Chapter 13

Britain’s Parliamentary Democracy

In This Chapter

Exploring parliament – the Houses of Commons and Lords

Looking at the jobs of MPs and peers

Following the passage of government and private members’ bills

Putting Commons committees under scrutiny

Ascending to the top of government

In this chapter I explore the inner workings of Britain’s parliamentary democracy, peeking behind the oak-panelled doors of the Palace of Westminster to see where the real power lies in the UK.

Honouring the Mother of Parliaments

The UK parliament is often referred to as the ‘mother of parliaments’ as a result of its long history and because people around the globe have copied and admired its traditions and approach to the execution of democracy.

Even the building that the UK parliament sits in shouts out history, power and tradition. The Palace of Westminster is recognised as a gothic masterpiece, with its stained glass, medieval timbers and, of course, iconic Big Ben – read more about this building in the nearby sidebar, ‘Visiting the Palace of Westminster’.

But the Palace of Westminster isn’t just a great building; it’s also a workplace, with 1,100 offices, 100 staircases and the small matter of 5 kilometres of corridors – all of which help the hundreds of Members of Parliament (MPs) and peers in the House of Lords do their job. And what a job it is – making the laws that govern the lives of around 60 million Britons. They draw up, scrutinise, debate and vote upon these laws in two legislative chambers:

• The House of Commons, made up of MPs elected by the public in individual constituencies
• The House of Lords, made up of appointees suggested by the monarch (who in turn takes the advice of the prime minister, or PM for short) as well as some lords who’ve inherited their title and right to sit in the Lords

People often refer to the House of Commons as the lower house and the House of Lords as the upper house. These terms date back to before the 20th century when society was very different and the House of Lords was more important than it is today. Back then people considered members of the House of Lords to be of high birth, and members of the Commons as, well, common and of low birth. In short, these terms are anachronistic and rooted in Britain’s ever-so-complex and long-standing class system.

Within parliament, many committees made up of MPs and members of the House of Lords pore over the small details of new laws and monitor old laws to see how they’re working. All this activity stems from one grand building in Westminster, which is at the very centre of Britain’s democracy.

The UK parliament is still of crucial importance, but some of its powers have been devolved – in effect, given away – to the Scottish parliament and the Welsh and Northern Irish assemblies. Flick to Chapter 17 for more about devolution.

Taking It to the Top: The House of Commons

More so than probably any other institution in the country, what happens in the House of Commons impacts on you in some way or another. The House of Commons is the major law-making body and the laws it makes affect your life for good or ill. For example, consider your car: laws made in the House of Commons dictate that you need to pay road tax and have car insurance, and a budget voted upon by its members decides how much tax you pay on the petrol in the tank. The job of the Commons is also to scrutinise the activities of the government of the day (run by politicians from the biggest political party in the Commons) as well as protect the liberties of Britons. Even in this modern media age, what happens on the ancient floor of the House of Commons chamber and in its committees does count because it’s at the very heart of our democracy.

Laws made by parliament are called statute law or acts of parliament. They’re the most important laws in Britain because no court is allowed to overturn statute law – only another act of parliament can do the job.

Aiming for a seat in parliament

At the 2010 general election, a grand total of 650 people were elected to the House of Commons – each MP representing a constituency. On election, these people become known as Members of Parliament, or MPs for short.

All three main national political parties in the UK have their own methods of selecting a candidate to stand for election to parliament or the devolved national assemblies (see Chapter 17 for more on devolution).

The following list offers a basic guide to hurdles to jump for candidates in each of the three main national parties:

• Conservative: Party members have to make it onto the approved candidate list. Selection for the list is via an application form, interviews and a half-day assessment programme. If you’re successful and make it onto the list, you’re free to apply to individual constituency Conservative Party associations. The members of these party associations choose who’ll stand as candidate in the election.
• Labour: The Labour Party has a tradition of devolved selection of candidates, but in recent years the party bigwigs working at Central Office have had more of a say in who should be a candidate for parliament. The Labour Party operates a central list of approved candidates that local parties can select from. The party’s National Executive Committee chooses who should be on the approved list; however, members of the local Labour Party can choose candidates not on the approved list but nominated by a trade union or individual council ward. Final selection of the candidate is down to a vote of party members in the individual constituency.

