Give an account of the law-making process in the UK Parliament,
distinguishing between primary and secondary legislation and evaluate the
relative functions and powers of the two Houses.
Acts or Parliament, or statutes, are the highest source of law in the UK and these are made
by the sovereign law-making body, the Parliament. The Parliament consists of the elected
House of Commons, the elected House of Lords and the Queen. House of Commons is
elected by the public and consists of 650 members, retaining all the democratic power.
House of Lords is the second chamber of the UK Parliament, consisting of around 800
members who are nominated. Together, they are referred to as Members of the Parliament
(MPs). A statute consists of several crucial purposes. These include; ensuring social control,
taxation, setting out public rights, regulating commercial activity, giving legal force to
government policies and so on. For a bill to become an act of parliament, it must go through
certain required stages. Pre-legislative process includes, firstly, putting down the idea into a
green paper which is a consultative paper and is open to discussion. This is followed by the
white paper is more detailed than the green paper. At this point, it is called a bill. A bill can
initiated by government ministers or private members of the parliament (backbenchers). An
example of a private members bill is the Abortion Act 1967. Next, a bill may be introduced in
either the House of Commons or the House of Lords, although money bills are generally
introduced in the House of Commons. The minister introduces the bill in the house for first
reading. This is a formal procedure where the name and main aim of the bill are read out.
Usually, no discussion takes place and usually, there will be no vote. This is followed by a
second reading where the main debate takes place. It focuses on the main principle rather
than the smaller details. Members of parliament may either support or challenge the bill, a
voting takes place side by side. Debates of second readings are published in Hansard. After
the second reading, the next stage is the committee stage where a detailed line-by-line
examination of each clause takes place and amendments are made. The Committee stage
is followed by a report stage where the amendments are discussed, and the bill is sent back
to the house where it had been initiated. If the bill was introduced in the House of Commons,
then all the above-mentioned stages will be followed in the House of Lords and vice versa.
Lastly, royal assent takes place when the Monarch (Queen) approves of the bill and the bill
is made into an act of parliament, giving it the title of being the highest source of law of the
land. Within the parliament, there have been tense relations between the two houses. The
House of Lords, until the early 20th century, had equal powers to the House of Commons
except that it was a convention that the Lords would not overrule the Commons on issues
related to taxation and public spending. A major conflict between the Conservative majority
in the Lords and the Liberal Government led to the passing of the Parliament Act, 1911
which allowed the Commons to overrule a Lords veto over legislation by voting it down in
two successive sessions of Parliament. It also made it illegal for the Lords to delay taxation
and public spending legislation for more than one month. In 1949, the Labour Government
reduced the delay over legislation to one session. In practice, Governments have hardly ever
had to use the Parliament Acts as the Lords have looked to avoid major conflicts over
legislation. Since 2000, it has only been used to overrule the Lords on the age of consent for
gay men and fox hunting. In Jackson v AG the HOL confirmed the validity of Parliament Act
1949. The Salisbury Convention is generally understood to mean that the House of Lords
should not reject, at the second or third reading, Government Bills brought from the House of
Commons for which the Government has a mandate from the nation (Conventions on the
relationship between the Commons Downloaded by Rowell Irfan (rowellirfan@gmail.com)
lOMoARcPSD|11697329 and the Lords by Lucinda Maer). The Salisbury Addison reduced
powers of the House of Lords to a great extent thus giving an upper hand to the elected
House of Commons. In addition, the House of Lords Act 1999 was introduced which limited
