Ep. 217 Parliament - the legislative function

Hello and welcome to the A-Level Politics Showpeeps. I hope you are fine and dandy in the Merry Month of February. The business season of exams is not too far off, so now we are going to look a little more closely at the nuts and bolts of what I think is the most important topic. Parliament, if you understand the three functions of Parliament, legislation, representation and scrutiny, you will be able to understand a lot of the other bits of the course. Today's focus will be placed solely upon one of these functions, legislation. I last recorded a pod on this way back in the pandemic episode 53 to be precise, so high time for a do-over. The question I will answer is simply this, evaluate the view that Parliament performs its legislative function effectively. Now, as with all your other essays, you should look to set the criteria for answering the question for judging it. In this instance, set a series of standards for what effective performance of the legislative function will look like. Do this in your introduction. Here is my attempt. For Parliament to perform its legislative function effectively, the government should be able to enact its program whilst at the same time allow for individual MPs to have their say on these laws and allow for careful consideration. There, I've done it. And now all you need to do is keep linking to those standards, to the words I've just used throughout your main body paragraphs. You'll hear me do that throughout this podcast. The other thing that you must have in your introduction is a clear direction and one that you stick to throughout, even when introducing and developing the weak argument. The direction of my part is that Parliament fails to perform its legislative function granted. In terms of enacting the government's program, Parliament can be said to achieve the legislative function. However, legislative output, which is what that is, is not the same as legislative quality. Firstly, the House of Lords is limited in what it can do. Secondly, there are question marks as to whether back bench MPs are able to have a significant bearing on shaping law. And finally, their ability to do so often depends on the type of government or more precisely whether the government has a majority and often it does. I will divide this pod into three main chunky sections. The first section will look at the fusion of powers and its impacts on legislation. Next, I'll look at the tools that back benches have at their disposal to shape laws, specifically private members bills and public bill committees. And finally, I'll examine the House of Lords and more debt. Right. Okay. Here goes. So what is the fusion of powers? It is typical in a parliamentary system of government whereby the government or executive is drawn from Parliament. It sits in Parliament and is able to numerically dominate it. This situation is very different to the separation of powers that we typically see in a presidential system like in the US where the executive is separate from the legislation. The government dominance seen in a parliamentary system with the first past the post-electural system that affords massive majorities often to the winning party allows laws to be made and laws to be passed pretty speedily. It allows legislative outcomes to be controlled and predictable. Since taking power in July 2024, the government is yet to lose a single vote in the House of Commons owing to its 168 seat working majority at the time of recording. This example demonstrates that in terms of legislative output, Parliament is performing its legislative function effectively as the government is able to enact its agenda. Some important pieces of legislation have been passed since 2024, including the passenger railway services Public Ownership Act 2024 and the Renters Rights Act. These examples demonstrate that Parliament is able to take tough and sometimes controversial decisions. For example, the passenger railway services Act allows the government to take train operators into common ownership. This is what the legislative function should enable Parliament to do. It should allow a government to take tough decisions and take them pretty quickly. However, the fusion of powers allows the government to dominate Parliament. Yes, allowing laws to be able to be passed. Yes, and pretty speedily. Yes, but not laws that have enjoyed appropriate scrutiny. Output is prioritised in the fusion of powers over quality. The overly dominant government is able to use its inbuilt majority in Parliament to ignore criticism and push ahead with ill thought out measure. The government dominated Commons overturned all of the amendments made by the Lords to the Safety of Rwanda Bill in 2024, made easier by the 80 seat majority that the Tories had won at the 2019 General Election. The bill effectively ignored real concerns that Rwanda was a safe place to send asylum seekers to. The Elections Act 2022 introduced new voter ID requirements that resulted in thousands of voters being turned away from polling stations in the 2023 local elections and 2024 general election. The Public Order Act 2023 further weakened the right to protest, allowing police to prevent people from even attending a demonstration. These examples show how executive dominance of the Commons through the fusion of powers can have a dire effect