  The Labour Party’s National Executive Committee (NEC) is made up of its MPs/MEPs, prominent local councillors and trade unionists and other affiliated organisations. Its job is to help form party policy and impose discipline on party members. Drawing up the list of approved party candidates is another of its key roles.

• Liberal Democrat: A candidate has to make it onto a centrally approved list. Just like going for an ordinary job, the candidate fills in application forms and goes to interviews. When the candidate has made it onto the list of candidates, she can start applying to individual constituency Lib Dem associations, which conduct interviews with potential candidates and make the selection via a secret ballot of local party members.

From the time when a party selects an individual to stand for an election to the UK parliament until the calling of the general election, she’s referred to as a prospective parliamentary candidate.

Generally, the more winnable a constituency is for a particular party, the greater the number of people looking to become a candidate. For example, the Conservative Party often wins the constituencies in the south-east of England. When one of these candidacies becomes available, therefore, competition among people on the party’s approved list of candidates tends to be very fierce indeed. On the flip side, the Conservatives do less well in the north-east of England and Scotland and so competition to become a candidate for those seats is less heated. (See Chapter 8 for more on the inner workings of all the main political parties.)

Looking at the job of MPs

Being an MP is a very important job. Here are some of the key responsibilities and powers that come with being an MP:

• Vote on proposed changes to the law.
• Help amend existing laws.
• Propose changes to the law through private members’ bills (which I explain in the upcoming section, ‘Introducing private members’ bills’).
• Sit on committees that scrutinise proposed law changes and the effectiveness of existing laws, as well as the actions taken by government ministers and their departments.
• Table written questions of government ministers and even the prime minister over their actions. Ministers and even the PM are expected to answer these questions fully and truthfully.
• Take part in debates over new laws and matters of public policy concern.
• Meet with constituents to hear their concerns over local matters or wider public policy.

Above and beyond their official duties, MPs do lots of different things:

• Host receptions in the Palace of Westminster for pressure groups or noteworthy constituents.
• Meet press journalists and give them stories or do TV interviews.
• Visit other countries so that they can see how policy initiatives and law changes work in practice.

If you ask a group of MPs how long their hours are, they’ll probably give you a host of different answers. Some are real workaholics, others less so. Some MPs focus on one or two aspects of the job, such as meeting with their constituents and listening to their concerns, while others love the limelight of the TV studio or like to propose myriad changes to the law. I’ve even met one MP who took pride in the fact that he routinely killed off law changes proposed by colleagues by talking and talking so that the bill ran out of legislative time. He saw keeping as many laws as possible off the statute books and thereby freeing Britons’ lives from red tape as his duty. I suppose someone’s got to do it!

Recognising that the House of Commons holds the power

The House of Lords used to be equally and at times actually more powerful than the House of Commons, but this is no longer the case. Although the House of Lords can vote against legislation sent to it from the House of Commons, it can’t kill it. All the Lords can do is propose amendments and ask the House of Commons to think again about legislation. In the final analysis, the House of Lords has an advisory role to the Commons and little real power.

In 1909 Chancellor of the Exchequer Lloyd George proposed a radical budget introducing the first old-age pensions. Many in the House of Lords voted against this budget, threatening to kill it off and send government finances into chaos. The Liberal government wasn’t having unelected peers telling it what to do over such a crucial issue and so it passed the 1911 Parliament Act. In effect, this act removed the right of the House of Lords to vote down legislation sent to it by the House of Commons.

Britain has an unwritten constitution based on tradition, custom and convention. This situation is best highlighted by the fact that the Parliament Act is used very rarely indeed. In effect, if members of the House of Lords don’t like legislation sent to them by the House of Commons, they vote against it and ask the Commons to reconsider. On the third and final reading, however, even if their concerns haven’t been reflected in amendments to the legislation, they’ll vote it through anyway. Why? Well, many peers in the House of Lords recognise that the House of Commons, as the elected body, has the greater rights and that opposing its bills isn’t their job.

