I am sorry but only at one time does that apply. At least once every five years the House of Commons is re-elected, and so at that point sovereignty really lies with the people. However, after the general election sovereignty returns to Parliament for the next five years.
Different types of sovereignty exist:
~ Legal Sovereignty: where Supreme Power lies according to the law
~ Political Sovereignty: where Supreme Power lies in reality
~ Pooled Sovereignty (In the EU, a supranational organisation, decisions are made by European Institutions on which all members are represented, but none has a overall say
[Most democratic political systems have both the separation of powers and checks and balances to prevent a single institution becoming omnipotent.]
Parliamentary Sovereignty is regarded as the main principle of the British Constitution. In other words, Parliament holds the supreme authority in the UK.
AV Dicey wrote that Parliament “has under the British Constitution, the right to make or unmake any law whatever; and further, that no person or body is recognised by the law of England as having a right to override or set aside the legislation of Parliament”.
~ Parliament has the ultimate political authority. Most key decisions (but not all, as some military and foreign decisions are in the hands of the PM) must be approved by Parliament.
~ All powers exercised by ministers (except for the prerogative powers of the PM), devolved governments, local governments and other public bodies are granted by parliament and can be removed by Parliament.
~ All new primary legislation must be passed by parliament and secondary legislation made by ministers can be overruled by Parliament.
~ Parliament is not bound by its predecessors (i.e. past Parliaments cannot control the actions of the current Parliament).
~ Parliament cannot bind its successors (i.e. it cannot pass laws that cannot be repealed or amended by future Parliaments).
Since the reductions in the power of the House of Lords in 1911 and 1949, the balance of power has shifted to the House of Commons.
Practical reality dictates that the British Government is the majority party in the House of Commons. Strong party discipline makes this majority reliable and almost guarantees the Government victory in Commons votes – an ‘Elective Dictatorship’. Also backed by the Civil Service ‘machine’ it is easy to argue that sovereignty actually lies with the executive not Parliament. However, a Prime Minister who systematically represses the powers of parliament tend to meet their fate – As occurred in the Supreme Court yesterday.
When Britain signed the Treaty of Rome in 1973 it accepted that the status of European law is superior to British law. This has given British courts the power of judicial review over Acts of Parliament. Therefore courts can scrutinise Acts of Parliament, refer them to the European Court of Justice and even suspend those Acts. However, Parliament is free to withdraw Britain from the EU at any time, so technically sovereignty still lies with Parliament
I’ve posted what follows in another thread but it seems apposite here, too. You are absolutely right that Parliament is sovereign, as Dicey explained. Despite that, the forum is replete with people who asserts that somehow we have lost sovereignty even when you show them that the highest court in the land has clearly repeatedly said we have not.
To my mind, this insistence that Parliament is no longer sovereign raises two questions:
1. If the reduction in a nation state’s ability to act as it chooses as a result of EU membership is NOT a loss of sovereignty, what is it? And
2. Whatever it is, why does it keep on getting described as a loss of sovereignty when that is categorically what it is not?
As to the first, the answer actually is quite simple. Even where the UK is legally entitled (as a matter of UK law) to act in a particular way, the political consequences of doing so frequently make such action unthinkable, even if legally possible. It is an excellent thing to have the strength of a giant but tyrannous to use it as a giant would.
Take this example. In 1919 (IIRC) Parliament voted that the 26 southern counties of Ireland should become independent. Legally it would be open to Parliament now to revoke that law, and any other law recognising Irish independence which followed it, on the application of the straightforward principle that any law that Parliament has made can be unmade. You don’t need me to tell you however that the political consequences of doing so would be catastrophic, so Parliament would never choose to do so even though as a strict matter of UK law it could.
In the context of international agreements, the fact that the United Kingdom enters into a treaty or enters into a convention stipulating that it will act in a particular way does not involve any loss of sovereignty. What it does do is render it politically unacceptable that it should act in a way that contravenes that agreement, even though it is legally open to it to do so as a matter of UK law. So, it is legally open to Parliament to decree that enemy combatants should be executed without trial, but it would be incompatible with the Geneva convention to do so, thus Parliament’s legal freedom to act as it chooses is limited by non-legal factors. Similarly, it is open to the UK Parliament to disapply any law emanating from the EU that it chooses, but again the political (including economic) consequences would be such that the absolute legal freedom enjoyed by Parliament to act as it chooses is in practice constrained by non-legal factors.
So why, given that accession to all international agreements and structures involves accepting political constraits on our freedom to act as Parliament chooses, is the inevitable acceptance of those constraints described in this, but only this, instance as a loss of sovereignty? Why for instance do those advocating that we leave the EU on WTO terms not acknowledge that this would involve a similar curtailment on our freedom to act as we choose? Why is membership of NATO not similarly described?
Well, in my opinion - and here we depart from the realm of law (which is settled, though not always universally understood) and enter the realm of opinion - the answer is that claims of a loss of sovereignty, whilst inaccurate, are more emotive. If your complaint is that abiding by an international treaty prevents us from doing what we want when we want, it doesn’t really set the pulse racing. Of course we can’t do what we want, but the benefits of signing up outweigh the limitations that signing up places on our freedom to act. Complaining about it is not exactly going to get people manning the barricades.
The claim that we has lost our sovereignty goes far far beyond that. It hints at a nation being emasculated. It hints of dark foreign powers that threatened us with invasion in the last century and the centuries before. It represents a challenge to our national identity and our place in the world. It’s bullshit to say we have lost our sovereignty, of course, but it speaks to our very sense of identity.
Is this deliberate? In my view it is. The argument that membership of the EU involves a loss of sovereignty (in terms what sovereignty actually technically means) is advanced either by those who don’t understand what it means, or do understand it and advance the argument dishonestly. My view is that the argument emanated from the latter and has been taken up by the former. The proponents of the argument that we have lost sovereignty are also those who said we could send the £350m we currently send to Brussels every week to the NHS. They are the people who put up a poster during the referendum campaign about immigration containing the headline ‘breaking point’ showing a series of black faces when thre is not a single EU member state that does not have a majority white population. I could go on. The claim we have lost our sovereignty stands alongside the other emotive, dishonest claims that came from the leave side.
