House of Commons of the United Kingdom
The House of Commons is the lower house of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Like the upper house, the House of Lords, it meets in the Palace of Westminster in London, England. The House of Commons is an elected body consisting of 650 members known as members of Parliament, who are elected to represent constituencies by the first-past-the-post system and hold their seats until Parliament is dissolved.
The House of Commons of England began to evolve in the 13th and 14th centuries. In 1707 it became the House of Commons of Great Britain after the political union with Scotland, and from 1801 it also became the House of Commons for Ireland after the political union of Great Britain and Ireland. In 1922, the body became the House of Commons of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland after the independence of the Irish Free State. Under the Parliament Acts 1911 and 1949, the Lords' power to reject legislation was reduced to a delaying power. The government is solely responsible to the House of Commons and the prime minister stays in office only as long as they retain the confidence of a majority of the Commons.
Roles
Relationship with the government
Although the House of Commons does not formally elect the prime minister, by convention and in practice, the prime minister is answerable to the House, and therefore must maintain its support. In this way, the position of the parties in the House is an overriding importance. Thus, whenever the office of prime minister falls vacant, the monarch appoints the person who has the support of the house, or who is most likely to command the support of the housenormally the leader of the largest party in the housewhile the leader of the second-largest party becomes the leader of the Opposition.The Commons may indicate its lack of support for the government by rejecting a motion of confidence or by passing a motion of no confidence. Confidence and no confidence motions are phrased explicitly: for instance, "That this House has no confidence in His Majesty's Government." Many other motions were until recent decades considered confidence issues, even though not explicitly phrased as such: in particular, important bills that were part of the government's agenda. The annual Budget is still considered a matter of confidence. When a government has lost the confidence of the House of Commons, the prime minister is expected either to resign, making way for another MP who can command confidence, or request the monarch to dissolve Parliament, thereby precipitating a general election.
Since the Dissolution and Calling of Parliament Act 2022 Parliament sits for up to five years. Prime ministers can, however, choose to dissolve parliament at earlier times, with the permission of the monarch, and often have. This was a return to the historic system that had been replaced by the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011, which fixed the term at five years. As of 9 July 2024, five of the twelve last prime ministers have attained office as the immediate result of a general election; the others have gained office upon the resignation of a prime minister of their own party.
A prime minister will resign after party defeat at an election, if unable to form a coalition, or obtain a confidence and supply arrangement, and may be forced to resign after a successful motion of no confidence. In such cases, the premiership goes to whomever can command a majority in the House, unless there is a hung parliament and a coalition is formed; the new prime minister will by convention be the new leader of the outgoing premier's party. It has become the practice to write the constitutions of major UK political parties to provide a set way to appoint a new party leader.
Peers as ministers
By convention, ministers are members of either the House of Commons or the House of Lords. A handful have been appointed from outside Parliament, but in most cases they then entered Parliament in a by-election or by receiving a peerage. Since 1902, all but one prime ministers have been members of the Commons at time of appointment; the sole exception was during the long summer recess in 1963: Alec Douglas-Home, then the 14th Earl of Home, disclaimed his peerage three days after becoming prime minister. The new session of Parliament was delayed to await the outcome of his by-election, which happened to be already under way due to a recent death. As anticipated, he won that election, which was for the highest-majority seat in Scotland among his party; otherwise he would have been constitutionally obliged to resign.Since 1990, almost all cabinet ministers, save for three whose offices are an intrinsic part of the House of Lords, have belonged to the Commons.
Few major cabinet positions have been filled by a peer in recent times. Notable exceptions are Sir Alec Douglas-Home, who served as Foreign Secretary from 1960 to 1963; Peter Carington, 6th Lord Carrington, who also served as Foreign Secretary, from 1979 to 1982; David Cameron, former Prime Minister who served as Foreign Secretary from 2023 to 2024; David Young, Lord Young of Graffham, who was Employment Secretary from 1985 to 1987; Peter Mandelson, who served as Business Secretary from 2008 to 2010; Lord Adonis, who served as Transport Secretary from 2009 to 2010; Baroness Amos, who served as International Development Secretary in 2003; and Baroness Morgan of Cotes, who served as Culture Secretary from 2019 to 2020. The elected status of members of the Commons and their direct accountability to that House, together with empowerment and transparency, ensures ministerial accountability. Responsible government is an international constitutional paradigm. The prime minister chooses the ministers, and may decide to remove them at any time, although the appointments and dismissals are formally made by the Sovereign, acting on the prime minister's advice.
