Lesson video

Hello.

So my name's Mrs. Tomassi and I'm gonna be working through with you on your citizenship lesson today.

If you're all settled and all good to go, we will make a start.

So today's lesson is what is the benefits and drawbacks of the bicameral system? And this is part of the unit, which is what is the nature of the British Constitution.

By the end, hopefully you'll be able to explain what the bicameral system is and describe the benefits and drawbacks of this system.

If we move on to the keywords for today, remember they will be in bold throughout so you can come back and refer to them.

So we've got bicameral there and it means two chambers.

So in a bicameral Parliament there are two separate groups that must both agree on changes to laws.

The UK Parliament is bicameral.

It has two chambers, the House of Commons and the House of Lords which leads us onto our next key term, which is the House of Commons, which is an elected body currently consisting of 650 MPs, Members of Parliament where the MPs debate, make laws and scrutinise the Government.

It is the lower House of Parliament and it meets in the Palace of Westminster.

Now we have the House of Lords, which is the upper House of Parliament, composed of life peers and hereditary peers, who scrutinise the bills approved by the House of Commons.

The House of Lords meets in the Palace of Westminster.

So this takes us to our first learning cycle of today, which is what is meant by a bicameral system? So where does the word derive from? If you think of the word and we break it down.

So you've got two parts here bi, which means two, and then we've got cameral, which means chamber.

So quite simply, when we're talking about this, we are talking about two chambers.

And like we said in the key terms, this is the two Parliamentary chambers.

Now, can you remember what these chambers are called in the UK Parliament? They are the House of Commons, which we've got there, which means the other one is the House of, House of Lords.

If you got that.

The term that means two chambers is A, unicameral? B, bicameral? Or C, tricameral? It is B, it's bicameral.

Unicameral means a single chamber, and tricameral means three chambers.

So that takes us onto one of the chambers, which is the House of Commons.

Now House of Commons is the publicly elected chamber of Parliament.

So that means the people vote them in.

So when you hear about the general election, that's what happens.

You vote for your member of Parliament and the person with the most votes is elected and they become part and helped to form the House of Commons.

So this is located in the Palace of Westminster in London.

Now in the House of Commons, those Members of Parliament discuss political issues.

They debate and they vote on proposals for new laws and changes to existing laws.

Sofia is saying there, How many MPs are there? Laura says, There are 650 MPs and they each represent a constituency.

So a constituency is each geographical area across the United Kingdom.

Now these MPs either represent as a political party or they can be independent and they're elected at the general election and they earn a salary for their role.

So there is a paid position.

The political party with the most seats after the general election, they are invited by the monarch to form the Government.

Now the leader of that party becomes the Prime Minister and they sit in the House of Commons and they have the opposition facing them.

So as well as making laws and debating political issues, the House of Commons has many other roles.

Can you think of any? Did you manage to get these? So they examine and challenge the role and work of the Government.

They allow the Government to raise taxes and scrutinise Government spending.

So they're kind of investigating and keep an eye on it.

And then you've got committees.

So these are made up between 10 to 50 kind of MPs and they examine issues, policies, and proposals for laws in detail.

So they might be on a specific topic or area or department and they will look at what the policies, issues, and proposals are in those areas.

How many MPs sit in the House of Commons? Is it A, 450? B, 550? Or C 650? It is C, 650 members of Parliament.

So this takes us onto the House of Lords.

So the House of Lords is that second chamber.

Now they are independent from the House of Commons.

They work separately and they are an appointed chamber.

Now, peers in the House of Lords is a bit different to the House of Commons.

It's not a paid position.

They don't receive a salary.

However, they can claim an allowance and expenses.

Now that allowance is up to 361 pound a day as of April, 2024.

The House of Lords has three main roles.

They're there to make the laws, investigate public policy often via committees and hold the Government to account.

So their role is more on the scrutinising side.

So they might receive bills from the House of Commons and they will scrutinise.

It is unelected.

So what we meant by that is the Lords themselves aren't elected in the same way like the held the general election for the members of Parliament.

So this means that they tend to be appointed.

