hi I'm Ollie and in this politics explained video I'm going to go through everything you need to know about the structure and role of the House of Commons and House of Lords in EXL AOL politics I'm going to start by giving you an introduction to Parliament looking at what it consists of and its four key main functions We're then going to look at the selection of members of the House of Commons and Lords and then finally going in detail um on the main functions of Parliament and the extent to which they're fulfilled the functions of passing legislation scrutinizing the executive are covered in much more detail as I'll as I'll explain in other videos on the politics explained YouTube channel in particular um the way the parliament interacts with the executive and parliament's scrutiny and the legislative process So make sure to have a look at those But we're in particular in this video going to look in detail at Parliament's function of representing the electorate and some key arguments you can use on either side of that debate The PDF you can see on your screen is part of an updated textbook on the UK government section of ED XLA level politics that you can purchase on the policy explain website where you can also find loads of other resources to help you in ed XL AE politics including these updated textbooks covering every single part of the course once you purchase them They continue to update throughout your A level to make sure you keep up to date as politics changes so quickly every week and every month There's also detailed um essay plans covering every single part of the course which update throughout the year as well as places as well as a place to sign up for tutoring and some revision webinars we do before the exams every year if that's something you'd be interested in Without further ado let's get into it So starting off looking at the parts of the specification This is of course part of the parliament subtopic and we're going to look at the selection of members of the House of Commons and Lords including the different types of peers and the main functions of the Commons and Lords and the extent to which they're fulfilled The most important debates um on this topic relate to how effective Parliament is at carrying out its key functions And as I mentioned a couple of these key functions that you're going to use in your essays legislation passing legislation and scrutiny of the government are covered in much more detail in other videos But what we're going to look at um in detail in this video is Parliament's representative um role near the end and some key arguments and examples on either side And that could be a key essay question on its own such as evaluate the view that parliament is representative of the electorate but will also be really useful in relation to a question on for example evaluate the view that parliament performs its functions effectively where it will be kind of one paragraph as part of three with one other on passing legislation and one other on scrutiny of the executive which is a key way I'd recommend structuring it Yeah Let's start with an introduction to parliament So parliament consists of the House of Commons and the House of Lords and the House of Commons is elected and the more powerful chamber as a result whilst the House of Lords is unelected and less powerful The UK is said to have a parliamentary government with the legislative and executive branches few So it's a fusion of powers unlike a separation of powers in the United States And what that means is that all government ministers including the prime minister are members of parliament They're all MPs or members of the House of Lords The prime minister for example is an MP as well and represents a constituency as to all government ministers A party is able to form a government when they have a majority um in the House of Commons That's where the executive comes from Parliament You can only become the government if you've got a majority of MPs and all of the government ministers come from or key ministers from the House of Commons come from those MPs Parliament has to approve all government legislation and parliament holds the government to account And crucially this is different from the US of presidential government which is based on the separation of powers between the legislature and the executive as you'll look at in in in lots of detail if you study the US part of the course next year Parliament has four main functions to pass legislation to scrutinize the executive to provide ministers to the government and to represent the electorate which we'll have a look at in more detail later on in the video Okay In terms of selection of members to the House of Commons So each of the 650 members of parliament in the House of Commons is elected by a constituency and represents a constituency Um they're elected by first pass and constituencies are around 75,000 members I think they're now actually a little bit more around 85,000 90 95 90,000 members um on average but there is significant variation still as well So the aisle of white um used to have two constituent kind of has two constituencies each with a population of under 57,000 and it used to just have one constituency of over 110,000 The vast majority of MPs belong to political parties and are selected as candidates by their local um constituency branch And this is sometimes where they have really strong local uh connections and that's why they're selected They might have been a counselor or a head of a council for a long time But sometimes the central party can also parachute candidates in if they want someone they think is really has really good political political talent They might just get stuck in a constituency even though they don't have links to the local area and and they're then there to represent them For example Torson Bell um former leader of the think tank uh resolution foundation was chosen to be