Parliament Explained
A podcast from the UK Parliament
Episode 1 ‘Parliament or Government?’
Script
MEERA SYAL:
Welcome to the first podcast in this series, “Parliament Explained”.
I’m Meera Syal and over the course of this series I’ll be exploring exactly what happens in Parliament.
You’ve probably seen a House of Commons debate on the news or read an article about the House of Lords in the papers – but what actually goes on in Parliament?
I’ll be finding out about the people, the processes and also the ways that the public can participate in Parliament’s work. We’ll start, in our first episode, by looking at the relationship between Parliament and the Government and the difference in their roles.
I should say at the outset that this podcast isn’t a party political broadcast. So we won’t be discussing the pros and cons of government policy or expressing a view on any current issues. Instead, I’ll give you an impartial overview of how and why things happen the way they do in Parliament and let you decide for yourself what’s working well and what could be improved. Of course, to help explain certain features, there will be some real examples of events in Parliament but I’ll always try to present these in a politically neutral way.
You can make sure you never miss an episode by subscribing on your podcast app. And you can always find extra resources or explanations online at
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So let’s get started. I’m going to cover a few basics.
Here’s a seemingly straightforward question… What does the word “Parliament” mean to you? I asked a few willing members of the public.
VOX POPS:
- “Parliament means Government to me”
- “The Government, I think?”
- “Government building”
- “Well instantly I think of the Houses of Parliament and Southbank and people representing us and our political views”
- “I just think of men in suits, making a lot of noise, not necessarily doing anything”
- “A house where lots of old people talk about issues and vote on them”
- “Err a bunch of bureaucrats not really in touch with the common man”
- “Government innit”
- “The centre of democracy, or supposed to be anyway, where our politicians argue their cases for trying to improve the country“
- “The place where MPs go to talk about Government issues”
- “I guess it’s where MPs go to work?”
- “Where democracy is carried out”
- “Collective (of) people who are making decisions based on views of the people”
- “It’s where politicians, Members of Parliament…pass laws and scrutinise the Government and hold them to account. (They) provide a check and balance towards what they’re doing”
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MEERA:
Interesting. So “Parliament” means different things to different people. Some people talked about places or buildings - others about significant people or events. And that’s no surprise really. You probably came up with something different yourself. But actually, some of the words used here had more to do with the Government than with Parliament. And there is a difference between the two.
Let’s talk to some experts and ask if they can explain for us the difference between Parliament and the Government.
Lynn Hobson and Gary Hart are Regional Outreach Officers for the Houses of Parliament.
GARY HART:
Hello. I’m Gary Hart, and my role is to deliver workshops, presentations, seminars, to encourage people to find out a bit more about how the UK Parliament works and hopefully to engage a bit more.
LYNN HOBSON:
My name’s Lynn Hobson and I’ve a similar role to Gary, but I work in the North East, Yorkshire and the Humber. One of the most important parts of my role is to encourage more people to get involved in the work of Parliament.
MEERA:
So the Government and Parliament are NOT the same thing?
LYNN:
That’s right.Though people often confuse them because they both have an important role in making decisions that affect us.
GARY:
The Government are the team of people, led by the Prime Minister, who are officially in charge of the country. To put it simply, the Government is responsible for deciding how the country is run and for managing things, day to day. For example, they work out how much tax we need to pay and decide how to spend it. They’re responsible for organising public services - like the NHS and our armed forces – and for literally ‘keeping the lights on’ by making sure the UK has an energy supply.
Quite a lot of day-to-day decisions have been delegated now, to the devolved institutions in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, but the UK Government acts and speaks on behalf of the UK as a whole and represents us abroad.
MEERA:
OK but if the Government are in charge of running the country – what’s the point of Parliament?
LYNN:
The Government are responsible for running things but they have to answer to Parliament. The Government needs Parliament’s agreement before they can do most things. The Government can’t make new laws or raise new taxes without Parliament’s approval. Parliament is there to represent our interests and make sure they’re taken into account when decisions are made.
Parliament works on our behalf to try to make sure that the Government’s policies and decisions are fair, workable and efficient.
MEERA:
Who is in the Government, then? And how did they end up there?