Lording It Up: The Job of Peers

Members of the House of Lords aren’t elected by you and me. Instead, they get to sit in that chamber because they’re peers of the realm – which sounds very grand, and it is. Their official title is ‘lords’.

Before taking up their seats in the House of Lords, peers have first to attend a ceremony to swear an oath of allegiance to the monarch. For this occasion, they dress up in ermine-trimmed ceremonial robes.

In the past, being a lord brought all sorts of extra legal rights and powers – in effect, they were considered extra-special; some lived in castles and kept their own armed forces. Nowadays, being a lord is less about castles – although some still live in them – and more about ceremony. Modern lords either inherit their title or are appointed by the PM to sit in the House of Lords. As well as attending the State Opening of Parliament, when the monarch reads out the government’s legislative programme for the parliamentary session ahead, the lords have other key jobs to play in Britain’s parliamentary democracy, including

• Voting on whether to accept or reject legislation drawn up by the House of Commons
• Proposing amendments to legislation drawn up by the House of Commons
• Debating legislation drawn up by the House of Commons
• Introducing new laws to be debated in parliament

The House of Lords does draw up legislation but all the really important laws tend to start their journey through the legislative process in the House of Commons.

Party loyalty tends to play a less important role in the House of Lords than in the Commons. Peers are often older than MPs because they’ve had notable careers in industry, the church, the sciences, the military or the House of Commons itself before joining the House of Lords. Lords have been there, done that and got the T-shirt – although lined with ermine, of course!

Some members of the Lords don’t belong to a particular party grouping. These peers are referred to as crossbenchers and they sit on benches opposite the throne in the House of Lords rather than on the side of the government or its opponents.

Inherited power: Hereditary peers

Until 1999, up to 700 peers who’d inherited their titles – called, catchily enough, hereditary peers – were allowed to sit in the House of Lords and take part in votes. However, successive Labour governments deemed this state of affairs undemocratic and most of the hereditary peers were turfed out by the Labour government of the day under PM Tony Blair. As a compromise, the Labour government allowed a small group of hereditary peers – just 92 – to keep their seats in the Lords. Nowadays membership of the Lords is by appointment and not through birth (apart from the remaining hereditary peers).

Many commentators suggest that the House of Lords is anachronistic and point in particular to the continued presence of hereditary peers to prove their point. And it’s true that hereditary peers aren’t representative of modern Britain; for example, only 2 of the 92 hereditary peers are women. For this reason, the Liberal Democrats, as part of the coalition government that came to power in 2010, wanted to reform the Lords and end hereditary peerages. However, the Lib Dems’ coalition partners, the Conservatives, disagreed and as a result a reform of the House of Lords, at least in the parliament that ran from 2010, didn’t get off the ground.

Nominating peers for life

The prime minister has the job of nominating peers to sit in the House of Lords – for life. Thus, they’re called life peers. After they die, their title lapses.

On the face of it, nominating peers seems a huge constitutional power in the hands of the PM and the PM alone. However, usually the PM asks the leaders of the two other main parties to submit names for inclusion. So, in practice, in 2014 David Cameron as PM asked Labour’s Ed Miliband and Liberal Democrat leader and Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg for a list of men and women to include in the list of new life peers.

Usually, PMs – of whatever party – try to draw up a final list of peers that ensures that their party has a majority of supporters in the House of Lords but also gives the other parties a substantial number of sympathetic peers.

The PM sends the list of life peers to the monarch for approval, but this is just a technicality. The monarch always approves the peers that the PM wants because of a constitutional convention that the monarch must always take the advice of the PM. (Chapter 12 explains the inner workings of the British constitution.)

When individuals become lords, they’re ennobled, which means that they’re now members of the nobility.

Introducing Bills

In the UK, laws only come about when the House of Commons, House of Lords and the monarch all agree. These days the agreement of the monarch is a given because, according to Britain’s unwritten constitution, she has to agree to new laws made by parliament (refer to Chapter 12 for more on this). What’s more, the House of Lords can only suggest changes to legislation drawn up by the Commons. So, in a power battle between the House of Commons, House of Lords and the monarch, there’ll be only one winner – the Commons.

