Parliament - House of Lords Factsheet

Composition By Party And Gender:
Life Peers
Hereditary
Total
Conservative
204
49
253
Labour
197
4
201
Liberal Democrats
98
4
102
Crossbenchers
143
32
175
Bishops
0
0
26
Other
37
1
39
Total
679
90
796

Functions Of The House Of Lords:
  • Legislation – Bills have to go through various stages in both Houses before they receive Royal Assent to become law. The House of Lords spends most of its time in the chamber (60%) on legislation. It examines and revises bills from the Commons, carefully checking government proposals and making changes through debate on amendments.
  • Checking and challenging the government: Questions enable Members to seek information and raise issues of concern about government policy and activities. Question time takes place in the chamber at the start of business (Monday to Thursday) and lasts for 30 minutes. In addition to this, debates are an opportunity to discuss important public policy issues and draw the government’s attention to concerns. More than 100 debates take place over the parliamentary year on a huge range of subjects.
Key Dates:
  • 1911: Deprived Parliament from having its absolute power to veto bills which he commons want to pass.
  • 1949: Reduced the powers that the House of Lords can delay certain types of legislation for a certain amount of time. This was done by amending the Parliament Act 1911.
  • 1958: The Life Peerage act allowed the right to sit and vote in the House of Lords. And the creation of life peers from the monarch.
  • 1963: The Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom that permitted women peers and all Scottish hereditary peers to sit in the House of Lords, and which allows newly inherited hereditary peerages to be disclaimed.
  • 1999: Got rid of the all but the 92 heredity peers from the upper house as part of New Labour reform.
  • 2014: An Act to make provision for resignation from the House of Lords; and to make provision for the expulsion of Members of the House of Lords in specified circumstances.
Salisbury Government:
  • The Convention ensures that major Government Bills can get through the Lords when the Government of the day has no majority in the Lords. In practice, it means that the Lords does not try to vote down at second or third reading, a Government Bill mentioned in an election manifesto.
at