Relevance of The House Of Commons
Is the House of Commons Relevant? The House of Commons is a division of the legislative part of government, which is where laws are passed. ... At this time, those who sat in the House of Lords, who were a small group of aristocrats, enforced power. Although by the early 19th century, the House of Lords was losing power. This power then resided in the House of Commons, this could be said to be the period when the House of Commons had the most power, due to more people having the vote and the 19th century reform acts. The House of Commons was created so that the growing middle classes had representatives and has many functions, which include representation, influencing legislation as it passes through parliament, providing and sustaining a government, acting as the focus of political debate in the UK and to scrutinise government policies. Theoretically, the House of Commons should possess more power than the House of Lords, as the Commons is an elected chamber. Each member of the Commons is elected under the first past the post system, leading to a majority party in the Commons, which are the government. When the Commons are debating issues, the party with the least members in the Commons has the least time to speak, in order to scrutinise the government and The Opposition has the most the time to scrutinise the government. ... The committees are made up from MPs, and the numbers in the standing committees are representative of the number of seats in the House of Commons each party has. ... This is one of the main arguments for the House of Commons being irrelevant. In order for the House of Commons to be seen as more relevant, the government has to reform the legislative process. ... This is an example where the Commons was not used as it should have been, and a badly thought through piece of legislation was passed. ... This would mean that people with a particular area of expertise could be consulted, and any difficulties ironed out before the bill would be passed to the Commons. ... Being able to carry a bill through from one Parliamentary session to the next and would stop people from rushing the bill through, which would provide more time for the Commons to debate issues fully, and arrive at a sensible conclusion.