Laws can emanate from both the House of Commons and the Lords. A proposed new law debated by parliament is called a bill. The two types of bill are

• Public or government bills: These are sponsored by the government, with wording carefully drawn up by civil servants and introduced by the minister responsible for that area of government. So, for example, a bill proposing extending compulsory education to age 18 would be introduced by the minister for children, schools and families.

  Government bills nearly always become law because the ministers who introduce them can rely on a majority of MPs to support them.

• Private members’ bills: These are sponsored by individual backbench MPs in the House of Commons. Private members’ bills have only a marginal chance of success – about one in ten bills become law – because the government gives them little debating time, and if it opposes such bills, they don’t have a chance of getting a majority.

Explaining government bills

The government introduces bills for a number of reasons, including the following:

• To fulfil manifesto pledges: During elections, each party states in its manifesto what it will do if it gets elected. The party that gets into power is then expected to carry these pledges through by introducing new laws.
• To maintain the regular workings of government: Each parliamentary session the government introduces a budget, or finance bill, that sets up the legal framework for the collection of taxes. Without this bill the government can’t raise the cash to fund day-to-day operations.
• To deal with an emergency: Sometimes a major event, such as a war or outbreak of disease, means that the country needs new laws fast. In this scenario, other bills go on the backburner and parliamentary time is freed up to allow the government to introduce its new law.

Often, the government consults pressure groups and interested parties prior to introducing new legislation. (Chapter 9 has more on the role of pressure groups in forming government policy.)

Circulating new ideas: Government Green Papers

Often, before introducing a new bill to parliament, the government checks out what interested parties think by publishing a Green Paper. In this document the government sets out its ideas and presents what it thinks are the policy options. Interested parties can then comment on the contents of the paper and the government can take their views into account when it finally publishes its White Paper, which I explain in the next section.

Green Papers are only appropriate when the government has time to spend on introducing the new law. In the case of an emergency, the government won’t bother with a Green Paper, but move straight to introducing the bill to parliament.

Moving the law along: The White Paper stage

A White Paper is the final stage before a minister introduces an actual bill to parliament. The minister whose area of responsibility the bill falls into uses the reaction to the Green Paper and the policy proposals contained within it to inform the contents of the White Paper. Some proposals in the Green Paper fall by the wayside and others make it into the White Paper.

The minister who’ll be introducing the bill to parliament shows the White Paper to her colleagues in cabinet and to the PM, and they debate its contents. The Cabinet may make changes, particularly when the Bill could affect many different departments. Usually, following White Paper stage, a bill is drawn up by civil servants and the minister then introduces this bill to the House of Commons or in some cases the Lords first.

In recent years, the Green Paper has fallen out of fashion. Nowadays the government often looks to undertake what is catchily called pre-legislative scrutiny before introducing a White Paper. This scrutiny often involves select committees considering draft legislation and asking interested individuals to give evidence before them.

Introducing private members’ bills

Although private members’ bills have only a slim chance of actually passing into law, individuals still try. Bills brought to parliament by backbench MPs can be devoted to big issues of the day or to addressing very small local concerns.

Time is short, with only 13 Fridays in each parliamentary session set aside for MPs to debate and vote upon private members’ bills. What’s more, debates often involve only a handful of MPs because many members return to their constituency homes on Thursday evenings. Passing a bill requires at least 100 MPs to vote, out of which a majority has to be in favour. So an MP wanting to introduce a bill not only has to get a majority in the chamber but also has to persuade 100-plus MPs to stay in Westminster on a Friday in order to cast a vote in the debate – no easy task!

