Slide 7. Royal Rainbow

Slide 8.

According to the constitution of the United Kingdom, the monarch has the following powers:

Domestic Powers:

· The power to dismiss and appoint a Prime Minister;

· The power to dismiss and appoint other ministers;

· The power to summon, prorogue and dissolve Parliament;

· The power to make bills valid;

· The power to commission officers in the Armed Forces;

· The power to command the Armed Forces of the United Kingdom;

· The power to appoint members to the Queen's Council;

· The power to issue and withdraw passports;

· The power to grant Prerogative of mercy;

· The power to grant honours;

· The power to create corporations via Royal Charter.

Slide 9.

Foreign Powers:

· The power to ratify and make treaties;

· The power to declare War and Peace;

· The power to deploy the Armed Forces overseas;

· The power to recognize states;

· The power to credit and receive diplomats.

Slide 10.

Legislature.

The constitution of the United Kingdom is the set of laws and principles under which the United Kingdom is governed. Unlike many other nations, the UK has no single constitutional document. This is sometimes expressed by stating that it has an "unwritten" constitution. Much of the British constitution is embodied in written documents, within statutes, court judgments and treaties.

Slide 11.

The UK Parliament is the supreme legislative body in the United Kingdom, British Crown dependencies and British overseas territories. It is located in Westminster, London. Its head is the Sovereign, Queen Elizabeth II. The Parliament can perform "constitutional reform" simply by passing Acts of Parliament and thus has the political power to change or abolish almost any written or unwritten element of the constitution.

An Act of Parliament is a law regarded as primary legislation by a national or sub-national parliament (Primary legislation is law made by the legislative branch of government. This contrasts with secondary legislation, which is usually made by the executive branch). A draft Act of Parliament is known as a bill.

Slide 12.

The British Parliament - like most in the world - is bicameral with an upper house, the House of Lords, and a lower house, the House of Commons. House of Lords - Checking and shaping draft laws and challenging the work of Government; House of Commons - Democratically elected house, makes laws and checks the work of Government.

Slide 13.

The House of Commons is the lower chamber but the one with the most authority. It sits each week day for about half of the weeks of the year.

The Commons is chaired by the Speaker. This post is non-political.

The House of Commons currently comprises 650 Members of Parliament or MPs (the number varies slightly from time to time to reflect population change). This is a large legislature by international standards. Rather oddly (but deliberately), there is insufficient seating capacity in the chamber of the House of Commons for all the MPs. Members do not sit at desks (like most legislatures) but on long, green-covered benches and there is only seating capacity for 437 MPs out of the total of 650.

Every citizen aged 18 or over can vote once in the constituency in which they live. Voting is not compulsory. The last General Election was held in May 2010. For elections to the House of Commons, the UK is currently divided into 650 constituencies with each electing a single member of parliament by simple plurality. Thus each member in the House of Commons represents a geographical constituency. General elections are called by the monarch when the prime minister so advises. The Parliament Acts 1911 and 1949 require that a new election must be called within five years of the previous general election.

Slide 14.

The House of Lords is the upper chamber but the one with less authority. Its main roles are to revise legislation and keep a check on Government by scrutinizing its activities. Since 1911, its power to block "money bills" is limited to one month and its power to block other bills is limited to one session, so ultimately it cannot block the will of the House of Commons.

The House of Lords includes two different types of members: the Lords Spiritual (the senior bishops of the Church of England) and the Lords Temporal (members of the Peerage) whose members are not elected by the population at large, but are appointed by the Sovereign on the advice of the Prime Minister. The House of Lords is an utterly bizarre institution that has no parallel anywhere in the democratic world.

· There is no fixed number of members in the House of Lords, but currently there are around 830 members - many more than in the House of Commons.

· Historically most members of the House of Lords have been hereditary peers. This means that years ago a king or queen nominated a member of the aristocracy to be a member of the House and, since then, the right to sit in the House has passed through the family from generation to generation. Clearly this is totally undemocratic and the last Labour Government abolished the right of all but 92 of these hereditary peers to sit in the House.

· Almost all the other members of today's House of Lords are called “life peers”. This means that they have been chosen by the Queen, on the advice of the Government, to sit in the House for as long as they live, but afterwards no member of their family has the right to sit in the House. Many are former senior politicians. Others are very distinguished figures in fields such as education, health and social policy.

· A small number of other members - 26 - are Archbishops and Bishops of the Church of England.

Slide 15.

Much of the work of Parliament is done in Committees rather than on the floor of the chamber. The House of Commons has two types of committee:

Select Committees are appointed for the lifetime of a Parliament, 'shadow' the work of a particular Government Department, conduct investigations, receive written and oral evidence, and issue reports. Membership is made up only of backbenchers and reflects proportionately the balance of the parties in the Commons.

General Committees are temporary bodies, formed to examine the detail of a particular piece of proposed legislation and consider amendments to the Bill.

There are some Joint Committees of the Commons and the Lords.

Slide 16.

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 – the Bills and amendments to them are examined in detail, by a small, specially chosen group known as Public Bill Committee.

· Report Stage – the changes made to the Bill in the Committee are reported to and debated by the whole House. Some changes may be brought in the Bill.

· 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.

Дата добавления: 2014-01-11