GARY:
We don’t all vote to elect the Prime Minister in the UK, buthow we vote when there is a General Election does indirectly determine who’s in Government. That’s because to be in Government you need to have the support of a majority of MPs in the House of Commons.
LYNN:
In the UK, we have a General Election every five years[1] where we all elect an MP to represent our local area by taking a seat in the Commons. Most MPs we elect are members of a political party. If a party wins more than half the seats – the majority of them – they’re expected to form a Government and serve until the next general election, five years later. At the 2010 General Election none of the parties won more than half of the seats – which is unusual. In that case two of the parties decided to work together and form a coalition Government. Between them they had enough MPs to be in the majority.
GARY:
The leader of the winning party is appointed as Prime Minister and they then choose a team of people to work alongside them, as Cabinet ministers and junior ministers. These are usually other members of their party from the Commons or the House of Lords. It’s this team of people that are referred to as the Government – they all still have seats in Parliament but most of their work is done elsewhere, in Government departments.
LYNN:
Government ministers are each given specific responsibilities within a government department, for example, Health or Transport. There are around a hundred ministerial posts that need to be filled when a new Government is formed. Ministers in the Lords or Commons oversee the teams of civil servants, who do the practical and administrative work in each department.
MEERA:
OK, so the Prime Minister is usually the leader of the party with the most MPs in the Commons and they choose a team of Government ministers from each House. But what about Parliament? Who is there to do Parliament’s work of keeping the Government in check?
GARY:
Parliament is made up of all the MPs we elected, as well as other people who have been appointed. They sit in two separate Houses...
LYNN:
In the House of Commons there are 650 MPs. These include all the MPs from other parties who won seats as well as those from the winning party who haven’t joined the Government team.
GARY:
The second House is the House of Lords, and its members have mostly been appointed for life. They’ve usually been chosen because of their professional achievements or experience. No one political party has a majority in the Lords and many of its members are non-party political.
The UK Parliament is bicameral - which literally means it has two Chambers. Both the House of Commons and the House of Lords need to agree when new laws are made.
LYNN:
A third part of Parliament is the Monarch – currently Queen Elizabeth II. Although the Monarch is the Head of State, his or her role in Parliament is now mainly ceremonial. The Monarch is politically neutral, which means they don’t support any political party and don’t get involved in day to day politics. The Monarch has to formally sign off any new Acts passed by both Houses before they can become law, and they officially open Parliament each year, with the State Opening ceremony in the House of Lords. It’s also the Monarch who formally invites the winning party leader to form a Government after an election.
MEERA:
So what does Parliament actually do to keep the Government in check?
GARY:
The job of the House of Commons and the House of Lords is to look closely at the Government’s plans and to monitor the way they’re running things. They do this by questioning and challenging ministers, by checking or amending new laws before they’re passed, by looking at government departments or specific issues in select committees, and by raising particular concerns with the Government in open debate.
LYNN:
Parliament works on our behalf to try to make sure that the Government’s decisions are open and transparent – by questioning ministers in public and making sure information is put in the public domain.
They also try to ensure the Government’s plans are workable and efficient – by examining new proposals closely and suggesting improvements. They check that public money is being spent wisely and efficiently.
GARY:
Parliament also checks that Government policy is fair and doesn’t discriminate, by checking that they comply with equalities and human rights laws and by speaking up on behalf of people who might be affected unfairly.
Members of both Houses of Parliament can speak up for us if a government department or agency treats us unfairly.
LYNN:
Because the Government is accountable to Parliament, its ministers have to respond to questions asked by MPs and members of the House of Lords.
Government ministers are required to come to Parliament regularly to answer questions and respond to issues raised in debates. They also have to keep both Houses informed of any important decisions they take. In this way, Parliament can be seen to hold the Government to account for its actions.
MEERA:
So Parliament is there to represent us. But many of its members also represent a political party and parties play a big part in how Parliament functions day-to-day. Let’s look briefly now at how the main political parties organise themselves in each House.
LYNN:
The second largest party in the House of Commons is normally known as the Official Opposition. You may have seen the Leader of the Opposition taking the lead in questioning the Prime Minister at Question Time.
Rather like the Prime Minister does, the Leader of the Opposition chooses a team from among their own party members in both Houses. This team works in Parliament rather than in Government and they are known as the Shadow Cabinet because they shadow their opposite number in the Cabinet and take the lead in questioning them in whichever House they’re in...
