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Conflict
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Parliament in the United Kingdom
In this course, Dr Louise Thompson (University of Manchester) explores the role of parliament in the United Kingdom, focusing in particular on the relationship the executive and the legislative branches of government. In the first module, we think about when and how conflict occurs between government and parliament, and why it matters. After that, in the second module, we think about divisions in parliament and the ability of parliament to say no to government. In the third module, we explore the importance and role of political parties, before turning in the fourth module to the role of the House of Lords. Finally, in the fifth module, we think about Brexit and what it can tells us about the relationship between government and parliament.
Conflict
In this module, we think about types of conflict that occur between government and parliament in the United Kingdom, focusing in particular on: (i) why conflicts between the executive and the legislature are less common – or at least less visible – in the UK than in the US; (ii) the different stages of the legislative process; (iii) the importance of oral questions; (iv) the role of Select Committees, including the Liaison Committee; and (v) why conflict between government and parliament is necessary and useful in the proper functioning of the system.
and Louise Thompson.
00:00:06And I'm senior lecturer in politics at the University of Manchester.
00:00:07And in this module I'll be looking at how and why
00:00:11conflict matters between the UK Parliament and the UK government.
00:00:13So when we think about political systems,
00:00:18we often think about that conflict between the legislative branch, as we call it,
00:00:21and the executive branch.
00:00:25And if you sort of US politics before then you probably very very aware
00:00:27of this because in a system with a more strict separation of powers,
00:00:31we see examples of this a lot more often.
00:00:35So you might be familiar with occasions
00:00:38of gridlock where the US Congress disagrees with
00:00:41what the president wants to do and things like the finance bill not getting through
00:00:44Congress and the whole of the government shutting down.
00:00:48And these sorts of examples are very visible.
00:00:51They're very extreme, and we tend to kind of latch onto them
00:00:53in the UK The fact that we don't have this very strict separation of powers,
00:00:57we have an executive government that is drawn from Parliament
00:01:01from the legislature kind of offsets this a little bit.
00:01:05It means that the government can more or less bank
00:01:09on having a parliamentary majority after every general election,
00:01:13it means that it can be very confident in getting its business through.
00:01:17So it's legislation, its bills passed through Parliament,
00:01:21through the House of Commons and through the House of Lords,
00:01:24and it means
00:01:26that we don't really see as much very visible,
00:01:27very extreme kind of examples of this sort of conflict.
00:01:32And parliamentary conventions can kind of add to this a little bit
00:01:35and make it even less likely to happen.
00:01:38So things like the Salisbury Convention, as we call it in the House of Lords,
00:01:41where by peers want will try not to veto or cause problems for the government.
00:01:45If a bill has been explicitly written in a government manifesto,
00:01:53a party manifesto election time, they will not vote it down,
00:01:57usually at second reading.
00:02:01But despite this,
00:02:03the sort of classic way that political scientists like to
00:02:04think about Parliament to talk about Parliament and to write
00:02:07about Parliament and its relationship with government is to think
00:02:10about these conflicts between the two branches when they occur.
00:02:13And most of the 20th century, political science has been defined by studies of
00:02:17Parliament's scrutiny of legislation
00:02:23and those occasions in which it has or it has not actually said no to government.
00:02:26So I'm going to look at the sort of occasions where
00:02:31we see this sort of conflict in the House of Commons
00:02:33and in the House of Lords.
00:02:36So if we start with the very design of the House of Commons chamber,
00:02:37if we think about the way that those green benches are set up facing each other,
00:02:41then it really sets up MPs to have this kind of conflict with the government.
00:02:45We have the government on one side
00:02:50and we have the official opposition or the
00:02:51government in waiting sitting on the other side.
00:02:53Conflict in some ways is the wrong word for what we talk about.
00:02:57When we think about the relationship between parliament and government,
00:03:01it's not always as simple as Parliament just saying no to government.
00:03:04Often it's more about challenging government testing,
00:03:08government probing what government actually wants to do so thinking about
00:03:12it using those sort of words is sometimes a better way.
00:03:16I've actually doing it.
00:03:19So where do we actually see this happening in Parliament?
00:03:21And because so much of political science has been dominated by legislation.
00:03:24Legislation is the best way to start thinking about it.
00:03:28So if we think about whenever government wants to pass a piece of legislation,
00:03:32it has a bill and needs to get it through parliament.
