1 Introduction
Background
to the inquiry
1. The Prime Minister is the chief of the executive
and the holder of the highest political officein the United Kingdom.To
complement our long-running inquiry into codifying, or not codifying,
the United Kingdom's constitution, we set out to explore whether
there is adequate public understanding andclarity about the Prime
Minister's role and powers, and whether the checks and balances
on those powers are sufficient.
2. This was an unusually long-running inquiry.We
decided to conduct an inquiry into the role and powers of the
Prime Minister on 20 January 2011 and issued a call for written
evidence the next day.The terms of reference are appended to this
report.We issued a further call for written evidence on 6 December
2012, including among the additional topics in which we were interested
the impact of transferring to a statutory footing the prerogative
power to dissolve Parliament.We held an evidence session purely
on this aspect of the inquiry on 20 June 2013, and published a
report, also purely on this aspect of the inquiry, on 25 July
2013.[1]As well as the
evidence session on the prerogative power to dissolve Parliament,
we held four oral evidence sessions on the broader questions raised
by the inquiry and received 28 pieces of written evidence.We are
grateful to all who contributed to the inquiry.
1 The role and powers of the Prime Minister: the impact of the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011 on Government,
Fourth Report of Session 2013-14, HC 440 Back
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