Here are the four methods MPs use to introduce their private members’ bills:

• A bills ballot: Because parliament allocates very limited time to hearing private members’ bills, a pre-selection process is in place. MPs put their private members’ bills on a list and a ballot decides the 20 most popular. The MPs of those 20 present the bills to the Commons on allotted Fridays. The higher up the list, the more likely the Commons is to debate the bill.
• Ten-minute bill: I said debate time was short, but ten minutes? Individual MPs get ten minutes of parliamentary time to present the case for a new piece of legislation. However, these bills very, very rarely make it into law. Generally, the MP introducing a ten-minute bill is doing so as a chance to bring greater publicity to a particular area of concern or to a policy hobby-horse.
• Bills from the House of Lords: Peers can introduce their own bills in the House of Lords and they can team up with an MP who’ll introduce their bills in the House of Commons as well.
• Standing Order No. 57: I know it sounds like a perfume but this order is actually a parliamentary procedure allowing individual MPs to introduce this type of bill on a Friday (the time set aside for this procedure) without making a supporting speech – which saves on precious time. The MPs get to read the bill (if they want) and can vote to debate it if it tickles their fancy. Usually, though, Standing Order No. 57 bills don’t make it to debating stage.

A private members’ bill has the best chance of making it into law if a widely respected and senior MP introduces it in a ballot. Success in the ballot brings debating time and means that a bedrock of support among MPs is already in place. However, the overwhelming majority of ballot bills don’t make it into law either.

Getting Bills Passed: The Process

Parliament operates to a strict calendar. Each year around November, or just after a general election, a new parliamentary session begins, with the monarch visiting parliament and making a speech outlining what bills the government hopes to introduce into parliament in the coming session. During this session, debates take place and MPs vote on laws.

During Christmas, Easter and over the summer parliament is in recess, which means it doesn’t convene. The amount of time parliament has in recess varies. A general election can alter things. But parliament is often in recess. In the 2014–15 parliamentary session, for example, the programme is as follows:

• Summer recess: 22 July to 1 September
• Recess to allow MPs to attend their respective party conferences: 12 September to 13 October
• Autumn recess: 11 to 17 November
• Christmas recess: 18 December to 5 January

In normal years MPs could also expect a nice long break at Easter, but a general election in May 2015 coincides. However, it’s clear that MPs get a lot more time off from their day job than ordinary folk. In fact, they even do better than school holidays!

Detailing the passage of bills

Bills have to jump over lots of hurdles and undergo oodles of scrutiny before they can become law. But government bills often have a majority of supporters; therefore, these bills usually get through even when opposition parties and pressure groups outside the UK parliament don’t support them.

A bill must pass through these stages:

1. First reading in the Commons: MPs vote on whether the bill will pass to the next stage of the process.
2. Second reading in the Commons: MPs vote on whether the bill will now be sent to a parliamentary committee for closer scrutiny.
3. Committee stage: The relevant Commons standing committee examines the bill. For example, a pensions bill is examined by a committee of MPs put together specifically to examine it (I explain the types of committees in ‘Poring Over the Detail: Parliamentary Committees’ later in the chapter). Individual MPs can table – put forward – amendments to the bill, and the committee debates these. The committee then sends the bill back to the Commons with some amendments attached.
4. Report stage: The House of Commons considers the amendments proposed by the committee and may attach new amendments.
5. Third reading in the Commons: MPs vote on the bill and its amendments again. Usually, the Commons accepts the amendments only if the minister who introduced the bill agrees to them.

   The government tells its MPs to vote for or against amendments.

6. Readings in the House of Lords: After the bill passes third reading, it goes to the House of Lords, where it again goes through a process of first, second and third readings.

The House of Lords has the power to table its own amendments to the bill. The bill then goes back to the House of Commons and MPs debate and vote on the amendments. The House of Commons does, however, have the ultimate say over whether or not amendments from the Lords see the light of day.

Though rarely used, the House of Lords has the right to vote down a bill. Doing so doesn’t kill the bill off, however; it merely delays it for a year. Parliament presents the bill to the monarch for royal assent; however, the legislation doesn’t come into force for one year. The exception is the government budget: if the Lords vote against this, the Commons can send it to the monarch for royal assent and it becomes law straight away.

By taking a vote the House of Commons can choose to bypass the committee stage of a bill. It thus passes straight from second to third reading. Cutting this stage speeds up the process of law-making and is useful in emergency situations.

