The Big Question: Why does the Queen open Parliament and deliver the Governments speech?
Why are we asking this now? Today, one of the oldest, best known and most colourful British ceremonies will be re-enacted, when the Queen makes her annual journey to Parliament for the event known as the Queen’s Speech – or, to give it its proper title, the State Opening of Parliament. This happens every year, in October or November, and immediately after each general election. The constitutional fiction behind it is that Parliament dissolves when the parliamentary year is over, and no one but the monarch can summon it to start another year. Neither the Commons nor the Lords can conduct any business until the Queen has read her speech.
