The House of Lords Is Now More Effective Than the House of Commons in Checking Government Power. Discuss (06/13)

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the executive. There are 178 crossbenchers, and these peers allow for personal opinions to be heard as most of them are not party aligned, they also spend 2/3 of their time scrutinising legislation. Whips also have far less impact in the House of Lords on the peers than they have on MPs in the House of Commons; as these Peers are appointed due to specialising in a career such as Lord Walton who is a former president of BMA, whereas an MP’s only career is in Parliament and they may need promotion whereas Peers remain unaffected by this. The members of the House of Lords are appointed and therefore do not have constituency pressures and can solely focus on the policy and do a better job at scrutinising it than the Commons. Due the reason that the Peers are not accountable to anyone, this allows them to speak their mind on the issues and not follow their party as oppose to the MPs in the House of Commons who have to stick to their party, due the pressure of the whips and promotions.

Another reason to why the Lords are more effective than the House of Commons in checking government power, is that the House of Commons operates under Whips, to ensure that MPs vote according to the party line and in favour of their leader. This can prevent MPs from forming their own judgement and thinking independently like the Lords, and this will result in far less scrutiny as MPs are likely to vote for their leader regardless of their own ideas. The importance of party loyalty within the House of Commons is also likely to reduce the effectiveness of scrutiny as MPs rarely rebel against their party’s wishes; and this can prove to be unsuccessful when the executive propose a new legislation, as due to FPTP system which rarely creates coalitions, the government will always have a majority in the House and most MPs will vote in favour of the government. MPs will vote with their party due to possible

promotions and securing their job showing how ineffective the scrutiny function in the House of Commons is when combined with the Whips.

A third reason to why the Lords are more effective than the House of Commons in checking government power, is due to their expertise and experience. An example of this is when the Lords Select Committee in banking reform where members included Nigel Lawson as well as the archbishop of Cantibury. They offered a number of criticism of the government plans of banking reform. Also, no party has a majority in the Lords therefore it is harder to get legislation across but also makes the Peers more independent. The previous Labour and coalition have suffered far more defeats in the Lords than in the Commons on issues such as NHS reform and welfare reforms.

In conclusion, although the House of Lords are quite effective in checking the power of the government due to their independently minded peers, it still does no outweigh the level of effectiveness the House of Commons carry out in checking government power. As the House of Commons is the only chamber that can reject legislation or can remove a government due to the fact that its elected and is democratically accountable. Therefore, ultimately, the House of Commons remains far more effective due to having greater powers in checking the government power.

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