Scrutiny of the government
The House of Commons formally scrutinises the Government through its Committees and Prime Minister's Questions, when members ask questions of the prime minister; the house gives other opportunities to question other cabinet ministers. Prime Minister's Questions occur weekly, normally for half an hour each Wednesday. Questions must relate to the responding minister's official government activities, not to their activities as a party leader or as a private Member of Parliament. Customarily, members of the Government party/coalition and members of the Opposition alternate when asking questions. Members may also make inquiries in writing.In practice, this scrutiny can be fairly weak. Since the first-past-the-post electoral system is employed, the governing party often enjoys a large majority in the Commons, and ministers and departments practise defensive government, outsourcing key work to third parties. If the government has a large majority, it has no need or incentive to compromise with other parties.
Major modern British political parties tend to be so tightly orchestrated that their MPs often have little scope for free action. A large minority of ruling party MPs are paid members of the Government. Since 1900 the Government has lost confidence motions thrice—twice in 1924, and once in 1979. However, the threat of rebellions by their own party's backbench MPs often forces governments to make concessions. Occasionally Government bills are defeated by backbench rebellions. However, the scrutiny provided by the Select committees is more serious.
The House of Commons technically retains the power to impeach Ministers of the Crown for their crimes. Impeachments are tried by the House of Lords, where a simple majority is necessary to convict. This power has fallen into disuse, however; the House of Commons exercises its checks on the government through other means, such as no confidence motions; the last impeachment was that of Henry Dundas, 1st Viscount Melville in 1806.
Legislative functions
Bills may be introduced in either house, though bills of importance generally originate in the House of Commons. The supremacy of the Commons in legislative matters is assured by the Parliament Acts 1911 and 1949, under which certain types of bills may be presented to the sovereign for royal assent without the consent of the House of Lords. The Lords may not delay a money bill for more than one month. Moreover, the Lords may not delay most other public bills for more than two parliamentary sessions, or one calendar year. These provisions, however, only apply to public bills that originate in the House of Commons. A bill that seeks to extend a parliamentary term beyond five years also requires the consent of the House of Lords.By a custom that prevailed even before the Parliament Acts, only the House of Commons may originate bills concerning taxation or supply. Furthermore, supply bills passed by the House of Commons are immune to amendments in the House of Lords. In addition, the House of Lords is barred from amending a bill so as to insert a taxation or supply-related provision, but the House of Commons often waives its privileges and allows the Lords to make amendments with financial implications. Under a separate convention, known as the Salisbury Convention, the House of Lords does not seek to oppose legislation promised in the government's election manifesto. Hence, as the power of the House of Lords has been severely curtailed by statute and by practice, the House of Commons is clearly the more powerful chamber of Parliament.
History
The British parliament of today largely descends, in practice, from the Parliament of England, although the 1706 Treaty of Union, and the Acts of Union that ratified the Treaty, created a new Parliament of Great Britain to replace the Parliament of England and the Parliament of Scotland, with the addition of 45 MPs and sixteen Scottish representative peers. Later still the Acts of Union 1800 brought about the abolition of the Parliament of Ireland and enlarged the Commons at Westminster with 100 Irish members, creating the Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.The Middle English word common or commune, which is derived from the Anglo-Norman commune, meant "of general, public, or non-private nature" as an adjective and, as a substantive, "the common body of the people of any place; the community or commonalty" in the singular; "the common people, the commonalty; the lower order, as distinguished from those of noble or knight or gentle rank", or "the burgers of a town; the body of free citizens, bearing common burdens, and exercising common rights; the third estate in the English constitution; the body of people, not ennobled, and represented by the Lower House of Parliament" in the plural. The word has survived to this day in the original Anglo-Norman phrase soit baillé aux communes, with which a bill is transmitted from the House of Lords to the House of Commons.
The historian Albert Pollard held a somewhat different view on the word's origins in 1920. He agreed that commons could be derived from Anglo-Norman communes, but that it referred to "civil associations" or "the counties". However, the Oxford English Dictionary, the historical dictionary of the English language, can only attest to the word meaning advocated by Pollard from the 19th and 20th centuries onwards, whereas sources for the meaning given in the previous section date from the late Middle Ages, i.e. the time of the establishment of the House of Commons.