How well does the British Parliament scrutinise legislation?
In the British political system, almost all legislation is proposed by the Government and much of it comes from promises made in the manifesto of the relevant political party at the last election. At the beginning of each annual session of the Parliament, the main Bills to be considered are announced by the Queen in a speech opening that year’s session of Parliament.
All legislation has to be approved by both Houses of Parliament.
In each House of Parliament, a proposed piece of legislation – called a Bill – goes through the following stages:
- First Reading – the Bill is introduced with simply a reading by a Minister of the long title of the Bill
- Second Reading – the general principles of the Bill are debated by all the members of the House and a formal vote is taken
- Committee Stage – each clause and schedule of the Bill, plus amendments to them and any new clauses or schedules, is examined in detail, in the Commons by a small, specially chosen group of members meeting as Public Bill Committee
- Report Stage – the changes made to the Bill in the Committee are reported to and debated by the whole House which is invited to consider the Bill as a whole, approve the changes by the Committee, and consider any further proposed changes that might be suggested
- Third Reading – the final version of the Bill is considered by the whole House in a short debate
- Royal Assent – the Crown gives assent to the Bill which then becomes an Act
This process of enacting legislation applies to what is called primary legislation which starts as a Bill and finally become an Act. Another type of legislation is called secondary (or delegated) legislation which is usually more detailed. The power to make specific pieces of secondary legislation comes from specific pieces of primary legislation. A piece of secondary legislation – formally called an Order-in-Council – is not even debated unless it is particularly controversial and then it cannot be amended but simply approved or opposed. In practice, the last time Parliament rejected a piece of secondary legislation was in 1979.
In recent years, the number of Bills passed by Parliament has remained broadly constant at around 50 a year. However, these Bills have become longer and, in the past few years, about 3,000 pages of primary legislation, as well as around 13,000 pages of secondary legislation, have been processed by Parliament. The reality, therefore, is that Parliament provides increasingly less scrutiny of a lot of legislation. This situation could become even worse as Parliament attempts to deal with all the legislation needed to take the UK out of the European Union (Brexit).
Of course this problem of elected politicians struggling to scrutinise effectively proposed legislation is not unique to the UK, but an an issue for all legislatures around the world.
You can find more information on the British political system here.