Now so as of December, 2024, there are over 800 members and there are three ways that you can become a peer.

So you have life peers who are appointed.

There's around 700 of them and that comes from their expertise and their subject specialisms. You've got the Church of England members.

So there's around 26 bishops and you've got hereditary peers.

Now, hereditary peers are peers who are born into the title.

This has reduced a lot from what it used to be and there's still continuation that in looking to try and reduce this further.

To do both chambers have equal power and responsibility? Just based off what you've heard, can you come up with any kind of thoughts on that? So the House of Commons actually holds more legislative power and is the main decision making body in Parliament.

Now, the House of Lords, they serve as, like we were talking earlier, they're there to scrutinise and suggest amendments to the legislation.

So the House of Lords can propose changes.

They don't have the same power to make the final decisions as the House of Commons does, which ultimately passes the law.

So the idea is the House of Commons comes up with it, they pass it to the House of Lords who scrutinise and then they go back and forth and ultimately the House of Commons will then pass the law.

True or false? The House of Lords is an elected chamber.

That is false.

Why? The House of Commons is the elected chamber and the House of Lords is unelected, it's appointed and it's made up of various peers.

So moving on to our first task for today.

We've got the UK has a bicameral system.

Can you create a table to compare the two chambers in the UK's Parliament? Make sure your table includes the following.

How many members does each chamber have? How are the members selected and what are their main responsibilities? If you have a go at that and take some time to pause and then when you're finished we can feed back.

How did you find that? Did you manage to get a table that might look something similar to this? So the House of Commons there, we've got the number of members of 650 and they are voted in by the electorate in each constituency during general election.

And they make new laws, hold the Government to account, debate political issues, scrutinise Government spending and taxes.

Whereas you've got the House of Lords there with more, they've got 800 members and they're called peers.

They're either hereditary Church of England members or life peers.

They're selected for their knowledge and expertise.

Their main responsibility to help shape the new laws and investigate public policy and hold the Government to account.

Hopefully you found that all right, and we're able to move on to the next learning cycle, which is how has the UK's bicameral system developed? So for this, we are again looking at this idea that it develops and evolves over time.

Parliament has not always been the bicameral system that we have today.

So it started 1265 going all the way up to changes that were made in 2009 and it probably will continue to develop and evolve as we move on.

So we are gonna look at some of these key dates in more detail.

Before we make a start, we'll do a quick check for understanding.

So true or false? The UK has always had a bicameral system in Parliament.

That is false.

Why is that false? Because it started as a unicameral system with only one chamber and it's split to bicameral in 1341.

This is what we're gonna go through properly now.

So we'll start from the beginning and go back to 1265.

So Parliament begins and it is unicameral.

Can you remember what Unicameral was from the start? We've got like a unicycle.

How many wheels has it got? So one it has.

So it's began just as one chamber.

Now the major towns and boroughs were invited to send a representative to Parliament, which was the unicameral body, and for the first time.

Come forward to 1341 and it splits and that's when it becomes two chambers.

This was under Edward III and it split into the nobility, which was the Lords.

And the clergy, which is the Bishops.

Lower chamber, included knights and officials from each borough.

Can you see the similarities there to the House of Commons and House of Lords that we have today? Then if we fast forward again, so we're going to 1689 now, which was the Bill of Rights.

What this did was it established Parliament's authority over the monarch and it became constitutional.

So this meant that the monarch no longer gets involved in the day-to-day running the country and the Parliament then has more authority and they can begin to make new laws and rules on how the country would be run.

They then had freedom expression so people could vote for who they wanted to and the Parliaments would occur regularly.

This leads us onto 1911 where we've got the Parliament Act.

So in 1909 it was Conservative-dominated House of Lords and they rejected the Liberal Government's "People's Budget." So two years later, the Parliament Act removed the Lord's ability to veto or reject a bill from becoming law.

So now this is the start of what we were talking about earlier where the House of Commons and House of Lords can ping pong back and forth.

The House of Commons holds that dominating final say.

So this is where that change happened.

They were then able to delay a bill, but they could not reject it.