candidate for Swansea West despite not being Welsh And that's for the Labour Party In terms of selection of members to the House of Lords there's no fixed number of members of the House of Lords Um and crucially none of these the members are elected and the vast uh vast majority are appointed So there are currently 776 I think that might be slightly more now but in the past there have been over 800 members Members of the House of Lords may belong to a political party or maybe crossbenches who don't belong to any party In March 2025 there are 273 Conservative members 187 Labor 184 crossbenches and 78 Liberal Democrats out of a total of over 800 members in the House So that's now gone above 800 members And there are three different types Lord spiritual hereditary peers and appointed life peers So there are 26 bishops from the Church of England who are there They're not appointed by by the government for example Um there are still 92 hereditary peers who were there due to belonging to noble aristocratic families They were before um Tony Blair's reform to the House of Lords The vast majority of the House of Lords were hereditary peers Um and crucially the majority of the House of Lords now are appointed life peers and that's since the 1999 House of Lords Act which was the Blair government's reforms and they're appointed for their lifetime without that period passing on to their children And there are a number of different ways life peers are appointed to the House of Lords All of which are overseen by the House of Lords Appointments Commission which advises the prime minister on the appropriateness of appointments Some of these appointments are non-political and they're nominated directly by the appointments commission due to their expertise and they're designed to kind of ensure diversity and experience and skills in the House of Lords But others are can be seen as political and are nominated by the government including direct ministerial appointments um which is when the government appoints someone to the house of law so they can be a minister Key recent examples of that might be David Cameron under Sunnak's government or James Timson under u the current Labor government Dissolution honors which is when at the end of each parliament before a general election parties nominate MPs who are leaving the commons um to be appointed to the lords and they might be some high profile MPs for example and maybe used by a prime minister or a party to reward them for their service and resignation honors which is when appointments are made by prime minister when they step down um from office And there's a particular concern over all of these last types um which are really kind of less directly controlled by the House of Lords Appointments Commission and more driven by parties leaders um and the prime minister And there's concern um that they're kind of used by prime ministers to appoint those they're close to and those who have donated to their party which led to concerns over corruption We looked at this um in the party funding video So when leader of the opposition Starmmer um criticized recent Tory governments for underminizing trust in politics by handing to what he called lackeyis and donors such as Boris Johnson's friend and even standard owner Evony Lebadev um um and billionaire conservative party donor David Harding We looked at the cash for period scandal in the party um funding video And there's also been a lot of these kind of instances where significant party donors are made members of the House of Lords For example Lord Ali is a really good example of this who was engaged in a significant scandal or involved in a significant scandal last summer The passes for glasses scandal just after um after Labour were made came into government effectively Boris Johnson's resignations reg resignation honors um led to controversy um due to accusations that they rewarded personal loyalty over public service Um for example some key kind of allies such as Chris Patel and Jacob Reese Mog were made members of the house of lords whilst perishes were also um gave out to three of Johnson's special advisers showing their kind of real political appointments and linked to political loyalty to a prime minister um in particular controversial was Charlotte Owen who was appointed despite just being um 2019 and having worked as a special adviser for just um one year and it's confirmed that eight people Johnson wanted to place in the second chamber rejected by the house of lords appointment commission as well We can say this has continued um under Labour um when in December over one week they made 30 nominations for periods including former chief of staff Sue Gray to address the imbalance um of the chamber as the conservatives having been in power for so long had appointed a lot of conservative party members These included former um MPs Tang Debonire close allies such as Angie Hunter and trade unionists such as Brendan Barber And these were labor loyalists and allies which highlights the limitations of the current selection process as governments are incentivized toward pariges based on political favoritism rather um than expertise And there's been a particular concern um over u PMS kind of appointing those they are close to On the other hand um because a lot of politicians are appointed through this process it can be argued that it's actually a strength as it means that a lot of um kind of former politicians with political and legislative experience are appointed to the second chamber Again a key criticism of the House of Lords is that a lot of these members of the House of Lords actually aren't very good at legislative scrutiny or don't turn up much Lord Sugar is a really good example of that He's now kind of since being appointed in 2009 attended less than 2% u or voting less than 2% divisions in the House of Lords Really important bill um um kind of introduced by Labor since the