Video script

Narrator:

It starts with a written proposal for a new law. This is presented to Parliament and is called a bill. There are various kinds of bill: Private and Public bills.

Public bills effect all of us. Public bills come in two types: Government bills introduced by the Government or ministers; and Private Members’ Bills introduced by MPs.

These Private Members Bills not always become laws as they don’t have enough support from other MPs. Government Bills succeed in getting through Parliament as the government has a majority in the House of Commons.

When you want to make a bill you have a long way to go before the idea can be called a bill.

Usually the government will go through a consultation stage where they get the opinions of lots of different people on what the law should say. These are experts of the subject as well as ordinary people. They ask pubs and clubs but also ask police and ambulance services to see if it’s a good idea.

Some ideas will be studied by Select Committee or MPs what they call pre-legislation scrutiny.

Sometimes the Government will set up the ideas for a bill in a discussion document called Green Paper. Comments they gather may change the document. Then they might set pout their proposal in a new document called White Paper. That forms the basis for a Bill that gets introduced into Parliament. The Bill begins its journey through the Parliament. The journey can start either in the Commons or the Lords. The Bill must go through the stages in both Houses and must be approved by the Monarch.

Most stages are called reading because in the days before printing the only way to know the bill was to read it.

The First reading stage is to let the Mps know that a Bill is coming for discussion.

The really important stage is the Second reading. The Minister piloting the bill through Parliament will explain its purpose and answer any questions. There will then be the time for debate followed by a vote on whether the bill should pass to the next stage.

The Committee Stage in the Commons is formed for each bill. The Public Bill committee goes off into a huddle in one of the many committee rooms and goes through the bill in details. Then it comes back to the House so Mps can see what changes the committee has made. This is called the Report Stage.

The Third Reading gives the House of Commons the chance to look at the bill with all amendments included and decide whether it should go further.

A clerk will then take the Bill to the House of Lords, so they can study and debate it too. In the Lords the bill goes through the First and Second Readings just as in the Commons.

But the Committee stage is a bit different. The Lords take time to go through the bill in great detail, line by line. Lords work together with everyone taking part and suggesting improvements.

The Report Stage and the Third Reading a few days later give the Lords more opportunities to spot any problems with the meaning or the wording of the bill.

If the Lords have made their amendments, the bill must come back to the House of Commons, so that they can see and approve any changes the Lords have made. The Commons can return the bill and it can go to and fro for a while until they are both happy with it.

When everyone is satisfied the bill must go to the Queen to receive her approval or the Royal Assent. The Crown always approves the bill as the Queen’s role is to approve what Parliament has done as Parliament represents the people.

But sometimes a bill may be very controversial and arouse strong feelings. (Crikey!) For example a bill on fox hunting turned out to be one of the most bitterly contested piece of legislation.

In 2006 when Tony Blair was Prime Minister he suffered his first Commons defeat when MPs including members of his own party voted against a very specific government proposal: the Government wanted to increase the time of the terrorism suspect detainment without charge from 14 days to 90 days and MPs rejected it