...The speaker of the House of Lords, the Lord Chancellor, is a member of the Cabinet. The La Lords sit as the highest court of appeal in England.The House of Commons carries out the bulk of parliamentary ork. The 650 Members Of Parliament MPs, ho sit in the Commons, are elected representatives of the people in the United Kingdom 523 for England, 38 for ales, 72 for Scotland and 17 for Northern Ireland. Each MP represents one of the 650 constituencies into hich the UK is divided. Commons has a maximum term of 5 years, at the end of hich a general election must be held. Hoever, a general election can be called in the Government at any time. The constitutionHoever, Britain is almost alone among modern states in that it does not have a ritten constitution. There are rules, regulations, principles and procedures for the running of the country but there is no formal document that could be called the Constitution of the United Kingdom or hich can be appealed to as the highest la of the land. Hoever, there are three distinctive features that have influenced Britains social and political institutions and that may be called the basis of the political system statue la, common la and conventions. Statue la are Acts of the Parliament. They are ritten las and include rules of major importance for the history of the country, e.g. the Bill of Rights or the European Community Act. They also deal ith the electoral system the Representation of the People Acts and ith the composition of the Parliament. Other acts relate to the monarchy, or are concerned ith civil liberties the Habeas Corpus Act.Common la is the body of traditional, unritten las of England, based on judges decisions and custom. They have proved particularly important in relation to civil liberties, such as the advancing of the Habeas Corpus Act, hich orders that a person should be told by a judge hy he or she is being held in custody.Conventions are basically rules that have developed during the centuries or may have come into existence only recently. Some conventions are far more important than most of the statues or common las. So it is a convention, that says that there must be a prime minister or a cabinet.The GovernmentThe term the government can be used to refer to all politicians ho have been appointed by the monarch to help run government departments or to take on various other special responsibilities, such as managing the activities of the parliament.The other meaning of the term the government refers only to the most poerful of these politicians, namely the Prime Minister and other members of the cabinet.Partly as a result of the electoral system, Britain, unlike much of estern Europe, normally has a single-party government. In other ords, all members of the government belong to the same political party. The habit of single-party government has helped to established the tradition knon as collective responsibility. That is, every member of the government, hoever junior, shares the responsibility for every policy made by the government.All important decisions are made by the Government. It consists of about 100 members ho usually belong to one of the Houses of Parliament. The highest members of the Government about 20 are knon as the Cabinet.The cabinetThe cabinet started in the eighteenth century as an informal grouping of important ministers and officials of the royal household. The Government as run by the Privy Council, a body of hundred and more people including those belonging to the cabinet directly responsible to the monarch. In the tentieth century, the cabinet has itself become more and more official and publicly recognised and much of the real decision-making takes place in the cabinet.The cabinet meets once a eek and takes decisions about ne policies, the implementation of existing policies and the running of the various government departments. The members of the Cabinet are chosen by the Prime Minister and may or may not have a government department under them.The Prime MinisterThe position of a British Prime Minister PM is in direct contrast to that of the monarch. Although the Queen appears to have a great deal of poer, in reality she has very little. The Prime Minister, on the other hand, appears not to have much poer but in reality has a very great deal indeed.Today the Governments poer is concentrated in the hand of the Prime Minister, ho at the same time is the leader of his party. He is the head of the government and has a seat in the Commons. Among other responsibilities, he recommends a number of appointments to the sovereign, including senior clergy of the Church of England.Prime Ministers since 1940inston Churchill 1940-45 Clement Attlee 1945-51inston Churchill 1951-55Anthony Eden 1955-57Harold Macmillan 1957-63Alec Douglas-Home 1963-64Harold ilson 1964-70Edard Heath 1970-74Harold ilson 1974-76James Callaghan 1976-79Margaret Thatcher 1979-91John Major 1991-97Tony Blair 1997- Conservative - LabourCentral and local governmentIn Britain local government authorities generally knon as councils only have poer because the central government has given them poers. Indeed they only exist because the central government allos them to exist.The system of local government is very similar to the system of national government. There are elected representatives, called councillors the equivalent of MPs. They meet in a council chamber in the Ton Hall or County Hall the equivalent of Parliament, here they make policy hich is implemented by local government officers the equivalent of civil servants.The monarchyFor the evidence of ritten la only, the Queen has almost absolute poer, and it all seems very undemocratic. Every autumn, at the state opening of Parliament, Elizabeth II, ho became Queen in 1952, makes a speech. In it, she says hat my government intends to do in the coming year. And indeed, it is her government not the peoples. As far as the la it concerned, she can choose anybody she likes to run the government for her. The same is true for her choices of people to fill some hundred or so other ministerial positions. And if she gets fed up ith her ministers, she can just dismiss them. Officially speaking they are all servants of the Cron. Furthermore nothing the parliament has decided can become la until she has agreed to it. There is also a principle of English la that the monarch can do nothing that is legally rong.But in reality it is of course very different. Of course she cannot choose anyone she like to be Prime Minister, but she has to choose someone ho has the support of the majority of MPs in the House of Commons because her government can only collect taxes ith the agreement of the Commons, so if she did not choose such a person, the government ould stop function. ith the Parliament it is the same story the Prime Minister ill talk about requesting a dissolution of Parliament hen he or she ants to hold an election, but it ould be normally impossible for the monarch to refuse this req...
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