How effectively does the House of Commons

perform its functions?

The House of Commons has six main functions that they
must carry out. There are six main functions; Legislative,
Deliberative, Scrutiny, Recruitment, Legitimation and
Representation. This essay will discus what these
functions entail and whether they are performed
effectively.
Firstly, the House of Commons must fulfil its
legislative function. This is the means by with parliament
passes the government’s legislation. Parliament is almost
the only source of legislation. The exception is GCHQ that
can authorise the imposing of taxes. When a party wins
the general election, which will be in May 2010, a
government is formed consisting of various parties. This
government then makes laws that become acts of
parliament, the legislation thus having been passed by
parliament. Most bills that are passed by parliament are
government bills, however, some bills that are passed
through parliament are private members bills, for
example, the abolition of hanging in 1967 by Sydney
Silverman. There are also private bills which normally only
affect certain private interests and can be introduced by
MPs, usually on behalf of a company. These are not
usually matters of public policy but are usually for matters
such as road building. Unfortunately, bills through
parliament can take a lot of time to become legislation.
This is because there are many stages which the bill must
go through which includes the House of Lords stage by
which the bill may be rejected or amended (this may only
occur three times). The final stage in the Royal Ascent is
the process by which the queen signs the bill. The Act of
Parliament has now gone into the statute book and must
now be obeyed by all citizens of the UK.
Due to the large amount of time it takes to pass bills
the House of Commons does not fulfil is function
effectively. As well as this, through instrumentality, the
leading party will always have the majority in parliament,
meaning it will almost always be able to push through its
legislation. Therefore bills can be passed which are not
necessarily good pieces of legislation.
 Next, the Commons has a duty to fulfil its
deliberative functions. Through this function, parliament
debates certain important issues of the day. The setting is
usually peaceful and there is an exchange of views
between the government and opposition. Through this
debating, for example, parliamentary issues can be
resolved. Recently, however, there has been a serious
problem with the deliberative function of parliament. It is
now unnecessary for MPs to attend the House of
Commons every day and to debate every topic. However,
MPs do still have to attend and debate in the Commons in
order to debate important issues and bills which are in the
process of being passed. Through the MPs not attending
parliament, as was done so well in days of old when MPs
used to give long and enthusiastic speeches, the House of
Commons is not fulfilling its deliberative function well.
The third function of parliament is scrutiny. This is
the process by which the government is held to account
by parliament. Parliaments therefore must react to the
actions and policies of the government and then deem
whether they are lawful or not. The Whips office carries
out part of this process. Their simple aim is to keep
parliament under control. The whips office is said to have
a little black book that contains all of the MPs sins that
they have committed. This, though good in keeping the
MPs in check, also gives considerable power to the Whips.
They are therefore able to have power over the MPs
through slight blackmail. They can therefore influence
them to vote for a certain bill for example. In that respect
the House of Commons does not effectively carry out its
scrutiny function. There has also been the huge story of
MPs expenses over the summer. It was brought to the
public’s attention through a military personnel working on
MPs expenses claim. The fact that these MPs were able to
get away with the false expense claims shows the scrutiny
function of the Commons is not performed effectively.
The House of Commons must also carry out its
recruitment function. This is the process by which, for
example, potential MPs are recruited by a party to stand
for their constituency. This is also the means by which a
political leader is selected, the door to which is very small.
An MP is not able to become a political leader unless he or
she is a similar member of the governing party. An
example of political recruitment is the selection of the
Conservative candidate for Corby and East
Northamptonshire, Louise Bagshawe. Currently there are
only 17 female Conservative MPs which is around 9 per
cent of the party's total number of MPs which is 192. In
contrast with this, 94 of the 349 Labour MPs are female,
27 per cent. Ms Bagshawe has no particular attribute
which make her a good candidate. It can therefore be
argued that the reason why she has been selected as a
candidate is predominantly because she is a woman due
to the fact that the Conservative party are currently
attempting to increase the number of female MPs in the
party. Through this the recruitment function is not carried
out effectively.
The fifth function is legitimation. This function is very
important the parliament and the government as it give
authority to any law that is passed by parliament and we
as a nation must therefore obey that law. Though a law
may be given authority, it does not necessarily mean it
can be enforced. For example for the Hunting Ban was a
piece of legislation which was poorly written, above all, it
is unenforceable. It is not possible to have police regularly
watching to see if the hunt obeys the law. The Commons
does give authority to laws, however, its authority is
consistently disobeyed.
The final function of the commons is that of
representation. MPs have a duty to represent their
constituency in the House of Commons. Clearly, no single
candidate will have 100% of the vote, other people will
have voted for the opposition. It is therefore necessary for
the successful candidate to represent everyone in the
constituency regardless of whether they voted for them or
not, in essence, the MP represents the interests of their
constituency. There has been much controversy over what
the representative function of parliament actually means.
There is one view that every kind of person in society
should be represented by one of their “Own”. Therefore
there would be a gay representative for gays etc.
However, this clearly separates society. In all, the
representative function is performed well. The MPs do
listen to their constituents, no matter who they voted for.
In some cases though, MPs do take a different stance, for
example Phil Hope was quoted as saying that he
“represents the Labour party in Corby and East
Northamptonshire”; thus not representing all.
To conclude the above six functions are key to the
success of parliament. Without one, the system would not
function correctly. Every function is not performed
perfectly and some are clearly far less effectively
executed than others, for example, the function of
scrutiny where MPs expenses were not moderated or
controlled well enough.