If the bill falls at any one of the above hurdles, it won’t become law.

When little debating time is available in the House of Commons, the government may choose to introduce its bill to the House of Lords for debate first. The bill still has to jump the same number of hurdles – first, second and third reading – but it may do so in a slightly different order. MPs and members of the House of Lords may team up to introduce a bill and they can choose to go through the Commons or Lords route.

Talking it over: Debating

When an MP refers to a fellow member in the House of Commons she always prefaces the comment with either ‘my honourable friend’ or ‘the honourable member’. The word friend indicates that the MP is on the same side as the MP speaking, and member refers to an MP from an opposition political party.

The leader of the House is an MP and cabinet minister who decides how much time parliament spends on a particular bill – with the assistance of her party whips – but the leader doesn’t have a completely free hand. The main opposition party, usually either Conservative or Labour, has the right to a set number of opposition days each session, when the Commons has to set aside other business and the opposition gets to debate an aspect of government policy. Generally, the opposition chooses opposition days so as to cause maximum embarrassment to the government.

After a debate begins, the speaker presides and she calls individual MPs to speak in the debate. After the time set for the debate has elapsed (and this is set out on a case-by-case basis, from an hour or two to several days), it’s up to the speaker to bring the debate to an end. If the debate is over a piece of legislation, the speaker calls on MPs to cast their vote to decide whether it moves on to the next stage of the legislative process. The Speaker announces the result of the vote on the floor of the House of Commons.

Members of the House of Commons and House of Lords enjoy parliamentary privilege. This privilege means they can say what they want in the debating chambers of these two houses without fear of facing action for libel or slander. However, members must be polite. The nearby sidebar, ‘Minding your language in parliament’, explains what MPs can and can’t say. What’s more, members are free from arrest on civil matters within the Palace of Westminster. However, this isn’t the case if they commit a criminal offence.

Icing the legislative cake: Receiving royal assent

Even after a bill has been through the exhaustive process of numerous votes and debates in the House of Commons and House of Lords, it still isn’t actually law. No bill from parliament can become law without the monarch’s signature – grandly termed being given royal assent. Parliament presents the monarch with the act of parliament to sign.

Getting the monarch’s signature is partly a constitutional convention but it’s also meant to be a final check on the law-making of parliament. However, the monarch must always follow the advice of ministers, which in this instance means she must sign or risk sparking a constitutional crisis.

A few weeks usually take place between the bill passing through parliament and it receiving royal assent and becoming law. In emergencies, though, the monarch can usually sign in double-quick time.

Without the signature of the monarch the bill doesn’t actually become law. After it becomes law, the bill changes into an act of parliament, which sounds very grand and official, and is!

Poring Over the Detail: Parliamentary Committees

Committees of MPs and, to a lesser extent, committees of lords carry out much of the work of parliament. Two main types of committee exist:

• Public Bill Committees: A temporary committee formed to examine a particular bill.
• Select committee: A permanent committee whose job it is to scrutinise the effects of legislation already on the statute book or examine the decisions taken by ministers.

These committees can shadow a particular department or they may look across the activities of a host of different departments. In short, though, parliamentary committees are a big deal, and they can call experts from different walks of life to give evidence.

Looking at standing committees

The House of Commons sets up standing committees temporarily to examine a particular bill put before parliament. The job of a standing committee is to debate and consider amendments to the bill they’re examining.

The phrase standing committee is very confusing – as with many terms used in parliament. Because the committee is only in existence temporarily, sometimes its work is done and it’s disbanded within a few weeks – so it doesn’t stand for very long at all.

The Commons Committee of Selection decides membership of the committee according to the number of MPs each party has in parliament as a whole. In a committee with 30 places to fill, the majority of members come from the government party (reflecting the fact that it has a majority of MPs), a large minority from the biggest opposition party and a smaller minority from the third-biggest party, and so on until all 30 places are filled. The key is that the committee is meant to be a microcosm of parliament and reflect the relative size of the parties (in terms of seats won) as closely as possible. So if one party has two thirds of the seats in parliament, its members make up two thirds of the members of each standing committee.

