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 (King-in-Parliament), the House of Lords, and the House of Commons. In theory, power is officially vested in the King-in-Parliament. However, 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 Parliament Acts 1911 and 1949 are two Acts of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, which form part of the constitution of the United Kingdom. Section 2(2) of the Parliament Act 1949 provides that the two Acts are to be construed as one.
An act of parliament, as a form of primary legislation, is a text of law passed by the legislative body of a jurisdiction. In most countries with a parliamentary system of government, acts of parliament begin as a bill, which the legislature votes on. Depending on the structure of government, this text may then be subject to assent or approval from the executive branch.
Royal assent is the method by which a monarch formally approves an act of the legislature, either directly or through an official acting on the monarch's behalf. In some jurisdictions, royal assent is equivalent to promulgation, while in others that is a separate step. Under a modern constitutional monarchy, royal assent is considered little more than a formality. Even in nations such as the United Kingdom, Norway, the Netherlands, Liechtenstein and Monaco which still, in theory, permit their monarch to withhold assent to laws, the monarch almost never does so, except in a dire political emergency or on advice of government. While the power to veto by withholding royal assent was once exercised often by European monarchs, such an occurrence has been very rare since the eighteenth century.
A bill is a proposal for a new law, or a proposal to significantly change an existing law. A bill does not become law until it is passed by the legislature and has been, in most cases, approved by the executive. Once a bill has been enacted into law by the legislature, it is called an act of the legislature, or a statute. Bills are introduced in the legislature and are discussed, debated and voted upon.
The House of Lords Act 1999 is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom that reformed the House of Lords, one of the chambers of Parliament. The Act was given Royal Assent on 11 November 1999. For centuries, the House of Lords had included several hundred members who inherited their seats ; the Act removed such a right. However, as part of a compromise, the Act did permit ninety-two hereditary peers to remain in the House. Another ten were created life peers to enable them to remain in the House.
The Identity Cards Act 2006 was an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom that was repealed in 2011. It created National Identity Cards, a personal identification document and European Economic Area travel document, which were voluntarily issued to British citizens. It also created a database known as the National Identity Register (NIR), which has since been destroyed. In all around 15,000 National Identity Cards were issued until the act was repealed in 2011. Separate versions of identification cards were issued for non-UK citizens and the Identity Card for Foreign nationals was continued in the form of Biometric Residence Permits after 2011.
NO2ID is a public campaign group, formed in 2004 to campaign against the United Kingdom government's plans to introduce UK ID Cards and the associated National Identity Register (NIR), which it believes has negative implications for privacy, civil liberties and personal safety. The NIR and ID cards were abolished by the Identity Documents Act 2010. Since then, it has been involved in other campaigns.
The Legislative and Regulatory Reform Act 2006 (LRRA) is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. It was enacted to replace the Regulatory Reform Act 2001 (RRA). The Act was and remains very controversial, because of a perception that it is an Enabling Act substantially removing the ancient British constitutional restriction on the Executive introducing and altering laws without assent or scrutiny by Parliament, and it has been called the "Abolition of Parliament Act".
Parliamentary ping-pong is a phrase used to describe a phenomenon in the Parliament of the United Kingdom, in which a bill appears to rapidly bounce back and forth between the two chambers like a ping-pong ball bounces between the players in a game of table tennis.
The United Kingdom last had compulsory national identity cards during World War II when they were introduced for security purposes. Wartime ID cards were finally withdrawn by the Churchill government in 1952 because of the tension they created between the police and innocent citizens. Proposals to reintroduce them have been raised on a number of occasions since then. During the early 2000s and 2010s, organisations such as NO2ID campaigned against these proposals.
The Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Act 2011(c. 1) is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom that made provision for the holding of a referendum on whether to introduce the Alternative Vote system in all future general elections to the UK Parliament and also made provision on the number and size of parliamentary constituencies. The Bill for the Act was introduced to the House of Commons on 22 July 2010 and passed third reading on 2 November by 321 votes to 264. The House of Lords passed the Bill, with amendments, on 14 February 2011, and after some compromises between the two Houses on amendments, it received Royal Assent on 16 February 2011.
The Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011 (FTPA) was an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom which, for the first time, set in legislation a default fixed election date for general elections in the United Kingdom. It remained in force until 2022, when it was repealed. Since then, as before its passage, elections are required by law to be held at least once every five years, but can be called earlier if the prime minister advises the monarch to exercise the royal prerogative to do so. Prime ministers have often employed this mechanism to call an election before the end of their five-year term, sometimes fairly early in it. Critics have said this gives an unfair advantage to the incumbent prime minister, allowing them to call a general election at a time that suits them electorially. While it was in force, the FTPA removed this longstanding power of the prime minister.
Individual Electoral Registration (IER) is the voter registration system which took effect from 10 June 2014 in England and Wales and from 19 September 2014 in Scotland. Under the previous system, the "head of the household" was required to register all residents of the household who are eligible. Under the new system individuals are required to register themselves, as well as provide their National Insurance number and date of birth on the application form so that their identity can be verified.
The Marriage Act 2013 is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom which introduced same-sex marriage in England and Wales.
The modern capabilities and legal framework for mass surveillance in the United Kingdom developed under successive governments of the United Kingdom since the late 20th century.
The European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018 is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom to repeal the European Communities Act 1972, and for parliamentary approval to be required for any withdrawal agreement negotiated between the Government of the United Kingdom and the European Union. Initially proposed as the Great Repeal Bill, its passage through both Houses of Parliament was completed on 20 June 2018 and it became law by Royal Assent on 26 June.
The European Union Act 2017 was an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom to empower the Prime Minister to give to the Council of the European Union the formal notice – required by Article 50 of the Treaty on European Union – for starting negotiations for the United Kingdom's withdrawal from the European Union. It was passed following the result of the 2016 United Kingdom European Union membership referendum held on 23 June in which 51.9% of voters voted to leave the European Union.
The European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2019, commonly referred to as the Cooper–Letwin Act, was an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom that made provisions for extensions to the period defined under Article 50 of the Treaty on European Union related to the United Kingdom's withdrawal from the European Union. It was introduced to the House of Commons by Labour MP Yvette Cooper and Conservative MP Sir Oliver Letwin on 3 April 2019, in an unusual process where the Government of the United Kingdom did not have control over Commons business that day.
The Elections Act 2022 is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, introduced to the House of Commons in July 2021, and receiving Royal Assent on 28 April 2022. The Act makes photo identification compulsory for in-person voting in Great Britain for the first time. Until then, Northern Ireland had been the only part of the UK to require voter identification. The Act also gives the government new powers over the independent elections regulator; the Electoral Commission has said it is "concerned" about its independence from political influence in the future.