election is the House of Lords her peers bill Still hasn't passed when I'm recording this video but I'm sure it will And effectively that's going to introduce a mandatory retirement age of 80 Um and it's not going to completely change the House of Lords like they spoke of in their manifesto What it's going to do is their kind of first key reform mentioned in the manifesto which removing the remaining 92 hereditary peers which they see as um key to modernizing um the House of Lords effectively Um of course conservative peers have been working to obstruct the bill's passage and the hereditary peers will as well but due to the Ssbury convention because it was in the government's manifesto there's not too much um they can do because we look more at the the Salsbury Convention in the next video on Parliament um in the playlist um and effectively because it was in the manifesto it's almost certainly going to get passed Moving on now to the main functions of Parliament and the extent to which they're fulfilled and the first of these is passing legislation Of course we this um we're going to look at this in way more detail um in the kind of the legislative process and House of Commons and Laws video on the Politics Spain YouTube channel which you can find on the UK government playlist But effectively it's a key function as the most important function of parliament is to pass laws It's a supreme legislative body in the UK and through passing laws it's effectively how it makes significant changes um to the country and to policy in the country The government has kind of significant uh really dominates the legislative process um it initiates the vast majority of bills and as the government has a majority in the House of Commons and often a large one it's very rarely defeated and often often easily able to pass the reforms and the laws and the policies it wants to through the House of Commons and the House of Lords Whips are highly important to the passage of legislation as they're responsible for ensuring that MPs attend parliamentary votes and for granting leave if their vote isn't essential They often issue written instructions um to attend a vote and vote along with their party Um and if they're underlined three times that's the strongest kind of whipping and that's known as a three um line whip And crucially whips play a key role in the par patronage as well They can work with the prime minister to offer those who are loyal ministerial posts um even junior ones as a kind of incentive to uh tow the party line effectively Good example of the government's dominance of the legislative process um is that they um Sunnak was able to pass a number of key pieces of legislation including the safety of Rwanda act and the strikes minimum service levels act despite being very unpopular and that was linked to the fact that he had a big majority effectively and due to the fact that the government has a significant troll control over the legislative process The House of Lords also votes on legislation but doesn't have the same amount of C power as the the House of Commons It can only interfere it can't interfere with monetary bill money bills It can only amend non-financial legislation with a one-year delaying power due to the Parliament Acts which we'll look at in more detail in the kind of legislative process and House of Commons and Laws um video Um so they can kind of delay and can have a significant impact um but only for a year due to it one year delaying power don't have a veto like they used to So the arguments you can bring in the parliament is effective in passing legislation is that due to its majority and the power of the wits the government rarely has a problem passing bills through the House of Commons and legislation is almost always um passed effectively The House of Lords kind of does offer amendments but rarely halts the passage of legislation But the House of Lords can be seen as kind of really important in scrutinizing legislation offering technical amendments in um emergencies Parliament um is able to push legislation through in a short amount of time For example recently on the 12th of April Parliament was called on a Saturday to pass um kind of an emergency bill giving business secretary Jonathan Reynolds the power to uh direct British steel um to kind of prevent a scam plant from shutting down That was passed in just six and a half six and a half hours is a really good example or some private members bills are also um really important Again as I mentioned as I kept saying we look at these kind of arguments and some examples in more detail in the legislative process video On the other hand there's a number of ways in which parliament is ineffective at passing legislation The vast majority of private members bills aren't passed particularly if they don't have government support The House of Lords only has a one-year delaying power but that can be significant in kind of holding up the government's agenda in certain cases And when the government has uh a small or no majority rebellions can be really destructive um in preventing important legislation um from being passed For example both Theresa May and Boris Johnson failed to pass their withdrawal agreements when they didn't have majority in the House of Commons Whilst this rushing through of legislation can also lead to kind of increasingly poor scrutiny and unworkable levels laws and that's kind of also linked to the fact that more recently it's common for legislation to be rushed through the House of Commons with not as much scrutiny Um so the illegal migration bill was given just two days um to be scrutinized by the House of Commons in the committee stage before being passed on to the House of Laws Really not detailed scrutiny that you would have seen previously Again more examples more detail on that in the other videos I mentioned Again scrutinizing the executive is a key um role of parliament Um it kind