions, the intent is rarely very different on major issues). So I'm not sure that I would be dismissing the concept of a House of Lords so quickly. If I were a UK citizen (subject?) I'd be awfully reticent to throw away anything that might act as a brake on the rest of government, however anachronistic it might seem. If they were trying to drag the entire country back to the 17th century I might feel less cautious, but it doesn't seem like there's any evidence of that.

      However bad you think your government is now, with enough meddling it could always get spectacularly worse in a hurry.

      --
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    7. Re:The Parliament Act. by MartinB · · Score: 5, Informative
      This wasn't snuck in, it's been around for quite some time now. It actually serves a valid purpose as well. Basically, the part that this article refers to allows a government to bypass the House of Lords (an unelected body) after a certain number of tries in a certain time period when trying to pass a bill.

      To separate out the two issues you're conflating:

      The Parliament Act is there to prevent the unelected Lords from blocking legislation which the elected Commons has a mandate to implement. By convention this means the content of the goverment's election manifesto.

      Now the Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill means that not only will the Lords not be able to oppose Government policy (in the manifesto or not), this will be extended to the Commons.

      Or, to put it in constitutional speak: the Executive usurps the power of the Legislature, and neuters the capacity of the Judiciary.

      Yes, our freedom-loving government is plainly tired of all that mucking around attending Parliament, and persuading MPs to support its bright ideas. In future (so goes the vision), our beloved, trusted ministers will be able to amend, replace and repeal legislation by fiat. The only restrictions are that ministers can't impose new taxes (but can introduce new fees. Po-tay-to/Po-tah-to), or introduce prison sentences longer than 2 years.

      So could HMG decide to make ID Cards entirely compulsory? Could they require all public services to be disposed of to PFI? Could they abolish the Scottish Parliament? Yes, Yes and Yes (they couldn't impose laws in devolved matters, but they could abolish the whole thing).

      And the checks and balances on ministerial absolutism? Erm... none. The minister merely has to consider a vaguely written checklist and be personally satisfied that's it's a Good Idea overall. Because ministers are of course entirely impartial judges of their own proposals. It's already being called The Abolition of Parliament Act as Parliament simply won't be able to scrutinise legislation in advance or block it. But it's also an Abolition of The Judiciary Act as the courts can't challenge Ministerial Orders after the fact on the basis of being disproportionate or removing freedoms and protections from the citizenry as long as the Minister can show that he/she has thought long and hard about it. Presumably the fact that Ministers are genetically incapable of thinking like this won't help...

      Separation of Powers? We've Heard of It

      Anything that goes through the parliament act will generate enough publicity for the public to kick up a fuss about it if they don't like it anyway.

      Which, as the Executive can impose what the hell it likes without the checks and balances of an adversarial Parliament, can be entirely ignored except for the 3 months before an election.

      --

      The only thing you can accurately describe as "Scotch" is a sticky tape made by 3M. And it's

    8. Re:The Parliament Act. by MartinB · · Score: 4, Interesting
      You see, the thing is, the Lords (at the moment) have a birth right to be there. They can say whatever they want without fear of parliamentary whips putting pressure on them to to stop conflicting with the current party's views, without fear of being kicked out, and without fear of losing their next election. That's why they're a good thing, because they have the chance to oppose laws even when the majority of parliament is for them.

      *blink* What the.... fuck

      *stares at user24 like the museum piece he/she apparently is*

      If you want a proper house of review (and you should) then you bloody well elect one.


      Arguably so, but at the moment, only a small proportion of the Lords are hereditaries (parent is forgetting the Lords reform over the last few parliaments). The rest are appointed, and not a few after having given large sums of cash to the Labour Party - but that's another discussion.

      The balance of power, however, is held by approx 160 independent Lords - no party alignment. And by and large, they do a very good job, and refuse to be treated as lobby fodder by the Government with its powers of appointment to powerful ministries.

      It's some comment on the current state of affairs that an unelected body with a proportion there by heriditary right is doing a better, more transparent, more thoughtful job than the elected one...
      --

      The only thing you can accurately describe as "Scotch" is a sticky tape made by 3M. And it's

  2. In COBN3T Britain by Philip+K+Dickhead · · Score: 5, Funny

    In SOVIET BRITAIN, Britannia waives the rules!

    --
    "Speaking the Truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act." -- George Orwell
    1. Re:In COBN3T Britain by Tackhead · · Score: 4, Funny
      > In SOVIET BRITAIN, Britannia waives the rules!

      You forgot the even-more-ironic second line to the chorus.

      In Sov'yet Britain, Britannia waives the rules! Britons, ever ever shall be slaves to fools.

  3. Errr... by brian0918 · · Score: 4, Funny

    I hate to be the grammar nazi, but the submitter misspelled "US" and "Congress"...

    1. Re:Errr... by Matthias+Wiesmann · · Score: 5, Funny

      I must say I love slashdot, where an article about UK politics displays with a US flag on top.

  4. To those who don't know what is redundancy... by fijal · · Score: 5, Funny

    http://uncyclopedia.org/wiki/Redundancy

    1. Re:To those who don't know what is redundancy... by Spy+der+Mann · · Score: 4, Funny

      To those who don't know what is redundancy...

      You must be new here :)

  5. "It's gonna get blown up anyway" by flyingace · · Score: 5, Funny

    Didn't you guys see "V for Vendetta" over the weekend ?

  6. RTFA - this is not about the parliament act by FhnuZoag · · Score: 5, Informative

    Yes, but the parliament act isn't what is in question.

