Politics - Prime Minister And Cabinet - Executive Powers

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Prime ministerial government?

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. The way these powers are deployed has given rise to the questioning on whether the UK can be said to have a system of Cabinet government, or of prime ministerial government

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Royal prerogative powers 1

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. Power which historically belonged to the monarch but are normally exercised by the PM or Cabinet

. E.g the granting of honors or of legal pardons, sign treaties, declare war and appointing ministers

. They are not set out in statutes but are based largely on the practice of previous governments

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Royal prerogative powers 2

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. Both Gordon Brown's Labour government (2007-10) and the coalition government were open to the idea of placing some prerogative powers under parliamentary authority

. Powers can be abolished or removed - E.g The 2011 Fixed Term Parliament Act removed the right of the PM to determine the date of the general election, however in the case of Theresa May, who called an early general election for June 2017, it is possible for the PM to override the act with the support of enough MPs

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Initiation of legislation 1

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. The executive controls most of the parliamentary time available for legislation - Exceptions are 20 opposition days, 13 days set aside for private members' bills, and a variable amount of time allocated for debates chosen by the Backbench Business Committee

. If the government has a majority in the Commons, it can usually rely on the party whipping system and the power of patronage to push through its programme but rebellions can occur

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Initiation of legislation 2

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. The executive has several tools to strengthen it's hold over the passage of legislation

. E.g the guillotine, which dates back to 1887, is a procedure that allows the government to curtail debate on the individual clauses of a bill, applying only in the Commons

. E.g the programming notion, introduced by the Blair government, enables the executive to set out in advance the time limits for each stage in the passage of a bill

. Since 2002, the government can carry over uncompleted legislation from one session to another, without having to start again from the beginning of the legislative process in the new season

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Secondary legislation

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. The government uses powers created by an earlier act

. Statutory instruments, the most common form of secondary legislation, enable a government to modify or repeal existing legislation without introducing a new bill

. Critics have raised concerns about the growing use of statutory instruments to make more controversial changes - E.g in 2016, statutory instruments were used to abolish maintenance grants for university students and to allow fracking in national parks

. Although parliament can debate and, in theory, reject a statutory statement, about two-thirds of them simply become law on a specified date in the future, without being put before MPs