The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Politics (219 page)

 
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See
bill
.

 
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Private member's bills, not to be confused with private bills, are public bills introduced to the UK Parliament by back-bench MPs or peers. They may be on any issue as long as the Crown's sole
prerogative
to propose public expenditure is not breached. In the Commons they may be introduced by those successful in a ballot for thirteen allotted days of Parliamentary time held at the start of every parliamentary session, or under the ‘ten minute rule’ at prescribed times during normal parliamentary business. Few of the latter achieve enactment, although success is more generally measured in the extent to which parliamentary and public attention has been drawn to the subject of the bill. Bills introduced by MPs successful in the ballot have a better chance of enactment, although many still fail for lack of parliamentary time. It is crucial that MPs presenting ballot bills do not excite the opposition of the government, so as to ensure assistance from government departments in preparing them, and to guard against fatal parliamentary opposition. They must also lobby support in both Houses, not least so as to ensure the attendance and support of at least a hundred MPs in the Commons second reading.
Private members' bills have frequently aroused controversy, and particularly in the 1960s when they resulted in legislation on contraception, homosexuality, abortion, and divorce. Opponents suggest that MPs do not have an electoral mandate to introduce bills and debates are far too rushed to deal with weighty moral issues. Advocates stress that it is in private members' bills that Parliament, sovereign and acting as a legislature independent of the executive, lives on. More pragmatically, private members' bills may be seen as vehicles to present legislation on matters for which the Government cannot find a place in its own parliamentary timetable, or upon which there is substantial social consensus outside Parliament but problematic dissenting voices in the governing party.
JBr 

 
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The transfer of public assets to the private sector, by sale, or contracting out. After some hesitant and small-scale experiments by the Health Government of 1970–4, UK privatization on a large scale was undertaken by the Thatcher Government after 1979 with the electricity, gas, and telecommunications industries being sold. The advantages of privatization from the government's perspective included: raising large sums of money to offset public borrowing; weakening the power of public sector trade unions; widening share ownership; giving the management of former nationalized industries normal commercial autonomy; and reducing the burden of decision-making imposed on government by public ownership. Critics of the British privatizations argued that they were undertaken so that maximizing competition was sacrificed in the interest of ensuring the greatest possible revenue from the sales and protecting the monopolistic positions of the existing enterprises. The perceived policy success of privatization in Britain led to its imitation in many other countries. In particular, organizations such as the
World Bank
encouraged developing countries to dispose of their loss-making state-owned industries. There is considerable scope for further privatization in France and Italy, but the greatest potential is in the former communist countries. Voucher schemes have been used in countries such as the Czech Republic, but there is increasingly successful political resistance to privatization by state-owned industries in the former Soviet Union.
WG 

 
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The British monarch's advisory group. Once a key part of executive power, it now exists as the formal machinery through which the monarch exercises prerogative powers. Its role primarily is as a dignified part of the constitution, although it retained an efficient role, for instance, in its facilitation of former polytechnics being granted university status in the early 1990s. The privy council is supervised by the Lord President of the Council and, whilst its membership extends to all past and present cabinet ministers and other public figures, it is generally attended by a select few.
JBr 

 
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