18. The Role of a Backbench MP

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Shephard ◽  
Jack Simson Caird
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Policy Development ◽  
Public Understanding ◽  
House Of Commons ◽  
Members Of Parliament ◽  
Legislative Branch ◽  
Parliamentary Systems ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
The Uk

This chapter considers the nature and roles of backbench Members of Parliament (MPs) as well as their impact and influence, placing emphasis on the Backbench Business Committee. The term ‘backbench’ refers to where the MPs or peers sit in the House of Commons — behind those with either ministerial frontbench or shadow ministerial frontbench positions. The definition of a backbencher holds in many other parliamentary systems where the executive is drawn from the legislative branch (for example, Canada, New Zealand, and Australia). However, emphasis on the role of backbenchers might vary depending on the parliamentary system. The chapter discusses the role of backbenchers in the UK Parliament, such as supporting their party; scrutinizing government; representing and furthering the interests of their constituency and constituents; contributing to policy development; and promotion of public understanding.

16. Select Committees

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexandra Kelso
Keyword(s):  
Foster Care ◽  
Membership Committee ◽  
House Of Commons ◽  
Select Committee ◽  
Committee Work ◽  
Members Of Parliament ◽  
Working Together ◽  
The Uk

This chapter examines the role of select committees in the UK Parliament, and more specifically how they enable lawmakers in the House of Commons to pool their scrutiny efforts by working together as a formally constituted team. Select committees are cross-party, with membership restricted to backbench Members of Parliament (MPs) and reflecting the party balance in the House. These committees determine their own work agendas and decide for themselves which topics to investigate. Committee work is structured around running focused inquiries into specific issues, ranging from antisemitism to foster care. The chapter first considers the effectiveness of select committees before discussing some major developments that the departmental select committee system has undergone over the last four decades with regard to elected committee chairs and membership, committee activity, addressing highly controversial topics, and developing policy expertise.

Calling Mr Speaker ‘Mr Speaker’

Pragmatics ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 64-87 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Bull ◽  
Anita Fetzer ◽  
Dániel Z. Kádár
Keyword(s):  
Prime Minister ◽  
Daily Life ◽  
Conflict Avoidance ◽  
House Of Commons ◽  
Normative Expectation ◽  
Members Of Parliament ◽  
Face Threats ◽  
Speaker Of The House ◽  
The Uk

Abstract Prime Minister’s Questions (PMQs) in the UK House of Commons is a ritual event, governed by a cluster of conventions. Members of Parliament (MPs) must address their remarks to the Prime Minister (PM) through the medium of the Speaker of the House, who is responsible for maintaining order during debates, and determining which MP may speak next. Due to the sacred role of the Speaker and the prevalence of conventionalised conflict avoidance between the PM and those who ask challenging questions, PMQs resembles archaic tribal councils, in which rights and obligations prevail. Yet, the importance of conventionalised indirectness and the sacred role of the Speaker do not correlate with a lack of face-threats and challenges. PMQs represents an aggressive ritual setting in which the ritual roles and rules only offer a façade to package aggression, and indeed may operate as interactional resources whereby participants can even increase the efficiency of their verbal attacks. Thus, PMQs embodies a scene that ritual experts define as ‘anti-structural’ in character: in this setting, the normative expectation in daily life to avoid conflict is temporarily suspended, to such an extent that conflict has become the ritual norm and is regarded as quintessential to this parliamentary institution.

3. Debating Politics and Making Laws

2021 ◽  
pp. 63-97
Author(s):  
Peter John
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
Political Process ◽  
The Political ◽  
House Of Commons ◽  
Members Of Parliament ◽  
Scottish Parliament ◽  
House Of Lords ◽  
The Government ◽  
The Uk

This chapter evaluates the institution of the UK Parliament, where parliamentarians have a chance to debate issues of the day and to make laws. It reviews classic arguments about the power of Parliament in relation to the executive, before looking at the role of the House of Lords and the House of Commons. The account is still influenced by the Westminster system of government, whereby the executive in the form of the government is sustained in power by having a majority in the House of Commons. The chapter then considers what Members of Parliament (MPs) and other representatives do in office, and how their behaviour links to other features of the political process, such as public opinion and constituency interests. It also compares other legislatures, such as the Scottish Parliament, with the UK Parliament.

scholarly journals Disability, Rights and Vulnerability in British Parliamentary Debate

