What is the English representative body callled?

Answer 1

England has a number of representative bodies as a constituent country of the United Kingdom, but unlike Wales, Scotland or Northern Ireland does not have any country-level representative bodies of its own.

England elects 533 of the 650 members of the House of Commons - giving it 416 more Members of Parliament (legislators) than the rest of the UK combined. English MPs tend to dominate the indirectly elected UK Government, especially right-wing governments, with 340 of 363 Government MPs elected at the 2010 election representing English constituencies, as opposed to 193 of the 287 mostly left-wing opposition MPs. These 533 MPs are England's senior most-representatives, and they can serve for up to 5 years before being up for election (all MPs are elected simultaneously when Parliament is dissolved by the Queen, unless a vacancy arises prompting a by-election/special election).

English Peers (Lords) also make up the majority of members of the House of Lords. However, as this body is appointed and not elected, it is generally not considered to be representative.

Below the Union-level, England is divided into nine regions, one of which - Greater London - has its own consultative legislative (the London Assembly) with minor powers.

For most English people however, their main representative bodies are local authorities, who are responsibly mostly for distributing local budgets, managing public services and passing very limited legislation (e.g. litter or traffic regulations) - they are usually called local or city councils, after their directly-elected decision-making body. The council system is uneven across the country; some regions have two tiers of local government (county and district councils) with differing responsibilities (except in 5 of 6 metropolitan areas, where 26 district councils perform the work of county councils without being unitary authorities) whilst some have just one (unitary authorities). There are 28 County Councils, or equivalent bodies, and 237 District Councils across England, plus 55 unitary authorities that perform the duties of both. London has a slightly different system, but effectively has 32 district councils plus the City of London, which is a unique 33rd unit. England thus has a total of 353 representative bodies, almost all of which are directly elected - some areas (around a third of England) also have parish councils which usually have very small geographic areas of responsibility, and provide a limited range of public services. There are over 8,000 of these councils, and they are not usually included in local government numbers or statistics - many seats on them are elected without contest. There are 19,395 county, district and unitary councillors across England.

Answer 2

Parliament