page_title: Reform of the House of Lords
section_title: Reform and reform attempts before 1997
hierarchical_section_title: Reform of the House of Lords / History of reform / Reform and reform attempts before 1997
caption_attribution_description: English: Poster in the National Museum of Labour History
context_page_description: Certain governments in the United Kingdom have, for more than a century, attempted to find a way to reform the House of Lords, the upper house of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. This process was started by the Parliament Act 1911 introduced by the then Liberal Government which stated:
  ...whereas it is intended to substitute for the House of Lords as it at present exists a Second Chamber constituted on a popular instead of hereditary basis, but such substitution cannot be immediately brought into operation
  When the Labour Party came to power in the 1997 general election, it had in its manifesto the promise to reform the House of Lords:
  The House of Lords must be reformed. As an initial, self-contained reform, not dependent on further reform in the future, the right of hereditary Peers to sit and vote in the House of Lords will be ended by statute...
  The Blair government subsequently passed the House of Lords Act 1999. On 7 November 2001 the government undertook a public consultation. This helped to create a public debate on the issue of Lords reform, with 1,101 consultation responses and numerous debates in Parliament and the media.
context_section_description: The Parliament Act 1911 removed the ability of the House of Lords to veto money bills; with any other bills, the House of Commons was given powers to overrule the Lords' veto after three parliamentary sessions. In 1917 the Bryce Commission was set up to consider House of Lords reform proposals. The commission's recommendations were rejected by a vote in the House of Lords. The Parliament Act 1949, however, amended the 1911 act reducing the time the Lords could delay a bill from three sessions to two.
  The Salisbury Convention is an unwritten constitutional convention that the Commons, as the elected chamber, has a mandate to pass anything in manifesto without Lords veto. This was necessary as the Conservative Party had an absolute majority in the House of Lords, and it was seen as inappropriate for them to use this to block the Labour government's policies following their landslide victory in 1945. The Life Peerages Act 1958 enabled the appointment of a new class of peers, who could sit and vote in the House of Lords, but the honour and rights would not be hereditary. These were intended to be merit-based, letting in 'the great and the good' from various backgrounds of expertise and experience and ending the exclusively hereditary (and male dominated) composition. Since 1965, almost all peerages appointed have been life peerages. However, the system has come under criticism in 'cash for honours' scandals in which those who donate significant sums to political parties may be able to gain membership of the House of Lords, undermining its credibility as a revising chamber. The Peerage Act 1963 allowed hereditary peers to disclaim their peerage, allowing them to vote and stand for elections to the House of Commons. It also permitted hereditary peers in the Peerage of Scotland and female hereditary peers to sit in the House of Lords without the election of representative peers as had been the procedure in Scotland prior to the Act.
caption: Labour Party campaign poster from 1910 General Election campaign
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