GARY:
The Government and Opposition teams are known as frontbenchers because, during business in the Chambers of both Houses, they sit on the front rows of benches facing each other.
MPs and members of the House of Lords who are not ministers or shadow spokespeople sit on the benches behind them and are known as backbenchers.
MEERA:
Backbenchers from all parties (and, in the Lords, the crossbenchers) can play an equally important role in checking and challenging the work of the Government through their own questions and debates, and in particular as members of select committees. We’ll learn more about select committee inquiries in future episodes.
But with MPs from all over the UK and members of the Lords from all kinds of professional backgrounds, how does a party manage to speak with one voice in Parliament? And most importantly, how can the Government be sure of its majority in the Commons?
This is where the Whips come in. I’m going to ask our experts for their help again now, to tell us more about the role that the whips play in each party.
So who or what are the Whips?
LYNN:
Whips are MPs or members of the House of Lords who are appointed by each party to help organise their party’s contribution to the work of Parliament.
They are responsible for making sure each party member knows when important debates and votes are taking place. They also make sure their backbenchers are aware if the party has an agreed policy on a particular issue.
The crossbench peers in the House of Lords don’t adopt a ‘party line’, so they don’t have whips in the same way as the political parties. All the same, their “convenors” carry out similar roles of passing information between the Government and the members, and organising their contributions to the House.
GARY:
But the Whips act as messengers in both directions - they are also relied upon to let the party leaders know the views of their backbenchers, so that internal disagreements and party rebellions can be resolved or headed off.
Whips carry out many day-to-day tasks from making sure their party are well represented in debates and selecting party members to serve on committees,to allocating office space to their MPs.
LYNN:
In the Commons, the whips play an especially important role when MPs vote. When numbers are close, it’s down to the whips to ensure that as many of their MPs vote as possible – and that they vote along party lines. They also act as ‘tellers’ who verify the count.
In the Lords, voting along party lines isn’t enforced in quite the same way but the whips still have a role in making sure their members attend debates. Most government departments have at least one minister in the Lords but, if they don’t, government Whips in the House of Lords will usually act as spokespeople so that the upper house can question the Government.
Because no party has a majority in the House of Lords, the whips’ role here is more about cross-party discussion and compromise. The Government can’t rely on forcing through its agenda, and has to try and find a consensus more often.
GARY:
Each week the whips offices send round a document to their members which is known simply as ‘the Whip’. This outlines the votes and debates that are coming up in Parliament in the week ahead and shows how important each item is by the number of times it’s been underlined.
An item with three lines under it - known as a ‘three-line whip’ – is of the highest importance. It might be for a vote on a vital stage of a Bill, for example. All party members are expected to show up for a three-line whip.
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MEERA:
OK, so we can start to see how people in the UK are represented in Parliament, and how the work of our Government is kept on track with rigorous debate and questioning. It’s time to sum all this up…
Parliament isn't just some big old building by the Thames. Parliament’s role is to make laws, debate issues of the day, represent the views of people across the UK, and to check and challenge the work of the Government.
It’s made up of the House of Commons – whose members are elected by us at a General Election - the House of Lords - whose members are appointed for their knowledge and experience – and the Monarch, whose role is mainly ceremonial these days.
Inside the debating Chambers, the big issues are discussed, new laws are made, and the Prime Minister and other government ministers are questioned.
Away from the main Chambers, a host of committees made up of small groups of parliamentarians scrutinise the work of government departments, check the details of new laws, look at major long-term issues, and ask experts and the public, that's you, for ideas and evidence to shape their inquiries. We’ll cover this aspect of Parliament’s work in more detail in later episodes.
Representing the people, passing laws, debating issues and checking and challenging the work of the Government, it's all in a day's work for Parliament.
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MEERA: We’re nearly at the end of our first episode. We’ve heard how the Government has the responsibility to run the UK but Parliament plays an important role in keeping the Government in check as it does so. We’ve met staff who work for boththe House of Commons and the House of Lords and found out about the role of the party whips in Parliament.
Before I go, let’s hear what happened when I asked our Regional Outreach Officers Lynn Hobson and Gary Hart to compare notes.