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Evan Odell
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Government Policies ◽  
Disability Rights ◽  
House Of Commons ◽  
Disabled People ◽  
Members Of Parliament ◽  
Parliamentary Debate ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Disability Movement ◽  
The Welfare State

This paper examines discussion of disability and disabled people by Members of Parliament (MPs) in the UK House of Commons from 1979–2017. It examines general trends in the number of speeches mentioning disability, including the parties and MPs most likely to mention disability issues, and examines how disability is used in conjunction with two keywords: ‘rights’ and ‘vulnerable’. It uses these keywords to explore two conceptions of how the state should engage with disability and disabled people: a paternalistic conception (which post-2010 has become more common) and a rights-based conception (which has been in decline since the 1990s). I conclude with a discussion about how this reflects the disability movement in the UK, and what it means for the future of disability politics, the welfare state and how disabled people themselves might view paternalistic government policies.

10. EU Legislation

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ed Beale ◽  
Libby Kurien ◽  
Eve Samson
Keyword(s):  
Direct Access ◽  
Legislative Process ◽  
House Of Commons ◽  
National Parliaments ◽  
Eu Legislation ◽  
House Of Lords ◽  
The Government ◽  
The Uk ◽  
The Eu

This chapter examines the ways in which the UK Parliament formally constrains the government and engages with European Union (EU) institutions. The House of Lords and the House of Commons both have processes to ensure that legislation proposed at the EU level has been properly reviewed before it takes effect in UK law. The ‘scrutiny reserve’, which stipulates that ministers should not agree to proposals under scrutiny, is used to elicit information about the government's negotiating position. Parliament also has a role in examining EU legislation and providing direct access to European institutions. The chapter first provides an overview of the EU legislative process, focusing on three principal EU institutions: member states, the European Parliament (EP), and the European Commission. It also considers the formal role of national parliaments in the EU legislative process, the UK Parliament's scrutiny of the EU legislation and its effectiveness, and parliamentary scrutiny after Brexit.

5. The Significance of Rituals in Parliament

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emma Crewe ◽  
Paul Evans
Keyword(s):  
House Of Commons ◽  
Parliamentary Debates ◽  
Political World ◽  
Members Of Parliament ◽  
House Of Lords ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Power Hierarchy ◽  
The Way

This chapter examines the significance of rituals in the UK Parliament, focusing on the centrality of rules in such rituals, how parliamentary debates are ritualized, and how ceremonies order relationships between different groups in our political world. It first explains the purpose of parliamentary rituals and how they are regulated, showing that the value attached to the way Parliament ritualizes its interaction is strongly contested between Members of Parliament (MPs) and by outside commentators. In particular, it considers Standing Orders, rules made by either the House of Commons or the House of Lords to set out the way certain aspects of House procedures operate. The chapter also discusses how rituals result in conflict and conciliation and as markers of power, hierarchy, and identity in Parliament.

Parliamentary privilege and defamation

1999 ◽  
Vol 58 (3) ◽  
pp. 461-499
Author(s):  
Nicholas Bamforth
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Direct Evidence ◽  
Bill Of Rights ◽  
Members Of Parliament ◽  
Domestic Courts ◽  
Wide Definition ◽  
The Times ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Domestic Law ◽  
Court Of Appeal

IN the past five years, the conceptual ambiguities of Parliamentary privilege have come to haunt the courts with a vengeance. Ancient constitutional questions such as what constitutes a “proceeding” in Parliament and what counts as “questioning” a proceeding–encapsulated in colourful nineteenth-century cases like Stockdale v. Hansard (1839) 9 Ad.&E. 1, the Case of the Sheriff of Middlesex (1840) 11 Ad.&E. 273, and Bradlaugh v. Gossett (1884) 12 Q.B.D. 271–have been at the forefront of a clutch of recent decisions. In Prebble v. Television New Zealand [1995] 1 A.C. 321, the Privy Council gave new bite to Parliamentary privilege by ruling (in relation to the New Zealand Parliament) that it would be an abuse of both Article 9 of the 1689 Bill of Rights–which prohibits courts from questioning the freedom of speech and debates or proceedings in Parliament–and of a broader principle of mutuality of respect between Parliament and the judiciary, to allow any party to litigation to “bring into question anything said or done in the House by suggesting (whether by direct evidence, cross-examination, inference or submission) that the actions or words were inspired by improper motives or were untrue or misleading” (above, at 337). As a result, domestic courts stayed two libel actions brought by Members of Parliament, on the basis that the claims and defences involved raised issues whose investigation would infringe Parliamentary privilege (see, e.g., Allason v. Haines, The Times, 25 July 1995). Parliament responded by enacting section 13 of the Defamation Act 1996, allowing individual MPs to waive Parliamentary privilege in order to bring defamation actions. But in an apparent reassertion of the spirit of Prebble, the Court of Appeal expressly approved–albeit outside the context of defamation–the Privy Council's wide definition of privilege as a matter of domestic law (R. v. Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards, ex p. Fayed [1998] 1 W.L.R. 669, noted [1998] C.L.J. 6).