of the government comes from parliament and parliament is given the task to hold it to account which it does through a number of of ways Ministerial questions including um PMQs ask label members of parliament to including the opposition to directly ask questions to government ministers and the prime minister and prime minister's questions um and the opposition can hold them to account through that Select committees um and a range of different debates are also really really important But again much more detail detail on that on the parliamentary scrutiny video on the playlist Another key function that you're not necessarily going to I wouldn't recommend kind of bringing into your essay so much if it was a question on the extent to which parliament's functions are fulfilled effectively I'd do one on legislation one on representing the elector and one on scrutiny But another key kind of um role of parl of kind of parliament is to provide ministers to the government As we looked at the government comes from parliament is not a presidential um system Um the vast majority of these ministers from the House of Commons and selected by the prime minister using their powers of patronage but some do come from the House of Lords as well such as um Minister James Timson um who is made kind of prisons minister by star by being made appear um effectively and overall parliament can be seen as effective in providing the government with ministers most um however some ministers lack the expertise in their department especially as they're often there's a lot of kind of reshuffles and changing between departments which might be seen as a counterpoint to The function we're going to have a look at in detail in this video is representing the electorate So the UK is a um democracy and parliament is elected to represent and implement the views and wishes of the population You could get a question in the um in the exam some on something quite specific like to what extent is parliament representative or evaluate the view of the parliament is representative of the electorate And in this I'd break it down effectively in three paragraphs on three different ways of thinking about representation firstly how democratic it is Secondly how well it kind of represents the issues um and interests of constituents in the population and a final um paragraph on how descriptively representative it is Firstly um looking at um whether it's democratic Some key ways we can say that parliament is representative is that members of the House of Commons are democratic elected on a regular basis with each MP representing a relatively small number of voters in their constituency And that means that these voters can hold their representatives to account and remove them if their judges have not represented them effectively That's also including through the recall of MPs act for example but also more importantly just at general elections removing them each MP has to win a polarity of voters in their constituency in order to get um elected whilst many win a majority of voters A good recent example um of that kind of real kind of representation in terms of democracy is that five pro Gaza MPs were elected in the 2024 general election despite being independents u because they had high Muslim populations I mean the area for whom um the kind of uh Palestine Isra Israel's war in Palestine Palest and in in Gaza sorry in the Palestine issue were really key issue and they were because it was such an important issue for these populations they were able to unseat a number of kind of Labor or Conservative um sitting um MPs and that really shows um how they can members of parliament can really effectively represent um their um constituencies and the key issues um they that are important to them and now they're kind of they formed an an alliance independent alliance um in um the House of Commons given the same number of MPs as reform and the Green Party On the other hand ways in which parliament isn't representative in terms of democracy are quite clear The House of Lords is unelected yet hold significant powers to influence policy scrutinize the government and delay legislation Party leaders and therefore prime ministers are selected by their parties rather than by the electorate with two recent prime ministers sooner can trust not being party leaders in an election yet seeking to implement significant um political changes Whilst the House of Commons can be also be seen as limited in terms of its representation democratically because of first pass and that's a good synoptic link it's very unproportional and very unrepresentative in comparison to other voting systems So the current parliament has 63% of the seats being held by Labor despite the fact they won just 33.7% of the votes in the 2024 election The next key way we can judge whether parliament is representative is does it kind of represent the issues that constituents care about we can say first of all that it is There's relatively small constituencies and the fact that a single MP is responsible for those who live within the constituency result in effective representation of local interests MPs handle correspondents from their constituents or their offices do and um problems their con constituents have and hold weekly constituency survey uh surgeries to help directly talk to their constituents and see how they can help them And they also represent their constituents interests in parliament For example in October 2022 33 Tory MPs rebelled against Liz Trust and abstained on a vote on banning fracking despite the government ordering them to oppose it um including many um MP Mark Fletcher of Bolover which had a strong local movement um in his area in Bolso and that shows they're representing key issues important to their constituents including voting against the party line on particular issues that are important um to their specific constituency Both the House of