Реферат: Great Britain: constitution. Politics. Law

Long to reign over us,

God save the Queen!

Many members of the Royal Family undertake official duties in Britain and abroad. Their various responsibilities reflect tradition, their own personal interests and Britain’s former imperial status.

For example, among her many titles the Princess Royal (Princess Anne) is Chancellor of the University of London, Colonel-in-Chief of eleven Army regiments, including the 8th Canadian Hussars [hu'za:] and the Royal New Zealand Nursing Corps, and president of the Save the Children Fund, for whom she has travelled widely.

The Royal Family's money comes from two sources: government funds and their own personal wealth, which is considerable. On the one hand the Queen is certainly one of the richest women in the world, while on the other her power is limited by the fact that so many of her expenses are paid for by government money. Parliament has had effective control of the monarch's finances since the seventeenth century. A survey in 1989 found that 71% of people in Britain thought that the Royal Family offered value for money – this was fewer than in previous surveys. As many as 74 per cent thought the younger Royals should “get proper jobs”.

The British Parliament works in a large building called the Palace of Westminster (popularly known as the Houses of Parliament ). This contains offices, committee rooms, restaurants, bars, and libraries. It also contains two larger rooms. One is where the House of Lords meets, the other is where the House of Commons meets. The House of Commons – a far more important of the two houses – consists of 651 members (524 for England, 38 for Wales, 72 for Scotland, 17 for Northern Ireland). Members of the House of Commons are elected by the voters of about 650 constituencies. They are known as MPs, or Members of Parliament .

The General Election of June 2001 Results

Number of MPs elected	% share of vote
LABOUR	412	40.7
CONSERVATIVE	166	31.7
LIBERAL DEMOCRAT	52	18.3
SCOTTISH NATIONAL	5	1.8
PLAID CYMRU (WELSH NATIONAL)	4	0.7
NORTHERN IRELAND (the four Sinn Fein members have not taken their seats)	18	2.8
OTHERS	1	0.1

The design and the layout of the House of Commons differ from the interior of the parliament buildings in most other countries; these differences can tell us a lot what is distinctive of the British Parliament.

The seating arrangement. There are just two rows of benches facing each other. The MPs of the governing party sit facing the opposition MPs. There is no opportunity in this layout for a reflection of all the various shades of political opinion. This division is emphasised by the table on the floor of the House between the two rows of benches. The Speaker ’s chair is also there. From here the Speaker:

· chairs and controls discussions in the House;

· decides which MP is going to speak next;

· makes sure that the rules of the procedure are observed.

If they are not, the Speaker has the right to demand a public apology from an MP or even to ban an MP from the House for a number of days.

The Speaker is, officially, the second most important commoner (“non-aristocrat”) in the UK after the Prime Minister. Once a Speaker has been appointed, he or she agrees to give up all party politics and remains in the job as long as he/she wants it.

Hundreds of years ago, it was the Speaker’s job to communicate the decisions of the House of Commons to the King (that’s where the name Speaker comes from). As the King was often displeased with those decisions, it was a dangerous job and nobody wanted it. They had to be forced to take it. These days, a position is a much safer one, but the tradition of dragging an unwilling Speaker to the chair has remained.

The Commons has no “front”, no obvious place from which an MP can address everybody. MPs simply stand up and speak from wherever they might be sitting.

MPs do not have their own place with a name on it. There are no desks for them. They sit on the benches like in church. Besides, there aren’t seats enough for everybody (there are only about 400 seats for 651 MPs).

Although MPs do not have their own personal seats in the Commons, there are two seating areas reserved for particular MPs. These areas are the front benches on either side of the House. These are the benches where the leading members of the ruling party and the leading members of the main opposition party sit. These people are thus known as “frontbenchers”. MPs who do not hold the governing posts and who, therefore, in the House of Commons sits on the back benches are known as “backbenchers”; an independent or neutral MP, who belongs neither to the Government nor to the Opposition is called a “crossbencher”.

All these features result in a fairly informal atmosphere. The fairly small size of the House together with the lack of podium means that MPs do not normally speak the way they would at a large public meeting. MPs normally speak in a conversational tone and because they have nowhere to put their notes, they do not normally speak long.

There is a rule, which forbids MPs to address one another directly or use personal names. All remarks and questions must “go through the Chair”. An MP who is speaking refers to or ask a question of “the honourable member of Winchester” or “my right honourable friend” . A Winchester MP might be sitting opposite but the MP never says you.

A parliamentary day in the Commons from Monday to Thursdays.

14.30	Prayers
14.35	Question time (the most well-attended part of the parliamentary day. MPs are allowed to ask questions to government ministers. Opposition ministers have an opportunity to make the ministers look incompetent or perhaps dishonest. However, questions have to be “tabled” – written down and placed on the table below the speaker’s chair two days in advance. The risk is a “supplementary question” which can be asked relating the minister’s answer.)
15.30	A debate on a proposal of a new law, known as “bill”. Most of the bills are introduces by the government but there are also “private member bills” introduced by individual MPs.
22.00	The main business of the day stops and MPs are allowed to bring up another matter for the discussion.
22.30	The House rises (usually).

* On Fridays the House starts in the morning, finishing in the early afternoon for the weekend.

The House has long holidays: four weeks at Christmas, two weeks at Easter, two weeks at Whitsun (Троицын день), about eleven weeks in the summer (the beginning of August – the middle of October).

Traditionally, MPs were supposed to be ordinary people giving some of their time to representation their countrymen. They were not even paid until the beginning of the 20^th century because they were supposed to have some business of their own, and usually only rich people could afford to be MPs. Even now British MPs – though professionals– are relatively poorly paid in comparison with many of European countries. The House does not sit in the morning because these are “gentleman’s hours” when MPs were supposed to do the business of their own. Nowadays, this time is spent on committee work, research, preparing speeches and dealing with problems of their constituences.

How a bill becomes a law.

Members of the House of Lords (peers ) are not elected at present. Until 1999 they were mostly “hereditary peers ” because their fathers had been peers before them. Now only 91 out of about 700 peers are hereditary: the rest are “life peers ” who cannot pass on their titles, senior judges (Law Lords ) and Church of England Archbishops and Bishops (Lords Spiritual ).

Elections. The United Kingdom is divided into 650 parliamentary constituencies (избирательный округ), each with an electorate of about 60,000 voters. Each British citizen over eighteen has the vote (although voting is not compulsory). Each constituency is represented by one Member of Parliament in the House of Commons.

Any number of candidates can stand for election in each constituency. The main political parties are usually represented, and sometimes candidates representing minority parties also stand. The winner is the candidate who gets more votes than any other single candidate, even if the difference is only one vote. This “first past the post” system is clear, familiar and simple, but it means that the candidate who comes second gets nothing.

The leader of the party with most seats becomes Prime Minister and forms a Government, which can remain in power for up to five years unless the Prime Minister decides to hold an earlier election. The second biggest party becomes the official Opposition. Its leader forms a “Shadow Cabinet ”. Since 1945 the Conservatives and Labour have been either the Government or the Opposition.