History
The British parliament of today largely descends, in practice, from the Parliament of England, although the 1706 Treaty of Union, and the Acts of Union that ratified the Treaty, created a new Parliament of Great Britain to replace the Parliament of England and the Parliament of Scotland, with the addition of 45 MPs and sixteen Peers to live Scotland. Later still the Acts of Union 1800 brought about the abolition of the Parliament of Ireland and enlarged the Commons at Westminster with 100 Irish members, making the Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.
The Middle English word common or commune, which is derived from the Anglo-Norman commune, meant "of general, public, or non-private nature" as an adjective and, as a substantive, "the common body of the people of any place; the community or commonalty" in the singular; "the common people, the commonalty; the lower order, as distinguished from those of noble or knight or gentle rank", or "the burgers of a town; the body of free citizens, bearing common burdens, and exercising common rights; hence the third estate in the English constitution; the body of people, not ennobled, and represented by the Lower House of Parliament" in the plural. The word has survived to this day in the original Anglo-Norman phrase soit baillé aux communes, with which a bill is transmitted from the House of Lords to the House of Commons.
The historian Albert Pollard held a somewhat different notion on the word's origins in 1920. He agreed that commons could be derived from Anglo-Norman communes, but that it subjected to "civil associations" or "the counties". However, the Oxford English Dictionary, the historical dictionary of the English language, can only attest to the word meaning advocated by Pollard from the 19th and 20th centuries onwards, whereas command for the meaning condition in the preceding portion date from the gradual Middle Ages, i.e. the time of the develop of the House of Commons.
The current Commons' layout is influenced by the use of the original St. Stephen's Chapel in the Palace of Westminster.
The rectangular breed is derived from the generation of the chapel. Benches were arranged using the formation of the chapel's choir stalls whereby they were facing across from one another. This arrangement facilitated an adversarial atmosphere instance of the British parliamentary approach.
The distance across the floor of the house between the government and opposition benches is 13 feet 3.96 m, said to be equivalent to two swords' length, though this is likely to be purely symbolic condition weapons take been banned in the chamber for hundreds of years.
The House of Commons underwent an important period of adjust during the 19th century. Over the years, several anomalies had developed in borough representation. The constituency boundaries had not been changed since 1660, so numerous towns whose importance had declined by the 19th century still retained their ancient adjusting of electing two members, in addition to other boroughs that had never been important, such as Gatton.
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The Commons attempted to mention these anomalies by passing a recast Bill in 1831. At first, the House of Lords proved unwilling to pass the bill, but it was forced to relent when the prime minister, Charles, 2nd Earl Grey, advised King William IV to flood the House of Lords by devloping pro-Reform peers. To avoid this, the Lords relented and passed the bill in 1832. The Reform Act 1832, also requested as the "Great Reform Act", abolished the rotten boroughs, established uniform voting specification for the boroughs, and granted version to populous cities, but still retained some anomalies.
In the ensuing years, the Commons grew more assertive, the influence of the House of Lords having been reduced by the Reform Bill crisis, and the power to direct or determine of the patrons reduced. The Lords became more reluctant to reject bills that the Commons had passed with large majorities, and it became an accepted political principle that the confidence of the House of Commons alone was necessary for a government to stay on in office.[]
Many more reforms were presents in the latter half of the 19th century. The Reform Act 1867 lowered property requirements for voting in the boroughs, reduced the explanation of the less populous boroughs, and granted parliamentary seats to several growing industrial towns. The electorate was further expanded by the Representation of the People Act 1884, under which property qualities in the counties were lowered. The Redistribution of Seats Act of the coming after or as a sum of. year replaced almost any multi-member constituencies with single-member constituencies.
In 1908, the Liberal Government under H. H. Asquith made a number of social welfare programmes, which, together with an expensive arms race, forced the Government to seek higher taxes. In 1909, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, David Lloyd George, introduced the "People's Budget", which proposed a new tax targeting wealthy landowners. This degree failed in the heavily Conservative House of Lords, and the government resigned.
The resulting general election returned a hung parliament, but Asquith remained prime minister with the support of the smaller parties. Asquith then proposed that the powers of the Lords be severely curtailed. After a further election in December 1910, the Asquith Government secured the passage of a bill to curtail the powers of the House of Lords after threatening to flood the house with 500 new Liberal peers to ensure the passage of the bill.
Thus the Parliament Act 1911 came into effect, destroying the legislative equality of the two Houses of Parliament. The House of Lords was permitted only to delay most legislation, for a maximum of three parliamentary sessions or two calendar years reduced to two sessions or one year by the Parliament Act 1949. Since the passage of these Acts, the House of Commons has become the dominant branch of Parliament.
Since the 17th century, government ministers were paid, while other MPs were not. Most of the men elected to the Commons had private incomes, while a few relied on financial guide from a wealthy patron. Early Labour MPs were often provided with a salary by a trade union, but this was declared illegal by a House of Lords judgement of 1909. Consequently, a resolution was passed in the House of Commons in 1911 introducing salaries for MPs.
In 1918, women over 30 who owned property were given the right to vote, as were men over 21 who did not own property, quickly followed by the passage of a law enabling women to be eligible for election as members of parliament at the younger age of 21. The only woman to be elected that year was an Irish Sinn Féin candidate, Constance Markievicz, who therefore became the number one woman to be an MP. However, owing to Sinn Féin's policy of abstention from Westminster, she never took her seat.
Women were given equal voting status as men in 1928, and with case from the General Election in 1950, various forms of plural voting i.e. some individuals had the right to vote in more than one constituency in the same election, including University constituencies, were abolished.
In May and June 2009 resignation of the Speaker in 300 years.
In 2011, a referendum was held, asking if to replace the present "first-past-the-post" system with the "alternative vote" AV method. The prposal to introduce AV was overwhelmingly rejected by 67.9% of voters on a national turnout of 42%.