THE HOUSE OF COMMONS

Date: 2015-10-07; view: 384.

Exercise 5 Read the text. Give Ukrainian equivalents for the words in bold type.

This is the House of Commons, where Members of Parliament take their seats on the green leather benches according to their party and position. From this we get the terms 'front benches', 'back benches' and 'cross benches'.

The two sides, Government and Opposition, sit facing one another. If, for example, you sit in the Public Gallery of the House of Commons, you would see the Government sitting to the left of the table. The Opposition parties would be seated on the right. Government ministers sit on the front bench on the Government side of the Chamber. They are therefore known as Government front-benches. Those MPs who belong to the same party as the Government but who do not hold a Government post are known as Government back benches. The Official Opposition is divided in the same way. The Opposition consists of all those parties which, as a result of the last general election, are not part of the Government. It is made up of the Official Opposition, the largest Opposition party, and a number of smaller parties. The Labour Party has the largest number of MPs in the House of Commons, having won the most seats in the general election of 1997. The party winning most seats in a general election will form a government and the party leader becomes Prime Minister. As the Conservatives won the general elections of 1979, 1983 and 1992, we had a Conservative Government for eighteen years, with the party leader, firstly Mrs Thatcher, and from November 1990 Mr Major, as Prime Minister. There were Labour Governments from 1964- 1970, 1974- 1979 and since their election victory in 1997 Mr Blair has chosen a team of ministers to help him, drawn from members of his own party in both the House of Commons and the House of Lords. Together they make up the Government.