What Are The British Political Institutions?

House of Lords
House of Commons

The British Constitution recognises three branches to central government: The Legislature (which is Parliament), the Judiciary,(which is the Law Courts) and the Executive (which is the Civil Service).  The Head of State is the King or Queen, at present Queen Elizabeth II.  

She opens Parliament by announcing the planned program of legislation drawn up by the government elected to power at the time.  She is also responsible for reading through and signing into law every single piece of legislation agreed upon by Parliament.  She meets the Prime Minister of the day for discussions which are kept absolutely confidential between them once a week.  She is also responsible for meeting and entertaining foreign heads of state when they visit Great Britain.  Along with these duties she has three constitutional rights:- the right to advise, the right to warn and the right to be consulted.

The legislature consists of the House of Commons presided over by the Prime Minister and his/her cabinet, who are the heads of all the various government departments, such as education, health, the home office, the foreign office etc.  This is known as the lower house.  Its members are elected by the voters and it is responsible for the day to day government of the country and the passing of all legislation.  The upper house is the House of Lords, which used to consist of the landed aristocracy, the bishops and barristers, who are basically senior lawyers.  It now has a "leader of the Lords" who will usually be a member of the political party currently in government.  However, the real head of the Lords is probably still the Lord Chancellor, who is also the head of the Judiciary.  The main responsibility of the Lords is to scrutinise legislation coming up from the Commons, checking points of law, suggesting amendments and requiring clarifications where necessary.  They can delay the passing of bills but do not have a great deal of power to prevent their passage into law any more.

The Judiciary, law courts, are responsible for the civil and criminal law courts, and interpretation of the statutes with regard to legal disputes, criminal prosecutions and the sentencing of convicted criminals.  There is a tradition of judge made law in England, where the judge can make a decision of his own where he feels a particular case is an exception not properly covered by statute.  Before he does so, he will normally check to find out whether a previous judge has had to rule in a similar case and thus set a precedent.  If so, he/she will normally follow that precedent.  Usually this will stand, but if the government of the day disagrees sufficiently strongly they can pass a new statute covering this kind of case, thus overruling the precedent.

The executive, or civil service implements the decisions of the government of the day.  Its staff are not political appointees and do not, therefore, change after a general election.  They are responsible to carry out to the letter the legislation passed by the government of the day, regardless of their own personal political convictions and they are likewise not supposed to be interfered with for party political ends.  For example, if the government has to accept an amendment to a bill which it did not really want, it is not allowed to try and force the civil service to ignore the amendment in practice.  Although each department in the civil service has its own head, a cabinet minister will have overall titular responsibility for it, so the Education minister is responsible for the Education Dept, the Health Minister for the Health Department etc.  If something goes seriously wrong within the civil service department for which he is responsible, it is expected that the Cabinet minister will resign.  The Chancellor of the Exchequer is the Cabinet minister responsible for raising taxes and making the final decision about how much money is allotted to each government department.  This is agreed between the cabinet ministers, not with the civil service heads of department.

Complications have set in, as some powers of raising taxes and passing separate legislation have been made to devolved assemblies in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.  Such matters are still decided for England in the United Kingdom parliament, which causes problems as Scottish, Irish and Welsh M.P.s are involved in making decisions for England which English M.P.s are not allowed to be involved in making for the devolved regions.

There is also a complex system of local councils and central government executive authorities to manage the detail on a local level.

At the basis, however, of British democracy lies one of the most important understandings.  That is that an M.P. Is elected to be his constituency's representative, not its spokesman.  That is, once elected, he votes according to his own conscience, not according to how his constituency leaders tell him to vote.