upon the rights of citizens with rush through ill thought out legislation. Maybe an electoral system that limits the winners bonus of the government would assist here since a government with a slim majority would have to reach out to other parties and compromise producing legislation that has been more carefully vetted. Yet even coalition governments have seen with the Lib Dem Conservative one between 2010-2015 were able to dominate numerically and rush through austerity measures that critics on the left argue affected the most vulnerable in society, many economists believe that the UK's slashing of public sector budgets during this time harmed economic growth. Thus, the stronger argument is that the legislative function is not effective as the fusion of powers, regardless of majority, gives the executive too much of an inbuilt advantage to rush through laws without proper consideration. Next up, let's think about back benches. Now, granted, Parliament provides plenty of ways for back bench MPs to influence decision-making thereby improving the quality of legislation. Private members bills give opportunities to back benches to make law. These are proposals introduced by individual MPs and lords who are not government ministers giving back benches a chance to shape public policy. The Abortion Act and the Murder Act were first introduced as private members bills, the Murder Act banned death penalty, by the way. Private members bills can raise important issues. The debate and subsequent vote at second reading of the assisted dying bill in December 2024 demonstrates how MPs can raise important issues and engage in substantive debate through these private members bills. In 2023, 16 out of the 20 private members bills selected in the private members bills ballot became law, including the Shaqfins Act 2023, which prohibits the import and export of Shaqfins. Between 2010 to 2024, 110 PMBs, that's private members bills, became law. Back bench rebellions also are important and demonstrate how ordinary MPs are influential in crafting laws. The level of back bench commons dissent has risen since the 1970s. Between 2017 general election and the end of March 2019, Theresa May's Conservative Party suffered 17 Brexit-related defeats, including the largest defeat in parliamentary history in January 2019 over the EU withdrawal agreement. Over 100 MPs rebelled over Plan B, COVID restrictions imposed in December 2021 to prevent the spread of the Omicron variant. These examples demonstrate that laws are carefully scrutinised, which is what is needed in order for Parliament to truly fulfil its legislative function. They also show that careful consideration of law, while more likely when there is a hung parliament or a slim parliamentary majority, it's even present when the government has a large majority. For instance, in December 2023, 22 Tories voted with opposition parties to speed up compensation for victims of the infected blood scandal. In 2025, over 49 Labour MPs rebelled Labour Government's planned welfare reforms, leading to significant concessions. This example shows that MPs are involved in helping to shape an influence legislation, perhaps resulting in better quality laws that eventually get subjected to further consultation. Backbentures can also sit on public bill committees, which go through a bill lined by line and table amendments. One such amendment was tabled for the 2025 Crime and Policing Bill that strengthened age verification requirements for the online sale and delivery of bladed products and crossbows. However, this example was a government-backed amendment. Indeed, public bill committees largely only pass government-friendly amendments. 99% of successful amendments to bills at committee stages are government-backed. Backbentures on these committees are expected to vote with their party. The whips, those MPs in charge of party discipline, control membership, and thus the outcome of the legislative process. Furthermore, private members bills face too many hurdles and backbench rebellions are limited due to the consequences MPs face from these whips. Only a minority of private members bills become law, around 4.4% of those introduced between 2010 to 2024 got onto the statue book. It is incredibly difficult to even bring a private members bill to the floor of the Commons. MPs only get a chance to draft a bill through a random draw, a lottery. Parliamentary rules state that it only requires one MP to shout object to a private members bill to block its progress. Tory MP Christopher Chope shouted object on a bill to ban upscirting and on outlawing female genital mutilation. Government has hijacked the process too. Ministers filibustered or talked out John Nicholson MP's Turing Bill to pardon gay men for obsolete sexual offences. At PMB faces just as many hurdles in the Lords, the assisted dying Bill, which I mentioned earlier, has been amended and delayed and remains far from becoming law as of February 2026. Backbench rebellions are a rarity too. MPs fear losing the whip, the ability to sit with their party and be considered as a candidate at the next election. Keir Starmo removed the whip from seven Labour MPs who opposed keeping the two child benefit cap. This example shows that MPs are unlikely to voice independent concerns in a stage of a bill for fear of their career. What about the House of