The problem with the parliamentary system is that a majority is essetially a dictatorship. With the party discipline, it is a dictatorship of the PM and his clique provided he can twist the necessary arms. They have many options - like refusing to allow a member to be a candidate for the party if they don’t toe the line.
The problem in the US is as described, that any moron can put an amendment onto a bill that says anything; and you have over 300 (plus an additional 100) morons doing just that. A law cannot simply be passed as presented to the house.
IIRC, a bill in Canada cannot be amended in a way that alters or diverges from the original purpose of the bill; i.e. you can’t amend a law against smoking to add a bridge to nowhere to be built (unless the original submitter of the bill - the minister - agrees). Similarly, the budget is a confidence motion. You cannot vote against it without triggering an election, so if you do choose to defeat your own government you risk being voted out of parliament within weeks. Parliament is a bigger game of chicken.
The point is that teh British system includes a much larger unruly mob of the majority party, which puts a bigger check on what the prime minister can ram through all by himslef.
There are serious arm-twisting tactics in both systems. Recall that Bush in 2000 gave up a senate majority and drove out a New England senator (details escape me) with deliberate and calculated snubs for having the temerity to disagree with him on a subject the senator held dear. That sort of vicious nastiness kept the Republicans in congress toeing the presidential party line right up to the end.
Various prime ministers on both sides of the pond have have similar tactics and nastiness to ensure that the sheep do not stray - with varying results.
“Majority equals dictatorship” is grossly overstating the position. Separation of powers purists overlook the internal structural issues built in to Parliament that mean that the Commons is a check on the power of the Executive. The Opposition can’t just be ignored.
For example, you overlook the power of Question Time and the publicity it brings. Unlike in the US, the Executive (ie, the Cabinet) are all MPs, sitting right there to be aggressively attacked at will by J Random Backbencher from Floppy Bottom over something a constituent has raised with him.
There is, rightly, much reportage of Question Time, and feedback to the population as to how the debate went. The system can be abused by Dorothy Dixers (questions asked by an MP who is a member of the government party designed to give some Minister a chance to brag about himself) or by non-responsive answers (which carry a political toll as well) but generally those things don’t detract from the reality of a combative debate about real-time issues of governance as well as of legislation. And I emphasise that the debate is about issues of executive competence, not merely legislation, and is savage.
It works. There is no dictatorship. Governments are forced to be sensitive to the popular will. And there is an advantage in that while the government persists in holding the confidence of the House, it can get stuff done. There will be one Act of Parliament, called the Mining Act (or whatever) per topic. It will be professionally drafted by lawyers dedicated to the task of drafting and familiar with the issues involved. You might get amendments over time as necessary, and debates about the merits of details, but you don’t get the incomprehensible donut-glued-to-a-bicycle thing (love that expression from upthread) that US legislation tends to generate.
I don’t feel oppressed in the slightest by having a Parliamentary system. The only people who do, tend to be those in opposition whose sense of “oppression” tends to be hyperbole derived merely from the fact that they are not able to govern. But the wheel turns.
That’s correct - the single subject rule is enforced by the Speaker, who in our system exercises his/her powers in a non-partisan fashion (unlike the Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, who is the leader of the majority party in that House).
Of course, the single subject rule doesn’t prevent bills that have a very broad subject range, but it does prevent weird add-ons to a bill that have nothing to do with the bill’s original purpose. And, even if the Minister agrees to an amendment proposed by the Opposition, the Speaker is the one that has the final say as to whether the proposed amendment comes within the single subject rule.
Another major distinguishing feature between the two systems is that in the Westminster system, money bills can only be proposed if the Crown requests them. That gives the Executive considerable power to enforce disciplined financial decisions. A rider can’t be added onto a bill to get a vote from other members of the House, unless the Crown (i.e. the PM and the Cabinet) agree to it.
This principle, coupled with party discipline, is what enabled the federal and provincial governments to balance the books in the 90s - the spending cuts were not popular, but a government that is committed to balancing the books has the institutional capacity to do so.
Not here it won’t, judging from the quality of much of the legislation that my attention has been directed to. Poorly drafted, confusingly laid out, obviously by people who have no knowledge and less experience, creates more problems than it solves.
Do you have an example of what you’re referring to? As a civil servant who has been involved in the process of creating legislation and known people who’ve worked on bill teams within my department I’d say the process of creating legislation is extremely professional, and the regard given to Parliamentary Counsel who produce the legislation is extremely high. The failure of Acts to do what people think they should is often because they were poorly thought out (i.e. the intention with which they were made was misguided), not because the wording is deficient.
The other issue with legislation in the UK of course being the fact that it is currently being mass produced through the programming method and churned out by the bucket load year after year. Whereas before there would be an issue which would lead to the need for legislation which would then be enacted, there is now a parliamentary timetable of slots which government Departments have to bid for to put their policies into. So rather than there being an Education Act this year because we really needed one, we just have one because there’s space in the calendar to make it and why the hell not? Don’t even get me started on the proliferation of criminal justice legislation which has reached such levels that the system is starting to become unnavigable.