00:03:37Where do we actually see
00:03:39this conflict occurring? So first of all, we see it what we call second reading.
00:03:40And this is a general debate in the House of Commons, where on the House of Lords,
00:03:46where MPs or peers will debate what we call the main principles of
00:03:50the bill so they won't actually talk about the text of the bill.
00:03:54They'll talk about the broad arguments, the broad ideas,
00:03:57the general thing that the government is actually trying to introduce or to change.
00:04:01We'll see a government minister standing up in the Commons and opening the debate,
00:04:05making the case for the government and for why this bill needs to be introduced.
00:04:09And then straight away we'll see the opposition minister,
00:04:13a labour minister at the moment,
00:04:16standing up and responding to this unusually saying.
00:04:18Actually, they don't think that it's a very good idea.
00:04:22They don't agree with the way that the government's doing it.
00:04:24They want to change something
00:04:26and then we'll see
00:04:28MPs from both sides of the house actually
00:04:29talking about what they think about the bill.
00:04:32At the end,
00:04:34there'll be a vote which may or may not be passed If
00:04:34it's not passed and then the bill cannot proceed to the next stage
00:04:37from here, the bill will go to committee stage and there again,
00:04:41we see this kind of conflict in the very design of the rooms that occurs in.
00:04:45So we see
00:04:49MPs sitting facing each other again,
00:04:50like in the House of Commons chamber in a public bill committee room,
00:04:53government on one side, opposition MPs on the other side.
00:04:56And it's a smaller group of MPs,
00:05:01so it's not in the extreme kind of atmosphere of the House of Commons chamber.
00:05:03But we still see the same sort of thing happening.
00:05:08A government minister standing up speaking about part of the bill
00:05:10and then an opposition MP standing up and saying Actually I don't like this,
00:05:14I don't agree with this.
00:05:17We need to change this.
00:05:18MPs might be voting on particular words in the bill, particular phrases,
00:05:20particular clauses
00:05:25and they can remove things from the bill.
00:05:27They can try and add things from the bill and the whole thing works through debate
00:05:29and votes in the same way as it does on the floor of the House.
00:05:32We might then see the bill go back to the floor of the House of
00:05:36Commons for its report Stage providing gets through
00:05:39a bill committee which it probably will,
00:05:41and then we'll see the same thing happening again.
00:05:44MPs trying to test the government trying to suggest more changes,
00:05:46more amendments to the bill government saying that actually, the bill is amazing.
00:05:49It should pass
00:05:53and there's nothing wrong with it
00:05:54and we get this kind of to and froing.
00:05:56So this conflict happens all the way through and at the very end we'll
00:05:58see a final debate called the Reading and the final debate on the bill.
00:06:01If this passes the bill, then go to the House of Lords
00:06:06and the whole process will be repeated so we can see the way
00:06:08that conflict is really built into every single stage of that legislative process.
00:06:12We could also see conflicts happening in other areas
00:06:17of House of Commons and the House of Lords.
00:06:20So happening, maybe at oral question times. So
00:06:22set occasions on each day of the parliamentary
00:06:27week where MPs can put questions to government ministers
00:06:29works on a topic basis.
00:06:33Or there's a particular department answering questions on a particular day
00:06:35and again,
00:06:38we can see MPs trying to challenge or test the
00:06:39government about their actions or particular piece of policy.
00:06:41So this week, as I'm filming this at
00:06:45the welcome pensions question time, we saw from a Brexit minister, David Davis,
00:06:49stand up and ask the DWP minister Amber,
00:06:53about when the government would be
00:06:57reforming the process for disability, living allowance appeals
00:07:00and the minister had to respond to this on the floor of the house then and there.
00:07:05No notice about what sort of question should be getting. We can also see it happen.
00:07:10Martha, really, this kind of conflict in parliamentary select committees
00:07:15and that might be in the House of Commons or it might also be in the House of Lords
00:07:19and probably the best example of this kind of conflict
00:07:22in committee is what we call the Liaison Committee,
00:07:25which is a very prestigious committee in the House of Commons.
00:07:28It's composed of all the select committee chairs
00:07:32and it has the job of bringing the prime minister in front of it, usually twice a year,
00:07:35and quizzing him or her for an hour, an hour and a half on some particular themes.
