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 to the Crown, which is a collective privilege of the House and is exercised by the Speaker on its behalf. Further privileges include the right (rarely exercised) to debate in secret; the right to control internal proceedings; and the right to pronounce upon legal disqualifications for membership and to declare a seat vacant on such grounds.

The privileges of the House of Lords are (i) freedom from civil arrest for themselves and their servants for a period of 40 days before and after a meeting of Parliament, (2) freedom of speech, (3) freedom of access to the Sovereign for each peer individually, (4) the right to commit for contempt, (5) the right to try and be tried by their fellow peers for treason or felony, and (6) the right to exclude disqualified persons from taking part in the proceedings of the House. These privileges are not formally claimed by the Speaker as in the House of Commons; they exist independently without grant.

The party system has existed in one form or another since the seventeenth century, and has now become an essential element in the working of the constitution. The present system is based upon the fact that there are three effective political parties in the United Kingdom: Conservative, Labour and Liberal, each of which lays rival policies before the electorate. Whenever there is a General Election, these parties (and any minor parties that may be in existence at the time) may all put up candidates for election in each of the constituencies into which the United Kingdom is divided for the purpose. Independent candidates may also stand. As a rule, the electorate has a choice of three candidates (Conservative, Labour and Liberal); and by its choice it indicates which of the opposing policies it would like to see put into effect.

The party which wins the majority of seats (although not necessarily the majority of votes) at a General Election forms the Government. By tradition, the leader of the majority party is appointed as Prime Minister by the Sovereign, usually on the formal advice of the retiring Prime Minister; and its most outstanding members in the House of Lords and the House of Commons receive ministerial appointments on the advice of the Prime Minister. The larger of the two minority parties becomes the official Opposition with its own leader and its own council of discussion or unofficial Cabinet; while the members of any other parties or any Independents who have been elected may support the Government or the Opposition according to their party’s or their own view of the policy being debated at any given time.

In the General Election which took place on the 25th October 1951, 82-6 per cent of the electorate voted, compared with 70 per cent in 1945 and 84 per cent in 1950. The number of votes cast for the principal parties is shown in Table 1.