This is a podcast from the archives of the BBC Reith Lectures.

This lecture in the series Government and the Governed, given by Douglas Was, was originally broadcast in 1983.

When Simon de Montfort summoned representatives from the shires and the towns in the year 1265,

his aim was to gain the support of the common people in a bid to counter the growing defection of the nobles from his cause.

His concern was not to share his power, but to retain and strengthen it.

That first Parliament is a far cry from the one we know today,

a Parliament whose prime duty is to curb and control executive power.

But how effective is Parliament today at exercising the functions of supervision and control

which the 17th century reformers allotted to it? The model of a Supreme Assembly, so well

described by Badget and Mill, does not correspond to the

parliaments we've seen for most of the 20th century. The emergence and strengthening of the party

system have given the central government immense authority over the House of Commons.

When I joined the civil service, I was forcibly struck by the difference between the formal respect I was taught to pay to the parliamentary system and the cavalier way in which Whitehall, for the most part, took the House of Commons for granted.

Fortunately, the last few years have seen something of a parliamentary reaction to the growth of executive power.

But party loyalty still acts as a forceful check

on parliamentary enthusiasm.

And this was strikingly demonstrated earlier this year,

when the attempt of a large all-party group of backbenchers

to give Parliament a greater role in the oversight of the nationalised industries

collapsed in the teeth of ministerial opposition.

The whips of the majority party don't hesitate to suppress if they can

an incipient backbench revolt.

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