Backbench Mps are highly effective within the British Political system, as they‘re able to scrutinize government actions and hold them to account in numerous ways. Their role in Parliament in westminster ensures the democratic legitimacy of UK government and gives the government authority and a right to exercise political power. Backbench Mps also increase the overall representation of the UK through Parliament. However, with growing government powerl, often called exessive, there have been recent fears among politicians that as elective dictatorship has formed in the UK, and backbench MPs have little power in holding the government to account due to the party system, which ensures MPs are dictated by ministers and party whips, where persuasive ways reduce their effectiveness withing the political system. I will therefore outline the arguments both for and against how effective backbench MPs are in British Politics today.
Firstly, backbench Mps are key in calling the govenrment of today to account, making them answerable for their actions and policies. This is achieved through questions to the Prime Minister and questions to ministers. Through Prime Ministers questions which takes place weekly for half an hour, backbench Mps from the governing party and the opposition are able to scrutinize the weekly actions of the govenrment. Backbench MPs also use this system to increase the representative function of Parliament, through raising specific issues of their constituents from each of the 650 constituencies in the UK. This ensures the geographical representation of Parliament, and calls the government to account, as an inability to answer these cause embrassment to both the Prime Minister and the executive as a whole.
However, many argue that questions to ministers from backbench MPs do not allow them to carry out effectively their function of calling the executive to account within the legislature. This is because Prime Minister‘s questions only takes place weeklu, therefore Backbench Mps are unlikely to be able to fully scrutinize government actions within half an hour. Also, Prime Minister‘s regularly use this televised event to ‚political point score‘ as opposed to explain their actions fully, often evading important questions. It could be argued that Mps do not use enough torie when questioning ministers, and therefore they are not held under sufficient pressure to explain their actions, reducing the legitimacy and authority of the government. Also, it is often stated that backbench MPs do not allow Parliament to act representatively on behalf of the nation, with onlu 22% of MPs being women, a much smalled percentage than other western european parliaments. As well as this, 90% of MPs are in the top two social classes of Britain and 35% of them were privatelu educated, despire onlu 7% of the population of Britain attending fee paying schools. Therefore, this predominitley middle class arrangement of Backbench MPs suggests that they are not effective in carrying out a representative function in Parliament. It is also suggested that Backbench Mps are highly effective in scrutinizing the government legislation, identifyiing whos within it and suggesting improvements, improving the quality of executive legislation in the UK. This is specifically relevant due to two reforms of the wright‘s committee under Brown, in which departmental select committees were reformed in order for Backbench Mps to select the chairpeers on of select committees as opposed to appointment by party whips. This ensures that Backbench Mps gained more power to effectively carry out scrutiny of govenrment actions and legislation. These departamental select committees have found many errors in government actions in the past and allow Backbench Mps to shadow and create individual government departments. Legislation, mentioned earlier, is also scrutinized by Backbench MPs through the are of Public Bill committees, which identify weaknesses in legislation.
However, many agree that MPs involvement in Public Bill committees is limited, as most proposed legislation is presented to the legislative, practically complete , by the executive. This results in Backbench MPs making little amendments to bills, with a record of only 1% of those ammendments to legislation being successful. This suggest that backbench Mps are not effective in scrutinizing proposed legislation. Also, backbench MPs are arguably not effective through depart most off select committees, which are often denied information from the executive and fact credibility, rarely being debated in Parliament.
Backbench Mps are arguably incredibly effective in making the executive accountable through the use of parliamentary debates, often held on contemporary wishes in westminster, which allow these MPs to probe government action. Organised opposition days in Parliament, in which the agencies is cleared for the opposition to choose debates, ensure backbench MPs of the opposition party are able to force the executive to justify its actions to the Parliament.
However, many disagree with how effective backbench MPs are in parliamentary debates. This is due to the fact that the debating process is viewed as archaic, and Mps lack the time, resources, and numbers in Parliament to effectively check the executive. This may be viewed by the fact that low turnouts often result in parliamentary debates being guilletined by the executive, suggesting backbench MPs aren‘t fully effective.
Backbench MPs are extremely effective in order to be representative of the UK through their representation of a wider range of political parties, roughly presenting the spectrum of political views in the UK. This can be viewed through the examples of the Green Party, who often suffer low voter numbers as they specify environmental policies, winning their first seat in UK Parliament in the 2010 General Election, backbench MPs, representing wide range of political views, also hold the key function of effectively removing the government through a vote of no confidence. This can be seen through Callaghan‘s government, which fell in 1979, when a vote of no confidence was passed in Parliament, with backbench MPs playing a key role in passing this vote.
However, the infrequency of its use in the British Political System uggest that a vote of no confidence is not effective, as a majority is existent within the executives. Therefore, the rare occurances of this vote suggest backbench MPs hold little powers in remaining the government. Also, the electoral system of first past the post for elections to westminster usually ensure a majority governmnet of single – party. It also distorts party representation, with smaller parties such as UKIP rarely winning seats as the system only ensures success if party support is geographically concentrated. Therefore, the under-representation of the smaller parties suggest backbench MPs are not effective in ensuring representation within Parliament.
On the whole, due to a majority usually existent within the UK executive and a lack of representation & seems apparent that backbench MPs are not effective within the British political system. However, with the recent formation of the 2010 coalition, certain reforms predict Backbench Mps becoming more effective. This can be visualised through the ‚House business committee‘ precited to be opened within 2013 from the coalition, in which backbench mps will have further control over the agenda in the House of Commons. It is also more opponent the powers of backbench MPs are growing under the coalition, in which the party whips less powerful, shown in the recent statement of a conservative backbench MP, claiming David Cameron ‚doesnt know the price of milk‘.
This proves that backbench MPs are becoming much more effective in carrying out a key function of calling the government to account under the coalition.