1970–February 1974 Parliament of the United Kingdom | |||||
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Overview | |||||
Legislative body | Parliament of the United Kingdom | ||||
Term | 18 June 1970 – 12 March 1974 | ||||
Election | 1970 United Kingdom general election | ||||
Government | Heath ministry | ||||
House of Commons | |||||
Members | 630 | ||||
Speaker | Horace King Selwyn Lloyd | ||||
Leader | William Whitelaw Robert Carr Jim Prior | ||||
Prime Minister | Edward Heath | ||||
Leader of the Opposition | Harold Wilson | ||||
Third-party leader | Jeremy Thorpe | ||||
House of Lords | |||||
Lord Chancellor | Baron Hailsham of St Marylebone |
This is a list of members of Parliament elected at the 1970 general election, held on 18 June.
These representative diagrams show the composition of the parties in the 1970 general election.
Note: This is not the official seating plan of the House of Commons, which has five rows of benches on each side, with the government party to the right of the speaker and opposition parties to the left, but with room for only around two-thirds of MPs to sit at any one time.
Affiliation | Members | |
Conservative Party | 330 | |
Labour Party | 288 | |
Liberal Party | 6 | |
Scottish National Party | 1 | |
Unity | 2 | |
Protestant Unionist Party | 1 | |
Republican Labour Party | 1 | |
Independent Labour | 1 | |
Total | 630 | |
Effective government majority | 31 |
This is a list of members of Parliament elected to the Parliament of the United Kingdom in the 1970 general election held on 18 June.
Notable newcomers to the House of Commons included John Prescott, Norman Tebbit, Ian Paisley, John Smith, Neil Kinnock, Kenneth Clarke, John Gummer, Alan Haselhurst, Dennis Skinner, and Gerald Kaufman.
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The Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is the supreme legislative body of the United Kingdom, and may also legislate for the Crown Dependencies and the British Overseas Territories. It meets at the Palace of Westminster in London. Parliament possesses legislative supremacy and thereby holds ultimate power over all other political bodies in the United Kingdom and the Overseas Territories. While Parliament is bicameral, it has three parts: the sovereign, the House of Lords, and the House of Commons. The three parts acting together to legislate may be described as the King-in-Parliament. The Crown normally acts on the advice of the prime minister, and the powers of the House of Lords are limited to only delaying legislation; thus power is de facto vested in the House of Commons.
The 1970 United Kingdom general election was held on Thursday 18 June 1970. It resulted in a surprise victory for the Conservative Party under leader Edward Heath, which defeated the governing Labour Party under Prime Minister Harold Wilson. The Liberal Party, under its new leader Jeremy Thorpe, lost half its seats. The Conservatives, including the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP), secured a majority of 30 seats. This general election was the first in which people could vote from the age of 18, after passage of the Representation of the People Act the previous year, and the first UK election where party, and not just candidate names were allowed to be put on the ballots.
The politics of Scotland operate within the constitution of the United Kingdom, of which Scotland is a country. Scotland is a democracy, being represented in both the Scottish Parliament and the Parliament of the United Kingdom since the Scotland Act 1998. Most executive power is exercised by the Scottish Government, led by the First Minister of Scotland, the head of government in a multi-party system. The judiciary of Scotland, dealing with Scots law, is independent of the legislature and the Scottish Government. Scots law is primarily determined by the Scottish Parliament. The Scottish Government shares some executive powers with the Scotland Office, a British government department led by the Secretary of State for Scotland.
In the United Kingdom, a member of Parliament (MP) is an individual elected to serve in the House of Commons, the lower house of the Parliament of the United Kingdom.
The Scottish Affairs Select Committee is a select committee of the House of Commons in the Parliament of the United Kingdom. The remit of the committee is to examine the expenditure, administration and policy of the Office of the Secretary of State for Scotland, and relations with the Scottish Parliament. It also looks at the administration and expenditure of the Advocate General for Scotland.