A government with a significant majority of seats in the House of Commons can usually expect to see its legislation go through committee stage without too many unwelcome amendments. MPs may tack on amendments that don’t undermine the basic thrust of the legislation and instead look to improve it, and the government may look at these amendments and agree that they’re a good idea.

Standing committees tend to have quite large memberships – anything from 14 to 50 members. Interestingly, members of standing committees sit with members of their own party, opposite the opposition parties. Therefore, Conservative members of a standing committee sit opposite Labour members. This seating arrangement can make committee meetings quite adversarial in character.

The individual party whips decide which of their party members get to sit on the standing committees. This is in contrast to select committees (discussed in the next section) where MPs get to choose which of their colleagues will be the chairperson, for example.

Examining select committees

Much of the work of standing committees doesn’t gain public attention, whereas select committees – permanent committees that meet regularly – are sometimes televised and have produced set pieces of political theatre.

Typing select committees

Two types of select committee exist:

• Departmental: These examine the actions of a particular government department or the effects of laws in that area.
• Non-departmental: As the name suggests, these committees aren’t related to a particular government department. Instead, they focus on the general operation of government as a whole, the internal running of parliament and even UK relations with the European Union (EU).

Of around 20 departmental select committees, the major ones include

• Treasury: Looks at how well the Treasury is performing – is it, for example, collecting taxes and paying benefits as efficiently as it ought? It also examines areas of wider public life relating to finance.
• Foreign Affairs: Looks at how effective UK foreign policy is.
• Defence: Looks at how the ministry of defence spends its money and equips the UK’s armed forces.
• Health: Examines how the government manages the National Health Service as well as aspects of public health.
• Home Affairs: Examines the workings of the criminal justice system and the police.
• Education: Examines the state education and university system.

The relative importance of the select committee reflects the importance of the department whose work it’s shadowing. A whole host of committees don’t follow a particular department but still examine an aspect of UK government or the running of parliament itself. Lots of these committees exist but here are some of the most important:

• Public Accounts: The most prominent non-departmental committee, well known for examining how government spends its money and bringing waste to light.
• Public Administration Committee: Examines the work of the parliamentary ombudsman, a position I explain in ‘Tying Up the Loose Ends: The Other Parliamentary Players’ later in this chapter.
• Standards and Privileges: Dedicated to monitoring the behaviour of MPs.
• European Scrutiny Committee: Looks at laws being passed by the EU.

Like standing committees, the Commons allots places on select committees according to party size in the House of Commons. Therefore the government has a majority on all the select committees. However, one of the MPs has to chair the committee and she’s elected to this post through a ballot of MPs (in the case of Commons committees) or peers (in the case of Lords committees).

Working out what select committees do

Committees meet about once a week while parliament is in session. They question ministers and civil servants, and call witnesses from the general public with special skills or knowledge.

Although committees can question ministers and ask for information from ministries, the minister or their civil servants aren’t automatically obliged to tell the committee what they know or give them access to private departmental documents. Ministers and civil servants who want to keep their dealings secret can always cite national security for not ’fessing up and telling the committee everything they know. For example, during the exhaustive Foreign Affairs Select Committee’s examination of the reasons for war in Iraq in 2003, the committee often met with the argument that to disclose certain information would put national security or the work of the intelligence services at risk.

The House of Lords has its own committees but these don’t tend to play a major role in legislative procedure and often their public meetings and investigations get little or no media coverage.

Keeping Order: The Role of the Speaker

One of the most notable figures in parliament is the speaker of the House of Commons. She sits on a chair between the government and opposition benches. The speaker is an ancient role, dating back to 1376.

The speaker’s main jobs are:

• Ensuring that an MP follows the procedures of the House of Commons to the letter.
• Deciding which MPs can speak in debates.
• Ensuring that MPs behave themselves and don’t use un-parliamentary language (see the ‘Minding your language in parliament’ sidebar, earlier in the chapter, for more on this).
• Disciplining MPs who don’t behave themselves. Sanctions include naming them publicly to suspending their privileges as an MP.

