The British Parliament is often called Westminster because it is housed in a distinguished building in central London called the Palace of Westminster.
The British Parliament - like most in the world - is bicameral, that is there are two houses or chambers. The only exceptions to this practice around the world are some small countries such as Finland, Israel and New Zealand.
The House of Commons
This is the lower chamber but the one with the most authority. I worked there as a Research Assistant to Merlyn Rees MP, then Labour's Opposition spokesperson on Northern Ireland, from 1972-1974.
The House of Commons sits each week day for about half of the weeks of the year. The precise hours of sitting are:
Monday 2.30 - 10.30 pm
Tuesday 2.30 - 10.30 pm
Wednesday 11.30 am - 7.30 pm
Thursday 10.30 am - 6.30 pm
Friday 9.30 am - 3 pm
The Commons is chaired by the Speaker. Unlike the Speaker in the US House of Representatives, the post is non-political and indeed, by convention, the political parties do not contest the Parliamentary constituency held by the Speaker.
The House of Commons currently comprises 650 Members of Parliament or MPs (the number varies slightly from time to time to reflect population change). This is a large legislature by international standards. For instance, the House of Representatives in the USA has 435 seats but, of course, each of the 50 US states has its own legislature. Before the last General Election, the Conservative Party said that it wished to reduce the number of Commons seats by around 10% (65 seats) and the Liberal Democrats said that the Commons should be reduced by 150 MPs. The current Coalition Government has passed legislation to reduce the number from 650 to 600, as part of a wider change to the number and size of constituencies, but Parliament has blocked the process of redrawing boundaries that is necessary before an General Election can be held with fewer seats.
Rather oddly (but deliberately), there is insufficient seating capacity in the chamber of the House of Commons for all the MPs. Members do not sit at desks (like most legislatures) but on long, green-covered benches and there is only seating capacity for 437 MPs out of the total of 650. The origin of this strange arrangement is that the Commons first home was the medieval St Stephen's Chapel in the Palace of Westminster which could only fit around 400 Members.
Equally odd is that Members vote (votes are called 'divisions') by physically walking through one of the two lobbies which run along the side of the Commons chamber. These lobbies are the 'aye' lobby and the 'nay' lobby. This archaic procedure means that votes take a long time to conduct and it is not unknown for a member accidentally to walk into the wrong lobby. The votes are counted by 'tellers' who then return to the chamber to announce the numbers to the Speaker.
Each member in the House of Commons represents a geographical constituency. Typically a constituency would have around 60,000-80,000 voters, depending mainly on whether it is an urban or rural constituency. The largest constituency in the country is the Isle of Wight with 108,253 electors at the last General Election, while the smallest is Na h-Eileanan an Iar (formerly known as the Western Isles) with an electorate of only 21,884. The current Coalition Government intends to make the size of constituencies more equal in terms of electors.
Every citizen aged 18 or over can vote once in the constituency in which they live. Voting is not compulsory (as it is in Australia). In the last General Election of June 2010, 65% of the electorate actually voted. Most democratic countries use a method of election called proportional representation which means that there is a reasonable correlation between the percentage of votes cast for a particular political party and the number of seats or representatives won by that party. However, much of the Anglo-Saxon world - the USA, Canada, and the UK but not Australia or New Zealand - uses a method of election called the simple majority system or 'first past the post' (FPTP). In this system, the country is divided into a number of constituencies each with a single member and the party that wins the largest number of votes in each constituency wins that constituency regardless of the proportion of the vote secured. The simple majority system of election tends to under-represent less successful political parties and to maximise the chance of the most popular political party winning a majority of seats nationwide even if it does not win a majority of the votes nationwide.
Until now, in the UK (unlike many countries), there has not been fixed term parliaments. A General Election - that is, a nationwide election for all 650 seats - was held when the Prime Minister called it, but the election could not be more than five years after the last one and it was usually around four years after the last one. I fought the General Elections of February 1974 and October 1974 as the Labour candidate for the north-east London constituency of Wanstead & Woodford. The Coalition Government has passed legislation to provide for fixed five-year parliaments which means that the next General Election will be on 7 May 2015.
The last General Election was held in May 2010 and the result was as follows:
Conservative Party: 306 seats (up 97) with a voting share of 36.1% (up 3.8%)
Labour Party: 258 seats (down 91) with a voting share of 29.0% (down 6.2%)
Liberal Democrat Party: 57 seats (down 5) with a voting share of 23.0% (up 1.0%)
Other parties: 28 seats (down 3) with a voting share of 11.9% (down 1.4%)
Total turnout nationwide was 65.1% up 4.0% on 2005
Note 1: In practice, the Speaker - notionally Conservative - is not counted against any political party because he is required to be neutral.
Note 2: One constituency did not vote because the death of a candidate postponed that election.