00:07:40So in 2018, and in early 2019,
00:07:46we saw Theresa May I come before the liaison
00:07:50committee and be grilled about the government's plans for Brexit
00:07:53and the deal that the government had negotiated
00:07:57And they're This conflict was perhaps more prolonged,
00:08:02even though it wasn't in the very visible and
00:08:05public kind of atmosphere of the House of Commons,
00:08:07the prime minister was really put on.
00:08:11The spot had to answer question after question on what was happening.
00:08:12The progress with the deal, what was happening with negotiations?
00:08:16What would happen if Parliament didn't agree to the deal,
00:08:19what would happen in the event of a no deal?
00:08:22And she was really put on the spot for an hour, an hour and a half on each occasion
00:08:25and
00:08:29and this is repeated in every single select committee through parliament.
00:08:30They can bring those ministers before them and ask them those sorts of questions.
00:08:33So we know that conflict occurs in Parliament.
00:08:38We know that there's this relationship between parliament
00:08:40and government where parliament can test government.
00:08:42So finally, I just want to think about why that conflict is actually important
00:08:45and the first reason it's important is quite simply because
00:08:49it means that government can actually do whatever it likes.
00:08:53It will be continually and repeatedly tested and prob
00:08:55by MPs and by peers.
00:09:00So even though we might think that the government is dominant,
00:09:02it's not really got completely free reign and it has to come before the House of
00:09:05Commons in various arenas or the House of Lords and actually answer for its actions.
00:09:09The second thing is that it can put pressure on the government to actually change.
00:09:14Its plans also explain itself.
00:09:18So if I go back to the example of Department of Work and Pensions questions
00:09:21from this week,
00:09:26um, the government minister Amber
00:09:27has actually been quizzed by MPs so many times about very particular
00:09:29constituency constituency issues for benefits and
00:09:34disability payments and things like this
00:09:39that she's had to set up her own kind of ministers surgery outside
00:09:41of the House of Commons chamber and she said in House of Commons in
00:09:46in time this week that she'll be running these surgeries.
00:09:50She runs them the week after question time
00:09:53and it means that MPs can come and she can talk a bit
00:09:56more in person about their particular issues that they've raised in the chamber.
00:09:58And this is because she's been put on the spot so many times by
00:10:02MPs about very specific cases that the government just haven't prepared for them.
00:10:05They don't really have the answers for
00:10:09that. She's had to set up alternative means to do this.
00:10:10The third one is that it's played out in a very public arena,
00:10:14so most of these exchanges don't happen behind closed doors.
00:10:17They happen in bits of parliament where members of
00:10:20the public can go and sit in and watch.
00:10:23They happen
00:10:25in places where they will be put on as footage on the television news.
00:10:26Anyone can log onto Parliament's website and watch what's happening.
00:10:32You know they can't hide from this kind of scrutiny and conflict,
00:10:35and fourthly, is not always plain sailing for the government.
00:10:39Um, you know, we'll see in other modules that they don't always get their own way.
00:10:41They're often have to make compromises or climb downs on big pieces of legislation
00:10:46and big examples from previous parliaments. Mind clued
00:10:52the watering down of terrorism legislation on the
00:10:56Gordon Brown government because of concerns of MPs.
00:10:59It might be the you change on tax credits onto David Cameron or, more recently,
00:11:02the difficulties that Theresa May has had
00:11:08getting her Brexit deal through Parliament.
00:11:10So academics and political commentators really like
00:11:12to study this kind of conflict.
00:11:15But we've got to be really careful about the type of conflict we look at
00:11:17and also the way that we interpret it.
00:11:20Big conflict doesn't happen very often. Lots of the time.
00:11:22It's much smaller and milder kind of level, or it often happens behind the scenes,
00:11:26and these are the sorts of things that we're going to look at in the next modules.
00:11:31
Cite this Lecture
APA style
Thompson, L. (2020, February 21). Parliament in the United Kingdom - Conflict [Video]. MASSOLIT. https://massolit.io/courses/parliament-in-the-united-kingdom/the-house-of-lords
MLA style
Thompson, L. "Parliament in the United Kingdom – Conflict." MASSOLIT, uploaded by MASSOLIT, 21 Feb 2020, https://massolit.io/courses/parliament-in-the-united-kingdom/the-house-of-lords