A ballot of all MPs elects the speaker of the House of Commons. This is a free vote, which means the party whips don’t try to influence how MPs vote (check out Chapter 8 for more on the role of the whips). MPs have a list of candidates – any MP can put her name on this list – from which they pick. When elected, the speaker sits for the duration of the parliament.

The speaker is supposed to be independent and, although a sitting MP and belonging to a particular party, she only votes when a tie occurs, which is very rare indeed.

Tying Up the Loose Ends: The Other Parliamentary Players

As well as the speaker (see the preceding section), several other significant figures play an important role in the UK parliament:

• Leader of the house: This is a government minister whose job it is to set out what debates and bills parliament will focus on in the forthcoming session. The leader’s role is crucial because the amount of time she gives to a debate often dictates whether or not a bill will make it through first-, second- and third-reading stages. The leader generally gives preference to government bills.
• Parliamentary ombudsman: The basic job of the parliamentary ombudsman is to investigate maladministration by the government that may have harmed the public. The ombudsman generally sticks to big subjects and spends a long time hearing evidence, writing reports and making recommendations about how the government can right its wrongs. As government gets bigger and stretches into different walks of life, the workload of the parliamentary ombudsman steadily increases.
• Black Rod: The role of gentleman usher of the Black Rod, to give this person’s full title, dates back to 1350. Black Rod accompanies the monarch when she attends the state opening of a new session of parliament.
• Serjeant at arms: The serjeant’s job is to escort out of the chamber MPs who’ve been asked to leave by the speaker. The post dates way back to 1415 and traditionally the people who become serjeant at arms – and Black Rod – are former members of the UK police force or military.

  Black Rod and the serjeant at arms are now just ceremonial roles. The nitty-gritty of day-to-day security in the House of Lords and Commons is taken care of by a professional security co-ordinator who has a background in counter-terrorism.

Climbing the Greasy Pole to the Top Jobs in Government

People refer to the climb in government as the ‘greasy pole’ for good reason – slipping back down is very easy.

Most MPs have ambitions above simply being a good constituency MP. They want to make a real difference by becoming a minister who gets to pilot government legislation through the Houses of Parliament and has a real say on government policy potentially affecting the lives of millions of Britons. However, only a small number of MPs become ministers or rise further up the ranks to the highest jobs in government, such as the home secretary, foreign secretary, chancellor of the exchequer and, of course, the top slot, prime minister.

In fact, if you’re an MP representing an opposition party rather than the party of government, you have no chance of becoming a minister until and unless your party secures a majority of seats in the House of Commons and therefore forms the government. But even for those MPs on the government benches in the Commons, making it into ministerial office can still be very hard. Many get close to the summit but don’t quite make it.

The following list outlines the path to ministerial power. Usually, MPs ascend each step in turn and reaching the top can take many years:

1. Parliamentary under-secretary: This minister’s job is to support the departmental minister of state – usually a more senior MP. An under-secretary basically does the work that the more senior minister doesn’t have time for.
2. Parliamentary private secretary: This job is the first rung on the ladder to the top ministerial posts. The PPS acts as the go-between for ministers and parliament. She helps keep track of backbench MPs’ opinions as they relate to the minister and the legislation they’re trying to introduce in parliament.
3. Minister of state: Below the cabinet minister are two, three or even four other ministers whose job it is to look after a particular part of the ministry’s work. For example, the Ministry of Defence has a minister for defence procurement, whose job it is to oversee expenditure on weapons and equipment, as well as ministers for the armed forces and international security co-operation.
4. Cabinet minister: This politician heads a government department. The minister’s job is to defend the department to cabinet colleagues and the PM and to argue the case for more money for the department’s coffers from the chancellor of the exchequer. People often refer to cabinet ministers as secretaries of state.

The prime minister appoints ministers. Ambitious MPs courting ministerial office need to keep the PM sweet, and they do so by remaining loyal and voting the way they’re told to by the whips. (Chapter 14 talks more about the role of ministers in government.)