Lords, though, where membership is not determined by an election? Is there greater independence and better focus on shaping law? Let's find out after the jingles. There are those who mistakenly claim that the House of Lords ensures legislation is suitably revised and thereby legislative quality is guaranteed. Since the removal of most of the hereditary peers being those who can pass on their position in the Lords to a family member, no one party has had a majority, including the ruling Labour Party. The Lords is now more likely therefore to defeat any government, not just the Tories, but the Labour Party too. Add in weaker party discipline and independently minded peers, especially the cross-bench peers who have no party affiliation and who hold the balance of power, and you have yourselves a chamber that can force a rethink on Lords passing through Parliament. Here are some examples. The government was defeated twice over the EU notification of withdrawal bill in 2017. The Lords wanted guarantees that EU citizens could remain in the country and to give Parliament a meaningful vote at the end of the negotiation process. In 2020, the House of Lords tabled an amendment to the agriculture bill to increase safeguards on food imports. In January 2022, the government suffered numerous defeats on its policing bill, specifically in relation to proposed clampdowns on noisy protests. It also inflicted 20 defeats upon the government when considering the illegal migration bill in 2023. These are all occurring, by the way, under a Conservative government. I'll come into Labour in a second. The Lords tend to challenge the government far more on proposals like these, since they were not in the government's manifesto. Thus, the Salisbury Convention does not apply more on that in a sec, and they concern the rights of citizens, an area where the Lords is becoming increasingly assertive. In 2023, the Lords managed to block government plans to weaken pollution rules in its bid to build more houses. This example shows how the Lords is not willing to rush through legislation to win a good headline, but to consider the overall impact of legislation and, in this case, to consider environmental concerns linked to the building of houses in inappropriate places. As of the 21st of January 2026, the Labour government, elected in 2024, has suffered over 120 defeats in the Lords. In January 2026, it defeated the government by asserting an amendment to the children, well-being and schools bill that would ban children under 16 from accessing social media. While this amendment will be removed by the House of Commons, it has forced the government to consider this issue with greater seriousness. However, however, the limits placed on the House of Lords weaken its ability to improve the quality of legislation. Conventions dramatically limit the power of the Lords when it comes to legislation. The South's Reconvention, which I mentioned earlier, means that the Lords do not try to vote down a government bill mentioned in an election manifesto. Financial privilege, the rule that bans the Lords from scrutinising a budget, can be used by the Commons as grounds for overruling any House of Lords proposal that has cost implications. The amendments attached to the EU withdrawal bill 2020 were simply defeated upon their return to the 80-seat Conservative majority-backed Commons. Most of the amendments suggested to the illegal migration bill in 2023 were similarly stripped out. These examples show the limited power that the Lords has in achieving legislative quality and therefore the effectiveness of Parliament's legislative function has to be called into question. The Parliament Act can be invoked to end the Lords resistance. That Act passed in 1949 limited the Lords' power of delay to just one year. Campaigners against assisted dying are worried that the law allowing it will be pushed through unamended despite the serious concerns raised by multiple peers through the use of the Parliament Act. Thus, while the Lords has the potential and appetite to revise legislation to make it better, it's lack of legitimacy, it's unelected, and the constraints on its ability to block legislation as a result of that lack of legitimacy hinders that careful crafting of law, that legislative quality that I mentioned in my introduction. So, Parliament fails to perform its legislative function. The fusion of powers alongside huge parliamentary majorities for governing parties allow for too much executive dominance, which crowds out other stakeholders such as ordinary MPs from crafting legislation. The tools these backbenches have at their disposal are insufficient in this endeavour, especially private members, bills, and public bill committees that they might sit on and the rare attempt at rebellion. The Lords, however much it tries, is too limited in what it can do. OK, so that's it then, peeps. I hope you enjoyed the pod and found it useful. If you wish to subscribe to Plus Plus Plus, then please do. The deeds on how you do this are in the show notes. Just follow the link that's there. But what do you get for your trouble, I hear you say? The complete back catalogue. That's right. 217 shows at the time of recording spanning almost seven years of pod goodness. All these shows for less than a price of a coffee each month cancel any time too. OK, until the next time then, see ya.