Commons and Lords can also be seen as really um important in representing the population as as a whole on issues they care about for example in relation to party gate there was significant pressure from within parliament um on the government that eventually resulted in Boris Johnson resigning Whilst that kind of pro pro Gaza MPs example is also really good to bring in for this that shows how the parliament is representative MPs are elected on a mandate and respond to the specific concerns of their constituents On the other hand we can say the parliament isn't representative MPs often don't vote according to their constituents wishes Instead what influences how they vote is almost exclusively how they're whipped They vote almost always in line with the party line in line with what the party tells them to do because that allows them to to kind of climb the ministerial ladder or the party ladder be favored due to their loyalty and give them a chance of becoming a minister For in the last parliament the vast majority of MPs rebelled against the party line less than 2% of the time with just 14 MPs rebelling more than 5% of the time is still very very low Crucially a lot of MPs have second jobs as well Um in the last parliament over 90 MPs had second jobs and they earned millions um from them effectively Theresa May for example received 2.5 million pounds alone from giving speeches when she was backbenture after being um prime minister including many to private equity firms And you could also argue actually as a different point that MPs don't the parliament isn't representative as MPs focus too much on representing their constituency constituents rather than other key functions of parliament Therefore it's a negative thing They focus far too much on case work which should be dealt with by other agencies such as local councils whilst MPs should really be focused on scrutinizing um the government which is a way of representing the country um rather than kind of local um issues effectively And of course we can look at the House of Lords as well and say that many members of the House of Lords don't take their kind of role of scrutinizing the executive and representing the public seriously at all For example Lord Sugar as we had a look at The final thing we can have a look at is in terms of direct representation and this is the extent to which parliament looks like the public Does it represent the public in terms of gender race educational background for example um and on the one hand we can say that parliament isn't representative in this regard as it's highly representative unrepresentative in terms of gender race and educational um background You can pause and have a look at some of the statistics there both in terms of the House of Commons um and um in terms of the House of Lords for example just 40% of the the Commons and 29% of the Lords are women compared to over half of the population Whilst just 13% of the commons and 7.3% of the lords are from minority ethnic backgrounds compared to over 18% of the population and statistically one of the biggest um kind of outliers is that 23% of the House of Commons and 57% of the households went to private schools compared to just 7% of the general population and 90% of the commons went to university compared to just 42% um of the population And this lack of direct representation can be seen as a big problem Not only because it's unjust and and and and a representative would have s symbolic value but also because actually if you had a more representative parliament descriptively they'd understand the wishes of the population more effectively um and that would broaden the um the political um agenda For example a male-dominated parliament as it still currently is is unlikely to fully understand or seek to um address a lot of the discrimination faced by women in society There are many reasons um for this Um it doesn't have a party list system electoral system where lists could be made represented So it's partly linked um to the kind of first class post electoral system Um whilst those who are discriminated against in society are less likely to put themselves forward as they lack the resources to do so and would say significant discrimination and danger more danger if elected as can be seen with the murder of Joe Cox So in 2024 um of the 4519 candidates who stood from 98 different parties 69% of them were male which really shows how that kind of inability and barriers facing um b facing women but it also very much applies to different um other kind of groups who are discriminated against or minority groups harm parliament's descriptive representation On the other hand we can look um at the fact that there kind of has been attempts um by by parties and how to law to improve direct representation Um so you've seen significant improvement So after the 1997 election just 18% of MPs were women um and nine MPs from minority ethnic backgrounds and that has significantly improved whilst the House Lord's appointment commission also seeks to appoint peers with a range um of backgrounds whilst LGBT representation is really effective um in um the House of Commons in particular and in Parliament and Parliament as a whole While some it can be argued that okay descriptive representation doesn't mean that or a lack of descriptive representation doesn't mean that parliament isn't doesn't effectively represent the population because parliament doesn't need to be a microcosm of society and minority groups can be listened to and represented by um by MPs even if they're not directly or descriptively represented by them Yeah hope you found that um video useful As I mentioned a lot of the kind of more detail on the functions of passing legislation and scrutiny are covered in other videos on the YouTube channel Let me know if you got any comments or questions in the comment section below and I'll get back to you Um and I'll see you in the next video