Accountability and Quasi-Government: The Role of Parliamentary Questions
While much concern has been expressed about the accountability of quasi‐government there has been little empirical research on the subject. Similarly, the literature lacks a thorough assessment of the contribution of parliamentary questions to holding governmental institutions accountable. In this paper part of this gap in the literature is closed by measuring the extent to which a wide range of executive non‐departmental public bodies (ENDPBs) are held accountable by the use of questions tabled in the House of Commons. Questions asked to ministers in the Foreign Office and the Department for Education and Employment about ENDPBs they sponsor are assessed. A similar exercise is conducted on the agencies in these two departments and the results compared. In general, the partisan political atmosphere of the Commons, the apathy of many MPs, the size of the ENDPB sector and the rules governing questions mean that their contribution to the accountability of these bodies is relatively small. In particular, many...
Questions in Parliament
Questions in Parliament. On Thursday, July 4, in the House of Commons, Major Chapple asked the Prime Minister whether his attention has been called to a system of farming-out of nurses in the London Hospital, under which nurses are taken from their training in the wards at the end of their second year, are paid 136. per week, and sent out to nurse as trained nurses in private cases at ?2 2s. per week, the hospital profiting by this means to the extent of over ?6,000 per year before the war; and whether he intends to introduce legislation to protect nurses and patients from this system ? Mr. Walsh said' : "I have been asked by my right hon. friend to reply to this question. The arrangements made by the London Hospital with their
Evaluation of buckling load and dynamic performance of steel shear wall retrofitted with strips made of shape memory alloy
One of the most imperfections of the steel shear wall is out of plane displacements that cause severe damage in both structural and non-structural elements. In this paper, the effects of shape-memory alloys on steel shear walls are investigated. First, a numerical analysis using the finite element method in ABAQUS software has been carried out according to an experimental test. The results of the numerical analysis have been verified with experimental results. Next, shape-memory alloy fibers have been added vertically and horizontally to various parts of the steel shear wall. The results show that retrofitting with the shape-memory alloy reduces the out-of-plane displacement of the steel shear wall under both cyclic and seismic loadings. Besides, the buckling load in the steel shear wall increases when it is retrofitted with the shape-memory alloy. Also, the total out-of-plane movement (accumulated absolute displacements) of the steel shear wall and non-structural damage are controlled by the characteristic of a shape-memory alloy material called “super-elastic”.