Eventually in 1949, that was reduced to one year and obviously as it is now, we will see it changes further 'cause that's not what we have in place today.

So 1999 we've got the House of Lords Act.

Now this is the labour Government plan to make the House of Lords more democratic and representative.

So can you think why it might not be representative or democratic? Remember the way we pick the peers, we've got life peers, we have the members of the church and we've got the hereditary peers.

So those hereditary peers would are born into the role and what they're saying is actually that's not very democratic because people aren't getting a say in those people that are making decisions and scrutinising new laws.

So the idea was to reduce the amount of hereditary peers.

At this time, there were over 700 hereditary peers.

The act was passed, which meant only 92 hereditary peers were able to remain and sit, and this is the same as it is in 2024.

So this was the first step for them becoming more representative and that reducing the amount of hereditary peers that were allowed.

And then in 2009, the House of Lords were referred to the Supreme Court.

So this is where their judicial responsibilities were transferred to the newly established Supreme Court.

So previously they were able to make legal and had legal responsibility and that was transferred over.

So this then meant the Supreme Court became the highest court of appeal and it ensured a separation of powers between the legislature and the judiciary.

When was Parliament's authority over the monarch established? Was it in 1265, 1341 or 1689? It was 1689 during the Bill of Rights.

So that's when the monarch became constitutional and we had then had the constitutional monarchy.

Another check for understanding there.

What year was the House of Lords Act? A, 1911? B, 1999? Or C, 2009.

It was 1999.

And in that one that's when they reduced the amount of hereditary peers.

So for this task, can you create a timeline to show how the UK's bicameral system has developed? Including these key dates: so you've got 1265, 1341, 1689, 1911, 1999, 2009.

For each event, can you explain how it's helped the UK's bicameral system to develop? So just thinking how it's helped to shape it over time and become the two chambers that we have today.

If you take some time to pause once you've finished it, we can go through and see how you get on.

How did you find that task? Did you manage to get a timeline? It might have looked similar to this.

You would have starting beginning 1265, obviously the Parliament begins as unicameral.

It splits to become bicameral.

You've got the Bill of Rights there in 1689.

1911 Parliament Act.

House of Lords Act in 1999.

And then 2009 is the House of Lords referred to the Supreme Court.

Then the second part of the task is thinking how it supported the development.

So in 1265 it created the first chamber.

So that was the beginning.

1341, you could have had that it developed become the first establishment of the two chambers.

We've got 1689 where the Parliament's authority was established over the monarch and provided the balance needed in the two chambers.

Moving on to 1911, which reduced the power of the House of Lords, creating a more democratic system.

1999 to developed by modernising the chamber and reduce hereditary peers again to create a more democratic system.

And finally in 2009, the House of Lords referred to the Supreme Court.

This helped the UK's bicameral system to develop as it created a separation of powers.

Hopefully you've got a better understanding now of what the bicameral system is, how it's developed.

So now in this final learning cycle, we're gonna look at the pros and cons of a bicameral system.

So that's that one there.

So to make a start, what do you think might be a good thing about having these two chambers and this bicameral system? Did you think of this idea that more people are there to scrutinise? You know, sometimes if you think of an idea on your own and you think, oh yeah, that's great, but you might not be looking at it holistically or objectively.

So by having somebody else come and go, yeah, but have you thought about that? It can help to avoid more avoid errors.

Then you've got the House of Lords is mainly an appointing chamber.

So actually, although they say that might not be as democratic, it's possible to recruit expertise from various professions.

'Cause the members of Parliament might not necessarily be experts in their field.

So by having the House of Lords, you've got people, you know, if you are debating a bill to be put through on healthcare, you might have professionals that have been involved in medicine there and they can give a real insight into those areas.

The Lords don't get a salary, so it is not as expensive.

And it reflects the history through traditions and demonstrates the involvement over time.

So again, going back to that timeline, it helps to show how we have developed to this point of the bicameral system that we have today.

True or false? The House of Lords can recruit experts in their field.

That is true.

Why? They're an appointed chamber.

