How Does a Bill Become a Law?

A bill is a proposed law. It is introduced into a legislature, debated in general terms, examined line by line in committee, debated again, then usually sent to a second chamber which repeats the process.

If both chambers agree on identical text, the bill goes for formal approval by a head of state or equivalent, at which point it becomes an act and enters the statute book. Some provisions come into force immediately and others on a later date set by ministers.

Most successful legislation is proposed by the government of the day, drawn from manifesto commitments, departmental priorities or responses to events. Government bills get priority for parliamentary time, which is the scarcest resource in any legislature.

Individual members can also introduce bills. These rarely pass without government support, though they can be effective at forcing debate on a subject or building pressure over several attempts. Some significant social reforms have arrived this way.

The typical sequence, whatever the local names, does the following work:

• •First reading, a formal introduction with no debate
• •Second reading, debate on the general principle
• •Committee stage, detailed line by line examination and amendments
• •Report stage, where the whole chamber considers the committee's changes
• •Third reading, a final debate and vote on the amended text

Bicameral systems exist to add a second look. The revising chamber often has more time, more subject expertise or less party pressure, and it catches drafting errors and unintended consequences that a rushed first chamber misses.

When the two chambers disagree, systems provide a resolution mechanism. This might be repeated exchanges of amendments, a joint conference committee, or a rule allowing the elected chamber to prevail after a delay. The delay itself is often the point, since it forces reconsideration.

The great majority of introduced bills never become law. Parliamentary time runs out, governments change priorities, opposition proves too strong, or a session ends and unfinished bills fall.

This is not necessarily a failure of the system. A process designed to be slow will kill a lot of proposals, including good ones, and that trade off is deliberate. The alternative, a legislature that passes everything quickly, has obvious risks of its own.

Most law that affects daily life is not passed by a legislature at all. It is made by ministers and agencies under powers granted by an earlier act, and it is variously called delegated legislation, secondary legislation or regulation.

The volume is large. A typical year may produce a few dozen acts and many hundreds or thousands of statutory instruments. The justification is that legislatures cannot handle technical detail at that scale, and the concern is that scrutiny of these instruments is far weaker than for primary legislation, which makes the drafting of the original delegating power unusually important.

The last step differs sharply between systems. In the United Kingdom a bill becomes law when it receives royal assent. In theory the monarch could refuse, but the last time this happened was in 1708, when Queen Anne withheld assent from a bill about the Scottish militia. Since then, assent has been treated as a formality governed by convention, and the real decisions are made in Parliament. The monarch acts on ministerial advice, so refusing a bill that Parliament had passed would now provoke a constitutional crisis.

In the United States the President's signature is a genuine decision point. The President can sign a bill, or veto it and return it to Congress with objections. Congress can override a veto only with a two-thirds vote in both the House and the Senate, which is difficult to achieve. If the President does nothing for ten days, not counting Sundays, the bill becomes law without a signature while Congress is sitting. If Congress has adjourned in that time, the bill fails, which is known as a pocket veto.

In the United States Senate, one extra obstacle shapes many bills. Senate rules traditionally allow extended debate, so a determined minority can delay a vote by continuing to talk or simply by threatening to do so. This tactic is called a filibuster. To end debate and force a vote, the Senate must pass a motion called cloture, which for most legislation requires three-fifths of all senators, normally sixty votes, rather than the simple majority needed to pass the bill itself.

Because neither party often holds sixty seats, the practical effect is that most significant legislation needs some support from both sides, or it stalls. There are exceptions. Certain budget measures can pass by simple majority through a process called reconciliation, and the Senate has changed its rules so that nominations for judges and officials need only a majority to end debate. The filibuster shows that the formal stages of a bill tell only part of the story, since chamber rules about debate can matter as much as the votes themselves.

The rule that lets an elected chamber overrule an unelected one in the United Kingdom came out of a political crisis. In 1909 the chancellor, David Lloyd George, introduced the People's Budget, which raised taxes on high incomes and land to pay for old age pensions and naval spending. The House of Lords, dominated by Conservative landowners, rejected it, breaking a long-standing convention that the Lords did not block finance bills. Two general elections followed in 1910, and the government made clear that the king was prepared to create enough new Liberal peers to outvote the opposition if necessary.

Faced with that threat, the Lords accepted the Parliament Act 1911, which limited their own powers. Money bills could now be delayed for only a month, and for most other public bills the Lords' veto became a delay of about two years. The Parliament Act 1949 cut that delay to roughly one year, and was itself passed using the 1911 procedure without the Lords' consent. The Acts are rarely used, because the threat usually produces compromise, but they did force through the Hunting Act 2004, and the courts later confirmed that legislation passed this way is valid.

In the House of Commons, ordinary backbench MPs compete for the chance to pass laws of their own through a lottery. At the start of each parliamentary session the names of 20 members are drawn in a ballot, and their bills get priority on a set number of sitting Fridays, usually thirteen. Those near the top of the draw have the best chance of a full debate. Other routes exist, such as the ten minute rule, which lets an MP make a short speech introducing a bill, but these rarely become law and are mostly used to draw attention to an issue.

Even a successful ballot bill faces hurdles. Opponents can talk it out on a Friday afternoon, because ending the debate requires at least 100 MPs to vote for a closure motion, and many members spend Fridays in their constituencies. Yet this route has produced landmark reforms, especially on moral questions where governments preferred to stay officially neutral and allow free votes. The Murder (Abolition of Death Penalty) Act 1965 began as a private member's bill introduced by Sydney Silverman, and the Abortion Act 1967 as one introduced by David Steel, which the government helped by providing extra time for debate.

A bill becomes a law by passing through debate, detailed committee scrutiny and approval in usually two chambers before receiving formal assent, and the deliberate slowness of the process is a feature intended to catch flawed legislation.