Given Bedd Gelert’s comment on my post on the 1958 Life Peerages Act, I thought it may be helpful to identify the principal legislation that has shaped the House of Lords over the course of the past century. There are five key measures.
The Parliament Act 1911 limited the ability of the House of Lords to veto measures passed by the House of Commons. It provided, in effect, that the House could delay a non-money Bill for two years and that a money Bill (certified as such by the Speaker) would pass into law a month after it had left the Commons.
There are some other points of interest about the Act. It was passed by the Lords only after it became known that the King was prepared to create enough new Liberal peers to create a majority for the Bill if it was rejected by the House. The provisions of the Act apply only to Bills that are introduced in the House of Commons; they do not apply to Bills that start life in the Lords (or to secondary legislation). Money Bills, which must start in the Commons, are certified as such only if their provisions deal exclusively with supply (money). Very few Bills qualify for the certification. The Act also reduced the maximum life of a Parliament from seven years to five years.
The Parliament Act 1949 reduced the delaying power of the Lords from two years to one year. The Act itself was passed under the provisions of the 1911 Act (leading some jurists to argue that measures passed under the provisions of the 1949 Act have the character of secondary rather than primary legislation). Since then, only four Acts have been enacted under the provisions of the 1949 Act: the War Crimes Act 1991, the European Parliamentary Elections Act 1999, the Sexual Offences (Amendment) Act 2000, and the Hunting Act 2004.
The Life Peerages Act 1958, as discussed in the earlier post, made provision for life peerages. It also provided that such peerages could be conferred on women, thus enabling women to enter the House for the first time.
The Peerages Act 1963 allowed hereditary peers to renounce their titles. The provisions were immediately made use of by Tony Benn to renounce his title as Viscount Stansgate, thus enabling him to stand for election to the Commons. The provisions were also utilised by Earl Home (Sir Alec Douglas-Home) and Viscount Hailsham (Quintin Hogg), though both later returned as life peers. The provisions now have little relevance, since most hereditary peers no longer sit in the House (and those that do have allowed their names to be put forward for membership). The Act also enabled hereditary peeresses to sit in the House.
The House of Lords Act 1999 excluded hereditary peers from membership of the House, other than 92 retained under an amendment agreed to the Bill: of these 75 are elected by the hereditary peers in the respective parties (the allocation distributed by party strength at the time), 15 are elected by the whole House to be available to serve the House if needed in different positions, and 2 serve ex officio. If a hereditary peer dies, a by-election is held to replace him or her. The effect of the Act to change the House from a chamber with over 1200 members, mostly hereditary, to one of under 700, mostly life peers. The membership was 666 at the start of the new 1999-2000 session, though it has subsequently increased to approximately 750.
As a result of these measures, the House of Lords has been transformed from a co-equal, exclusively male, primarily hereditary and not particularly over-worked chamber – with a clear Conservative preponderance – to one that at the start of the 21st Century has a diverse membership of predominantly life peers, accepts the primacy of the elected chamber, is not dominated by any one party, and works hard fulfilling functions that complement the work of the first chamber. Though some of the form and trappings of the old House remain, the reality is that the second chamber is very different to that which existed for much of the last century.
Hmm.. So the £ 50 grand [£ 8 million in today’s dosh] that Maundy Gregory marked up for a peerage wasn’t such bad value, if it was a ‘hereditary’ rather than just a ‘lifetime’ affair.
In fact, if I were one of the hereditaries unceremoniously booted out [surely ‘seduced by the silver tongue of Baroness Jay’ ?] I would be tempted to ask the Liberal Party for some of my forefathers’ money back…
What are your hopes for the next 100 years?
This is a brazen attempt to lure you into discussing my earlier question on reforms for the HoL. And I’m getting a bit desperate on how to get rid of our government (legally)…
Thanks, Bedd, for reference to Maundy Gregory, not a name I’d come across before – my parents sheltered me too much.
Very clear and very informative–thanks.
lady tizzy – of more real excitement and interest to you are the activities of Lloyd George himself. He wasn’t known as the Welsh Goat for nothing, although it didn’t make it to the papers in those days.
Of course, I’m sure that the papers have to go truffling around the worlds of the media and motorsport to titillate their readers these days – I’m sure such activity could never emanate from the Houses Of Parliament these days as they are so much busier…
Although some interests, for example, traditional hunting and shooting, seem to be slightly over represented…
The politics of 1911 had Landed Gentry and Business represented in the Lords and the source of revenue needed by the Commons to fund welfare reform. The Lords would not pay taxes to fund such reform but they were persuaded to pay what we now know as National Insurance. To this effect and over time, legal upper limits were placed on what could be extracted as NI contributions by the Treasury.
As a result of the act, one might have expected the constitutional position to be one that denied the Lords any ability to debate NI money bills. Not so. The opposite in fact occurred and bills concerning money per se could not pass through the House but NI ones could. This was only allowed because NI was not deemed a tax.
Whichever way one looks at this, it comes down to sour grapes on behalf of the Commons. It denied the nation from a constitutional viewpoint any check on spending by the Commons. This gave the Commons fiscal powers that had in earlier times been the prerogative of the Monarchy.
The politics of today is one where Commons parties with their snouts firmly in the Treasuries trough are finding it difficult to raise taxes, impossible to make unfunded tax cuts and only able to offer the electorate higher welfare spending.
So we arrive at the National Insurance Contributions Bill 2007 debated at second reading in the Commons during December 2007 and at second reading in the House of Lords during late April 2008:
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld200708/ldhansrd/text/80430-0011.htm
specifically, debate by Baroness Noakes [30 Apr 2008: Column 307].
It seems that the government is about to extract an extra 1.5 billion pounds of monies from middle-income earners. Further, a raid on State Second Pension or S2P [1] is about to take place that is breathtaking in its stealth.
But most damming of all is the fact that this bill intends to eliminate the upper earnings limit or UEL for NI contribution in a direct assault on previous agreements that took place post 1911. It would mean that there would be no limit to the extraction of NI ‘taxes’ from middle to high-income earners.
This is not the fault of the government but that of a failing House of Commons whose parties have operated as a cartel in this case to secure higher welfare funding by keeping it quiet. What’s more the NI ‘fund’ is in surplus with the extra monies going to fund general taxation costs such as military campaigns.
If the electorate in their wisdom feel they need to elect governments and opposition parties that act without the constraint of political scruples then our constitution should act to protect us from them. It should also free the House of Lords from the Sword of Damocles[2] to counter House of Commons largesse.
[1]: http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/pbr2007/pbrn1.pdf
[2]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damocles