Debate and Discipline
Members may only speak if called upon by the Speaker. To get the Speaker's attention, a member must partially rise. There is no recourse if the Speaker fails to call upon a particular member. Nonetheless, it is traditional that the Speaker alternate between calling Government and Opposition members.
Debate must be addressed to the Speaker. If a member wishes to refer to a person other than the Speaker, he or she must do so in the third person. Traditionally, members refer to each other not by name, but by their constituencies. The form used is the Honourable Member for... or, in the case of Privy Counsellors, the Right Honourable Member for... Also, members may refer to office-holders by their titles (for example, the Prime Minister or the Leader of the Opposition.)
The Speaker is required to keep discipline in the House. If a member deviates from obeying the Standing Orders, the Speaker may warn that member. If the member disregards the warning, the Speaker may order the member to leave the Palace of Westminster for the remainder of the day. Should the member continue to disobey the Speaker, the Speaker may invoke a power known as "naming" by stating, "I name Mr. X" (substituting, of course, the actual name of the member for X.) Then, the Leader of the House or another senior member may move "that Mr. X be suspended from the service of the House." If the motion is agreed to, then the member is suspended for five days if the offence was his or her first during the session. For a second offence during the same session, a twenty day suspension applies. For a third offence, the House determines the suspension period. If a suspended member fails to leave the House, he or she may be suspended for the enitre session.
The ultimate punishment that the House may impose is expulsion. Expulsion, however, does not prevent an individual from running for election again. Thus some members have been expelled more than once. There were only three suspensions during the twentieth century.
Voting
As the formal checks on the power of the House of Commons are very limited, a party with a majority in the House has very few formal limits on its ability to change government policies. In addition, Members of Parliament almost always vote with their party. The reasons for this are complex, but derive partly from natural party loyalty, and partly from job security: MPs who vote against their party are unlikely to reach ministerial rank, and may be deselected as official party candidates in the next election (though in some circumstances, an MP may be threatened with deselection if he or she does vote with the party). In addition, unlike presidential systems, a government cannot function without a majority support of the House of Commons, hence the parties have much more interest in ensuring that people do not vote against the party either by pressuring MPs to change their vote, or more often by modifying legislation to avoid an adverse vote.
There are two cases in which MPs will vote against party lines. One is when a party announces a free vote over an issue of conscience in which invidividual members are allowed to vote according to their personal beliefs; in this case, there is no official party line to vote for or against. This is the case ethical issues like the death penalty, abortion etc. MPs representing the majority party occasionally may also vote against their party in large numbers where there is widespread discontent among backbenchers over the government's policies. Since the late 19th century, major backbench rebellions have only occurred once every few years, most recently in 2003 when Labour MPs voted against Tony Blair's support of the United States over the Iraq war. Smaller rebellions, in which only a handful of back benchers vote against their party, are more common when the Government has a very large majority. The Labour Government suffered 16 back bench rebellions in the 1997-2001 Parliament.
Because the outcome of votes are largely predetermined, parliamentary debates are intended less to change the outcome of pending legislation, than for the party in power and those out of power to appeal to the public for the next election.
Even though the outcome may be predetermined, the House must vote on every motion. All motions are originally subject to a voice vote. The Speaker then gives his opinion as to which side won the voice vote. If his assessment is challenged by any member, then a division occurs, signified by the ringing of the Division Bell. On either side of the House Chamber is a division lobby. Those who wish to vote "Aye" (yes) enter one lobby, while those who wish to vote "No" enter the other. As members then exit the lobby and reenter the Chamber, their votes and names are recorded by tellers and clerks. The tellers then announce the numbers of Ayes and Noes to the Speaker, who then announces the result to the House.
Question Time
One important characteristic of the House of Commons is Question Time, in which members of both the party in power and the opposition parties have a weekly opportunity to ask questions of Cabinet ministers including the Prime Minister. Questions are subject to several rules; for example, questions must relate to the official government activities of a Minister, rather than his activities as a leader of a party or as an MP. Questions may receive either an oral or a written answer.
Oral questions are part of one category of questions. Under the rules of the House, Question Time, when oral questions may be asked, is the first hour of business on weekdays other than Friday. Question Time occurs in the main chamber rather than in Westminster Hall. The clerks of the House must be notified of questions a certain number of days prior to the day on which it will be asked. The clerks then use computers to randomly select a limited number of questions that will be permitted, for Question Time is not an unlimited period. When the Speaker calls on a member during Question Time, the member need only state his question's number, for the minister will already have been notified of it. Then, the member who asked the original question may ask one supplementary question. Next, other members may pose their own supplementary questions. There is no formal limit to the number of supplementaries; the Speaker merely stops recognising members who wish to speak when he feels that enough supplementaries have been asked.
Government departments are assigned certain days for questions by rotation. More than one department may be questioned on a given day. Usually, each department is questioned for about an hour per month. The Prime Minister, however, is subject to about twice as much questioning, for he answers questions for a half-hour each Wednesday.
Another category of questions is urgent questions. Instead of notifying clerks days earlier, as with oral questions, a member need only notify the Speaker that he intends to ask an urgent question. Only if the Speaker agrees that the question is one of public importance, and is indeed urgent, may the question be asked.
Written questions, the last category of questions, are by far more numerous than any other type of question. If the MP requires an answer by a specific date, notice of at least two days must be given to ask the written question. Alternatively, the MP may decide not to name a date for an answer, in which case the Minister usually replies within a week. Responses are not only to the member who asked the question; they are instead published for the use of all members.
Committees
Unlike in, say, the United States Congress, committees in the House of Commons are not very powerful, and most of the review of legislation occurs in the Cabinet. There exist several types of committees: Standing Committees, Select Committees (including Departmental Select Commmittees and Domestic Committees), Joint Committees, and others.
Most bills are considered by Standing Committees. Though "standing" may imply permanence, the membership of Standing Committees is constantly changing. There is no limit to the number of Standing Committees in existence at any one time, though there are normally no more than ten. These committees are referred to by a letter of the alphabet from A to H, or as the First or Second Scottish Committee, which deal only with bills relating to Scotland. However, the Scottish Committees are essentially obsolete due to the introduction of a separate Scottish Parliament. When a bill is due to be referred to a certain Standing Committee, the Committee of Selection meets and chooses sixteen to fifty MP's to serve as Committee members; the number of members from a particular party is approximately proportionate to that party's membership in the whole house.
Departmental Select Committees scrutinize government activities. Though a bill may be referred to a Select Committee, this method is rarely used. There are eighteen Departmental Select Commmittees:
- Constitutional Affairs
- Culture, Media, and Sport
- Defence
- Education and Skills
- Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs
- Foreign Affairs
- Health
- Home Affairs
- International Development
- Northern Ireland Affairs
- Office of the Deputy Prime Minister
- Science and Technology
- Scottish Affairs
- Trade and Industry
- Transport
- Treasury
- Welsh Affairs
- Work and Pensions
Each committee (except for the Science and Technology Committee) correlates to distinct a