    What is in question is this new proposed act, that allows any cabinet member to alter any piece of legislation by conducting a single vote with the minimum of debate or discussion. The parliament act is usually only used after ages of battling, so at least we are certain that MPs have looked at and understood what is being passed. With this new act, it would be very easy to sandwich scary ideas into an innoculous looking package, and sneak that through the vote. The worst case scenario is that one such scary bill would be a motion to alter this bill itself - and remove parliament from the process altogether.

    Even if we trust the government not to abuse it, this is still a terrifyingly huge loophole. And in fact, the bill is currently *very* close to being passed. It only has a 1-hour final hearing in the commons, and then it's onto the Lords. And if the Lords don't cooperate, a truly malicious government can use the Parliament act to force it through....

  7. Bloody MC by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    It's that damn Magna Carta, you know.

    Once you take the power from the one true Sovereign, who has been selected by God to know what is right for this country, all of this havoc follows in due course.

    I say: absolve the House of Lords and the House of Commons, and revert all power to HRH Elizabeth Regina.

    We'll then all get along splendidly. (Or at least untill Charles takes the thrown.)

  8. The Queen? by dadragon · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Well, this is (theoretically) why the monarchy still exists, unfortunatly, too many people have no respect for what power the sovereign has. She can refuse to sign this bill into law, even if Parliament passes it. Too bad she probably won't as that will trigger a constitutional crisis and put the Queen into a political position which they tend to try to avoid.

    --
    God save our Queen, and Heaven bless The Maple Leaf Forever!
  9. How Emperor Blair will rule without bureaucracy... by Too+many+errors,+bai · · Score: 5, Funny

    "The regional governors now have direct control over their territories. Fear will keep the local systems in line. Fear of this battlestation."

  10. Hm. by mattpointblank · · Score: 4, Insightful

    If GCSE History serves me correctly, didn't Hitler [1] do something like this? Some bill that granted him "emergency powers" over the Reichstag that meant he could pass laws on his own? One step closer to dictatorship we step..

    [1]Note that I'm not equating Tony Blair to Hitler or Labour to the Nazis or anything, just an interesting co-incidence..

  11. Re:Maybe In Canada Too by CaptainCarrot · · Score: 4, Insightful
    Because the Governor-General is no more a political office than the Crown is. The appointment is made with the "advice" of your Parliament anyway, which basically means the Crown appoints whomever its told to appoint. It's as democratic as your Prime Minister.

    Besides, some people see an advantage of separating the Head of State from the Head of Government. In the US it would be refreshing to be able to have the Head of State present to solemnize some event, without having to invite the current idiot in the White House who will use the occasion to push whatever's presently on his political agenda.

    --
    And the brethren went away edified.
  12. Re:Maybe In Canada Too by hunterx11 · · Score: 4, Funny

    Republicanism is a divisive issue in Canada, splitting people into two opposing sides: those who just don't care, and those who don't really give a damn.

    --
    English is easier said than done.
  13. Re:Constitution? by anaesthetica · · Score: 4, Informative

    See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_the_U nited_Kingdom

    --
    The Rise and Fall of Online Community
  14. To a large extent..... by mormop · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The UK parliament has been redundant for a long time.

    Back in the days of Margaret Thatcher, huge parliamentary majorities were won on minority votes thanks to the first past the post, 3 party system. If I remember rightly, Mrs. T held a majority in excess of 300 MPs with only 40% of the electorate voting for her. Tony Blair commanded about 35% of the vote when less than 50% of the electorate turned out.

    With a three figure majority and the back-benches filled with career minded sheep, the government can get pretty much anything they want through so the new law is just icing on the cake. What worries me more is the sort of people they hang with. According to the treasury web site, the following are being flown in by Gordon Brown, the next Prime Minister, to give advice on business in New Britain:

    Bernard Arnault, Chairman and CEO, LVMH
      Lord Browne, Group Chief Executive, BP
      Dr Jean-Pierre Garnier, CEO, GlaxoSmithKline
      Bill Gates, Chairman and Chief Software Architect, Microsoft Corporation
      Sir Ka-shing Li, Chairman of the Board, Hutchison Whampoa Ltd
      Sir Terry Leahy, CEO, Tesco
      Sir John Rose, CEO, Rolls Royce
      Robert Rubin, Director and Chairman of the Executive Committee, Citigroup Inc
      Lee Scott, President and CEO, Wal-Mart
      Ratan Tata, Chairman, Tata Group
      Meg Whitman, President and CEO, eBay
      James Wolfensohn, Special Envoy for Disengagement and Former President of the World Bank

    Yep, that's right. In order to improve the business environment for entrepreneurs and encourage opportunity among the lower classes, Brown is freighting in a convicted monopolist and a horde of bankers and fat-cats some of which are heads of corporations that have been criticised for predatory and/or unfair practises. Hmmmm.. Can't wait 'til the advice starts flowing. "Well everyone, what's the best thing to encourage competition in business"? Patents for everything and tax cuts for the exceptionally rich? Sure thing, no problem now that I can push it through Parliament without a proper debate. Seat in the House of Lords? Two million to you guv but make it untraceable, know what I mean?

    Sick country man, a really sick country.

    --
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  15. There's no money in the House of Lords these days by lebski · · Score: 4, Funny

    Now Blair can't sell peerages to it; he's going to close it. Well I guess that will sort out the corruption but I don't think that's what we had in mind.

  16. Executive Orders... by shaneh0 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    This may have been covered in a comment already, but I didn't see it.

    People are discussing the mechanisms in the UK and Canada to pass a law w/o running it thru parliment, and my understanding of these mechanisms is that they work much like "Executive Orders" do in the US.

    The president can sign an executive order and it becomes the law of the land. It can be circumvented by Congress and the Supreme Court, but not easily.