The British Governmental System
...inister who, in other words, is the leader of the government. The government consists of representatives from the most popular political party, and is answerable to the parliament. The government performs the executive functions of the UK, like making budget suggestions or reviewing law proposals. A prime minister is chosen and he (or she) then forms the government by selecting other ministers for different tasks. These ministers form the Cabinet. The current prime minister is Tony Blair, who represents the Labour Party. The parliament is the supreme legislative body which the Government is drawn from. It is divided into two parts, the elected House of Commons and the unelected House of Lords. The House of Commons is currently made up of 646 Members of Parliament (MPs) who each represents a political party. 592 of them are from England, 59 are from Scotland, 40 from Wales and 18 from Northern Ireland. The House of Lords has much less power than The House of Commons, but has 724 members as of now. The members of this part of the parliament are not elected; they are a combination of hereditary members, bishops and appointed members. The bishops are members of The Church of England, who then makes up the Lords Spiritual. The remaining members of the House are the Lords Temporal. Together, the lords’ task is to review legislations from the House of Commons and, in short terms, have the power to delay these law propositions with twelve months if they don’t approve them. They can also propose amendments to the legislations, but other than that, the House of Lords have far less power than the House of Commons, since they’re not elected by the people. The House of Commons are what the parliament mainly consists of, so the House of Lords is more of an addition to the parliament. The parliament’s tasks are mainly to make law proposals, review and pass the budget suggestion fro...