The party system in Parliament

Most divisions take place along party lines. MPs know that they owe their position to their party, so they nearly always vote the way that their party tells them to. The people who make sure that MPs do this are called the Whips. Each of the two major parties has several MPs who perform this role. It is their job to inform all MPs in their party how they should vote. By tradition, if the government loses a vote in Parliament on a very important matter, it has to resign. Therefore, when there is a division on such a matter, MPs are expected to go to the House and vote even if they have not been there during the debate.

The Whips act as intermediaries between the backbenchers and the frontbench of a party. They keep the party leadership informed about backbench opinion. They are powerful people. Because they 'have the ear' of the party leaders, they can have an effect on which backbenchers get promoted to the front bench and which do not. For reasons such as this, 'rebellions' among a group of a party's MPs (in which they vote against their party) are very rare.

Sometimes the major parties allow a 'free vote', when MPs vote according to their own beliefs and not according to party policy. Some quite important decisions, such as the abolition of the death penalty and the decision to allow television cameras into the Commons, have been made in this way.