A General Model of Author “Style” with Application to the UK House of Commons, 1935–2018

2020 ◽  
Vol 28 (3) ◽  
pp. 412-434
Author(s):  
Leslie Huang ◽  
Patrick O. Perry ◽  
Arthur Spirling
Keyword(s):  
Statistical Model ◽  
General Model ◽  
Panel Regression ◽  
House Of Commons ◽  
Members Of Parliament ◽  
Covariate Effects ◽  
The Uk

We consider evidence for the assertion that backbench members of parliament (MPs) in the UK have become less distinctive from one another in terms of their speech. Noting that this claim has considerable normative and substantive implications, we review theory and findings in the area, which are ultimately ambiguous on this question. We then provide a new statistical model of distinctiveness that extends traditional efforts to statistically characterize the “style” of authors and apply it to a corpus of Hansard speeches from 1935 to 2018. In the aggregate, we find no evidence for the claim of more homogeneity. But this hides intriguing covariate effects: at the MP-level, panel regression results demonstrate that on average, more senior backbenchers tend to be less “different” in speech terms. We also show, however, that this pattern is changing: in recent times, it is more experienced MPs who speak most distinctively.

The role of character in talent identification and development in New Zealand rugby union

2019 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 406-418
Author(s):  
Ryan Rosevear ◽  
Tania Cassidy
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Rugby Union ◽  
Talent Identification ◽  
Systems Model ◽  
A Value ◽  
Universal Definition ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Development Manager

The purpose of the study was to gain understanding of how character is understood in the New Zealand Rugby (NZR) ecology and how the Player Development Manager (PDM) in one Provincial Union (PU) negotiates, constructs and operationalizes interpretations of character within talent identification and development practices. The study design was informed by Bronfenbrenner’s ecological systems model of development and the methodology was case study. The participant in the study was the PDM who worked for one provincial rugby union and NZR. Data was gained using; interviews, document analysis and observations. An iterative strategy was employed when adopting the deductive and inductive analysis. The study found that across the NZR ecology there was no universal definition of character, or set of criteria used to assess players’ character. Within the NZR macrosystem there were formal policies that explicitly identified character as a value to be assessed. Yet, implicit understandings and assessment of character also existed. The PDM working in a microsystem constructed his understanding and assessment of character based on his experiences working with, and for, NZR (macrosystem) and the PU (exosystem) respectively, as well as drawing on his personal value set. The findings of this study are significant not only for rugby, in New Zealand and elsewhere, but they are relevant and topical for any selector, recruitment agent or coach who implicitly and explicitly (de)selects participants based on character.

scholarly journals Partisan Dealignment and Personal Vote-Seeking in Parliamentary Behaviour

2020 ◽  
pp. 003232172095350
Author(s):  
Thomas G Fleming
Keyword(s):  
House Of Commons ◽  
Members Of Parliament ◽  
Electoral Strategies ◽  
Legislative Proposals ◽  
Empirical Tests ◽  
Low Levels ◽  
Election Results ◽  
The Uk ◽  
New Evidence ◽  
The Relationship

What shapes legislators’ incentives for personal vote-seeking in parliament? Recent work suggests that partisanship among voters deters personal vote-seeking, by limiting its effectiveness. This has potentially significant implications for policy-making, election results and patterns of accountability. However, empirical tests of this argument remain few in number and have several limitations. This article thus offers a new test of the relationship between partisanship and personal vote-seeking. Using legislators’ bill proposals as an indicator of their personal vote-seeking activity, I analyse legislative behaviour in the UK House of Commons between 1964 and 2017. I find that members of parliament make more legislative proposals when voters are less partisan. Moreover, partisanship appears to moderate the influence of other drivers of personal vote-seeking: electorally vulnerable legislators make more legislative proposals, but only at low levels of partisanship. These findings provide new evidence that voters’ relationships with political parties affect legislators’ electoral strategies and parliamentary behaviour.

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