Parliaments in Britain

The Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is the supreme legislative body in the United Kingdom and British overseas territories. Is alone has parliamentary sovereignty, conferring it ultimate power over all other political bodies in the UK and its territories. At its head is the Sovereign, Queen Elizabeth ІІ.

The parliament is bicameral, which means that they have two houses. An upper house – the House of Lords, and a lower house – the House of Commons. The Queen is the third component of Parliament. The House of Lords includes three different types of members: the Lords Spiritual (the senior bishops of the Church of England), the Lords Temporal (members of the Peerage, a part of the British honor system) and Law Lords (judges that carry out the House of Lords’ judicial responsibilities). All members of the House of Lords are not elected by the population at large, but are appointed by the Queen on advice of the Prime Minister. The members of the House of Lords are often called Peers and there are now 750 Peers in the House of Lords.

The House of Commons is a democratically elected chamber. The people in the UK elect Members of Parliament (MPs) to represent their interests and proposing new laws. There are 646 Members of Parliament (MPs). Almost all belong to one of the ten political parties represented in Parliament. The three biggest parties at present, in order of size, are Labor, Conservatives and Liberal Democrats. The leader of the party with the largest number of MPs is the Prime Minister who selects Members for their party to form Her Majesty’s Government. MPs split their time between working in Parliament itself, working in the constituency that elected them, and working for their political party. Some MPs from the ruling party become government ministers with specific responsibilities in certain areas, such as Health or Defense. The UK is divided into 646 areas called constituencies. During an election everyone eligible to cast a vote in a constituency (constituents) selects one candidate to be their MP. The candidate who gets the most votes becomes the MP for that area until the next election.

The Houses of Parliament, also known as the Palace of Westminster, is in the centre of London. As well as the home of the UK Parliament, it is also a royal palace and former residence of great kings. The Palace comprises many famous sites including the green-colored House of Commons Chamber and the red-colored House of Lords Chamber where political decisions are made to this day. It also includes the famous Clock Tower, popularly known as Big Ben.