I’ll go for the Firearms (Amendment) Act 1997 and the Firearms (Amendment) (No.2) Act 1997, the Anti-Social Behaviour Act 2003, s.287 et seq. of the Criminal Justice Act 2003, and the Violent Crime Reduction Act 2006, not to mention the various Firearms Rules, Firearms Regulations and amendments made under the European Communities Act 1973. The result is the text of the Principal Act is now mostly useless as printed in 1968 and is a hiccuping mishmash of clauses, sub-clauses and [ab*a]-type parentheses and even people who are paid to give full-time attention to these points disagree on what the law does or doesn’t mean.
Oh I agree. But as you say, it is “for the most part.” That the Royal Prerogative still exists, and is available for exercise by the Prime Minister, is a problem for British democracy.
Even where the powers have been considered & granted by Parliament, though, it can still be Presidential. Much of the shift of power from Congress to the Presidency occurred with the consent of Congress.
Fair enough, not familiar with those Acts myself but it doesn’t surprise me. I’ve had situations where I’ve had to trawl legislation to check something and you have to navigate yourself three or four iterations back to a previous Act to get the original wording that has been amended or added to in the subsequent Acts and it is indeed annoying and unnecessarily difficult. Still, it is doable though, and I’m not even a lawyer.
Villa, can you be a bit more specific as to why you find the prerogative to be a problem for a democracy? It’s a collection of legal powers for the monarch, defined by the common law courts, and exercised only on the authority of the elected Cabinet, except for the very rare possibility that the Cabinet is doing something unconstitutional
It’s a bit difficult to follow your position without a bit more information.
Also, the same problem, if it is one, would presumably exist in many of the other Commonwealth realms, such as Canada, both federally and provincially. I’m curious what you see as the problem with the prerogative.
Well my first problem would be the Cabinet isn’t elected, its appointed. It is usually made of up people who are elected, but they are elected to a different job, that of Member of Parliament.
My problem with it is that the legislature should be consulted before laws are created. And the RP allows that to be bypassed.
How is that different to the American system of appointing people to government positions? Was Hilary elected to the role of Secretary of State? Also you are a minister/cabinet member as well as an MP, it’s not like you campaign to be elected an MP then suddenly you’re converted into a minister. One of the checks on the behaviour of individual politicians is the fact that they’re beholden to their constituent voters as well as the Prime Minister.
What do you mean consulted before they’re created? The legislature votes on whether legislation is passed in several stages and also gets to potentially amend the legislation during the committee stage. If you mean the legislature should get to decide whether a law is even considered, that would be a) completely impractical and unwieldy and b) pointless - that’s what the Future Business committee is for (which is, incidentally, made up of MPs/the legislature). The royal prerogative is used in such tiny number of instances that it’s practically not worth dwelling on, it’s simply a short cut to what can be achieved through the usual parliamentary and/or executive process. If we were in a situation where the prerogative was being used to ride rough shod over the democratic process then there would be far bigger problems than the niceties of constitutional law because we’d probably also be in a martial law situation as well, and it would all be highly academic (as it is now, in actually).
It’s not. I know this. However, I was responding to a post which talked of the “elected Cabinet” which just isn’t correct.
Yes it is rare, and it is a short cut through the usual parliamentary process. That’s what I think is undemocratic. You might argue it is necessary at times, but it is still an undemocratic process. I also think the executization of government, in both the UK and more noticeably the US is undemocratic, but that is a different argument.
I’m not claiming Orders in Counsel are used daily. I know full well they are not. But that they still are even possible is a challenge to Democracy. I think the last time they were used in the way I am thinking was to impose the restrictions that later got through Parliament as the Prevention of Terrorism Act, but that could be my memories playing tricks on me - it’s been a long time since I studied this.
My overall point was devolving monarchical powers to the PM is a challenge to democracy. It’s not a big one, and not one I expect to cause the collapse of the British system of government, but it is one I would like to see removed. Actually the last time I think the monarchy did genuinely interfere in politics was actually against the PM and elected party during the Orange strike in Ulster. I don’t know if it is apocryphal, but I have heard in multiple places that the army told Harold Wilson that it would not run the power stations if ordered to by the PM. A system where the military is officially in allegiance with the monarchy rather than the constitution has the potential for bad things.
Unlike Americans, who seem to have an extraordinary reverence for their constitutional arrangements, we here aren’t greatly interested in constitutional theory. If we works, then we keep doing it, and if we decide it needs changing then we do that too and not worry too much about the theoretical implications. Occasionally this brings unexpected consequences, like The Dismissal in Australia in the '70s, but the Westminster system seems to survive it.
I just want to comment on Britain going to war with Finland.
I for one would welcome it and think that it’ s long overdue.
They’re shifty eyed blighters and would deserve it.
And lets be honest here, they’re johnny foreingers,
It makes my flesh crawl just wondering what the inscrutable Finns are planning right now even as we speak.
And god knows what foul inhuman practices foreigners get up to.