So they can select members to ensure that there are experts in the field to scrutinise new laws and policies.

However, if we start to think now of the negatives of the bicameral system, can you think of anything already that's coming to mind of having these two chambers? So only one of them chambers is elected by citizens, so it's not fully representative.

So this idea that actually, the people aren't getting to vote for who is going into the House of Lords.

So we've only got one side, which is representative of the citizens.

A negative of yes, actually.

So we had on the positives the House of Lords don't get a salary, so it could be cheaper.

However, they can claim a daily attendance rate of up to 361 pound a day, that was in April, 2024.

So it's a question mark of is that still quite expensive system because that could be equivalent to other people's salaries of a day.

Then you've got the unelected chamber has around 150 more members than the elected one.

So that the House of Lords has around 800 members and they're not representative of the citizens.

However, the representative chamber only has 650 members.

So actually does that need developing and changing as well? Then the House of Lords can slow down a new law being made.

Obviously we've got that they can't veto a decision, but they can slow the process down.

And if you've got an important law that needs to come through, is that then gonna impact that? Check for understanding now.

So how many chambers are elected by citizens in the UK Parliament? A, none? B, one? Or C, two? It is one.

So Alex says ,There there are two chambers.

The House of Commons is an elected chamber and the House of Lords is an appointed chamber.

This brings us onto our final task for today.

So in 2024, the Labour Government's manifesto set out their long-term ambition to the House of Lords with an alternative elected second chamber.

Write a short speech to argue for or against replacing the House of Lords with a second elected chamber.

Include reasons and examples to support your viewpoint.

So just remember here you can pick to argue for or against.

Take some time now and pause and then come back and we can feed back and go through what you've chosen.

Hopefully, you enjoyed that task and you've chosen your speech on either side.

Now, if you wrote a speech in favour of replacing the House of Lords, you could have said something like this.

I believe the House of Lords should be replaced with an elected second chamber for lots of reasons.

Firstly, it would make the system more democratic.

The current House of Lords is unelected.

An elected chamber would be more directly accountable to the public and is likely to be more representative.

Secondly, whilst the Lords do not receive a salary with so many members 150 more than the House of Commons, the fact they receive a daily allowance can still make them costly.

The bicameral system can also slow down law making.

While this helps make sure laws are properly checked, it can cause delays, especially when decisions need to be made quickly.

So that's covered a few different points there.

You might have had something similar, you might have even thought of a complete different argument.

And as long as you've justified why you think that, then it isn't a problem.

So if you chose to keep the current system and you don't want to replace it, you could have said something like this.

I support keeping the current bicameral system for several reasons.

The bicameral system ensures laws are carefully reviewed by two separate chambers.

This added layer of scrutiny helps enhance the quality of legislation, identifying potential issues and ensuring laws are fair and well considered.

Additionally, the House of Lords brings expert perspective from fields like medicine, the armed forces and education which may not be represented in the House of Commons.

Finally, the House of Lords reflects our history and traditions showing how democracy has evolved over time and is important reminder of how things used to be.

So again, another side there with perfectly good arguments as well.

So as long as you've justified which side you sit on and what you believe.

And that brings us towards the summary, which when we kind of look at here, there is no correct answer of whether the system should stay or the system should change.

But hopefully what it's allowed you to do is find out what the system is, look at the timeline, and come to your own conclusion of what you believe should happen in the future.

It is an interesting one to be a part of because again, right now it is still evolving and changing and it's possible that in another 5 to 10 years time, it could evolve further.

So the summary, a bicameral system refers to a Parliamentary structure with two chambers.

In the UK, these are the House of Commons and House of Lords.

The UK Parliament started as a unicameral system in 1265 and became bicameral in 1341.

The benefits of a bicameral system include greater scrutiny of laws as two chambers review legislation and the ability of the House of Lords to bring in experts from various fields.

However, drawbacks include limited representation as only one chamber is elected and the potential for slower lawmaking due to the involvement of two chambers.

And that draws us to the end there.

Thank you for working with me today and I hope that's helped to introduce you to the bicameral system in the UK.