‘The absence of a separation of powers in Britain gives the government too much power.’ Discuss.
1c) Britain's govt. is too powerful due to its absence of a separation of powers. Britain’s executive, legislative and judiciary are fundamentally connected. Many are part of two or more these powers, such as the PM who is in both the executive and the legislature. Therefore a large majority can do as it pleases. The Govt. controls itself and can create legislation and our flexible constitution to suite its own interests and these places too much power in our elected body. If a party holds a large majority in parliament it can pass any bills it likes. This is partially due to the whipping system where party members (known as whips) have to vote with the interests of the party in mind. The opposition, the minority is powerless as even if they are against the legislation it will still be passed by the whips and party members. Any opposition is purely advisory and the PM doesn’t have to listen to them. This is too much power for a govt. to have as it’s uncontrollable. (This was apparent in Blair’s leadership). The party in power effectively become in control of both the Executive and the legislature. Our PM, David Cameron sits in the HOC as an MP, and is a major party of both the Executive and the legislature himself, whereas in America the president is not allowed to sit in congress. It means the Executive and legislature are controlled by one central power, the PM and 10 Downing Street. Therefore no one can question what the PM is doing and prevent him putting his party’s bill into action in our country. This is clearly far too much power for our govt. and here it abuses its power in the extreme. Some however do believe Britain’s political system is more unified and therefore focused. IT can pass laws it feels are in the best interests of our country without and substantial protests. They believe it creates less conflict between the three elements of our government and that this can only increase the quality that our govt. is providing. However they are wrong. Even within one party there is still conflict and unrest. During Blair’s leadership there were resignations, these are particularly embarrassing and damaging for any PM, such as Claire Short and this proved to be more of a distraction to Blair creating unsettlement within his party and the Cabinet. Any minority govt. however would be too frail to run our nation effectively. It could not easily pass legislation and the opposition could prevent it from passing bills. However surely this is one of the fundamentals of Democracy. Our govt. should vote together on important matter without letting the whipping system prevent a fair vote. Although a minority would be less powerful, it would run our nation more fairly and democratically allowing every elected MP to have a vote that counts. Not a vote waste thanks to govt. whips always agreeing with their parties interests. An example of this was the war on Iraq. Personally very few MP’s in the HOC during the vote on the Iraq war were in favour of it. However Blair’s govt. easily manipulated the MP’s in order to get what it wanted. Many wrongly believe because the Judiciary is separate from the Executive and the legislature administratively that this is much less powerful. In America judges must belong to a political party, whereas in the UK this is not the case, therefore it could be said that they are not biased, and will not always agree with what they are told. Where this is true, Britain's judges can also themselves be too powerful. As there is no constitution many matters placed in front of them are dealt with through personal interpretation or from convention. In controversial situations such as the recent riots many judges placed too harsh penalties on rioters. One man was held in custody for 2 months for stealing merely a bottle of water clearly this is not fair, whereas in other places, such as Nottingham, very few punishments were placed upon rioters. This shows that although the Judiciary is a separation of powers it is still too powerful and again is uncontrollable. Judges cannot be sacked for making ‘poor decisions’ and thus, do as they please. This is clearly far too much power for our Judiciary to have, as part of our govt. Britain's govt. is not democratic or controllable. Once a PM gains a majority in the HOC, which has been the case every year since the 1970’s, they are able to run the whole executive and legislature as they like. Using whips it can easily win votes between MP’s in the HOC and therefore change things in its own interests. Not only this, the Judiciary itself is fairly uncontrolled. Judges have free reign to make whatever decisions they see fit within court. Although some feel this all creates less conflict within our govt., surely conflict is what is needed to get the best decisions on how to run our nation.