The legislative process

Green	Green paper	Contains the general proposal
Winged	White paper	More detailed proposal are set out after the initial consultations
Dragons	Draft	The proposals are drafted into a bill by government lawyers and then published
Fly	First reading	The bill is usually introduced to the House of Commons. This merely notifies the House of the bill and its subject matter. There is no debate.
Slowly	Second reading	This is the main debate on the principles of the bill, followed by a vote.
Clockwise	Committee stage	A committee between 16 and 50 MPs examines the details of the bill clause by clause and suggests amendments.
Round	Report stage	The committee reports back these amendments to the House.
The	Third Reading	This usually coincides with the report stage and marks the final debate on the bill in its amended form in the House of Commons.
Old	Other house	The bill passes to the ‘other house’ (House of Lords) for similar procedures, although in the committee stage in the lords the whole House acts as a committee.
Ruin	Royal assent	The Monarch gives approval to the bill. This is a formality and is not undertaken by the Queen personally.

Making laws: Where do they come from?

Doctrine of Parliamentary Supremacy

As a democratically elected body, parliament is the supreme law making body in the UK. 

Parliament can legislate on any subject matter, meaning there are no limits on what they can make laws about. An example of this is the Parliament Acts 1911 and 1949 which limited the powers of the House of Lords to block a Bill by voting against it. 

Parliament cannot bind their sucessor, meaning each new Parliament should be free to make or change what laws they wish. There are some laws which cannot be repealed, e.g. Act of Settlement in 1700 changed the line of sucession to the throne. It affected who was entitled to be King or Queen so after 300 years this could not be repealed.

Laws made by Parliament cannot be overruled by others, even where the Act of Parliament  may have been made because of incorrect information. See the case of British Railways Board v Pickin.

One limitation to Parliamentary supremacy is the membership of the European Union. The UK joined the European Union in 1973 by passing the European Communities Act 1972, this membership means that European Union law takes priority over English Law. e,g, Merchant Shipping Act 1988 states that 75% of directors and shareholders in certain businesses had to be British , this contradicted EU law and there was changed as discussed in the Factortame case.