British government

Britain is a parliamentary democracy with a constitutional monarch – Queen Elizabeth II – as a head of state. The Queen is impartial and acts on the advice of her ministers.

The government in Britain is divided into three sections, the elected House of Commons, the non-elected House of Lords and the hereditary monarch.

The UK is divided into 650 areas called constituencies. Each constituency elects one person to represent them in the House of Commons. These people, or candidates, can be any British person except for a few cases. The candidate usually represents a political party for example the Conservative (Tory) Party, Labour, Liberal, Green (Ecology) or Nationalist par­ties. The candidate with the most votes, even if it is less than 50 %, represents their constituency as the member of parlia­ment (M.P.) for the period of time up until the next general election, anything up to five years later.

If one party has 326 or more seats then they form the government, the leader of the party becomes the prime min­ister and he or she chooses 20 members of their party to form the cabinet. Each member of the cabinet is responsible for one area of the government, for example, the minister for the environment, the minister for health or the Chancellor of the Exchequer (finance).

These ministers are responsible for their department in the civil service who are the people who tell ministers any information they need to know and any decisions which need to be made. The civil service workers do not work for a par­ticular political party but represent the government no matter which party it is formed from. Most civil service workers have been privately educated and attended Oxbridge universities.

The House of Lords has around two to three hundred active members. They are not paid for their political work but merely debate a decision taken in parliament and suggest any changes to a bill which they consider necessary before send­ing it to the monarch to be signed. The monarch can refuse to sign a bill as they see fit but has not done so for over two hundred years.

Along with the national government, there is also a local government system for each of the 55 administrative regions known as counties. This local government is responsible for the roads, schools, hospitals and so on for their own county.

Some people in Britain think that the election system is unfair and should be changed but neither the Conservative nor the Labour parties (the two largest) have any wish to change the system at the moment.