The Government of England/the United Kingdom

March 2, 2013 Vol. 1 Issue 1

The British Government

The leader of the government is the Prime Minister. David Cameron has been the Prime Minister since May 2010. After elections, the leader of the majority party, or majority coalition, usually becomes the prime minister. The Prime Minister appoints ministers and Secretaries of State, who are over individual government departments such as finance, international affairs, internal affairs, legal system, education, and transport/environment. The Secretaries of State make up the Cabinet. The Prime Minister picks around 100 people from Parliament to help him run the country. The government is different from the parliament and separate from the majority party.

Queen Elizabeth II
Constitutional Monarch of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland

Parliament
The Parliament is made up of two houses. The House of Commons consists of Members of Parliament that are elected by the people in a General Election every 5 years. The MPs in the House of Commons represent 659 constituencies in the United Kingdom. There are three major political parties in the House of Commons the Labour, Conservative, and Liberal Democrat parties. The House of Commons is where policies are debated and laws are made. The second house in Parliament is the House of Lords. The House of Lords is made up of people who have inherited family titles or been appointed titles because of their outstanding work in various fields. There are 675 members in this house. The job of the House of Lords is to double check new laws and make sure they are fair. **England is the only country in the United Kingdom that does not have its own separate parliament. Englands issues are decided by the UK government.

ngland has been a monarchy since its

very beginning. There was only one 11-year span in the 1600s that England did not have a king or queen. Queen Elizabeth II is the United Kingdom's Head of State today. She is also known as the head of the Commonwealth, a multinational body that was created after the dissolution of the British Empire. Queen Elizabeth II is a constitutional monarch. This means that even though she is the head of the state, the country is actually run by the government, which is led by the Prime Minister.(The English Bill of Rights Act of 1689 greatly reduced the power of the sovereign and created Parliaments place at the heart of the English constitution.) As Head of State the Queen goes on official State visits. Queen Elizabeth ll is also Head of the Armed Forces and Head of the Church of England. The Queen appoints archbishops and bishops with the advice of the Prime Minister. Another duty of the Queen is to read over and sign documents and reports from the government and Commonwealth officials.

Sources
Barrow, M. (2011). Project Britain: Your guide to British life, culture and customs. Retrieved from http://projectbritain.com/