Explain How Effective Parliament Is At Carrying Specific Functions

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In this essay I will be writing about how effective parliament is at carrying various of functions. One vital function parliament carries out is scrutinizing the opposition. Parliament does this in several of ways; one of the most important is having a select committee. Select committees scrutinize government policies. They carry out inquires and have question and answer sessions with ministers and other witnesses. This is very effective as other members are chosen by their parties which reduces party whips and means backbenchers are able to scrutinize government policies properly and get their grievances addressed without having to be influenced by whips. Furthermore, 40% of references get passed through. This means its effective in scrutinizing. …show more content…

This is shown with Question Time were backbenchers are given one question to ask the Prime Minister and the leader of the opposition gets granted 6 questions. This is ineffective for many of reasons. One reason is that the backbenchers with the government often ask planted questions which are given by the whips and told they will be given a promotion if they ask it to the Prime Minister. This is weak as they don’t ask questions about government policies which may affect the backbencher’s constituency. Furthermore, most of the programme is filled with political point scoring were the leaders try to embarrass each other. One example took place in January 2014 where Ed Milliband and David Cameron tried to humiliate each other rather than answer the backbencher’s question. This is a major weakness as rather than the leader of the opposition properly scrutinizing the government on policies and/ or important topics they would rather point