Part of Oral Answers to Questions — House of Commons – in the House of Commons at 12:00 am on 25 November 1991.
Mr John MacGregor
Chair, Privileges Committee, Lord President of the Council and Leader of the House Lords (Privy Council Office), Lord President of the Council and Leader of the House of Commons (Privy Council Office), Chair, Privileges Committee
12:00,
25 November 1991
The hon. Gentleman can express his views about the organisation of the sittings of the House, and whether they should include Fridays, to the Committee. As I have stressed before to him, when I think I carried the vast Majority of the House with me, to suggest that we are talking about a four-day week for Members of Parliament, even if we do not meet on some Fridays, is utterly ridiculous. My point was that hon. Members increasingly have Constituency engagements to undertake on Fridays that they cannot carry out at weekends. I was trying to take that into account. The hon. Gentleman does the House no service by suggesting that this has anything to do with a four-day week.
The House of Commons is one of the houses of parliament. Here, elected MPs (elected by the "commons", i.e. the people) debate. In modern times, nearly all power resides in this house. In the commons are 650 MPs, as well as a speaker and three deputy speakers.
The term "majority" is used in two ways in Parliament. Firstly a Government cannot operate effectively unless it can command a majority in the House of Commons - a majority means winning more than 50% of the votes in a division. Should a Government fail to hold the confidence of the House, it has to hold a General Election. Secondly the term can also be used in an election, where it refers to the margin which the candidate with the most votes has over the candidate coming second. To win a seat a candidate need only have a majority of 1.
In a general election, each Constituency chooses an MP to represent them. MPs have a responsibility to represnt the views of the Constituency in the House of Commons. There are 650 Constituencies, and thus 650 MPs. A citizen of a Constituency is known as a Constituent
