Talk:Parliament Acts 1911 and 1949

message: Outrageous!  The equivalent page is is a featured article (Exzellente Artikel) in the German wikipedia! Look at their lovely diagrams! Something must be done... -- ALoan (Talk) 21:21, 21 Jan 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: German featured atricle

message: this article needs background on why it was needed then - and why it was then never used! Morwen - Talk 17:29, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: There is some good background discussion in the judgments of the High Court   and Court of Appeal  (which I have been reading on the train!). -- ALoan (Talk) 17:56, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: INteresting stuff.  Have added some material from there.  Morwen - Talk 09:50, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: 1949 act

message: This article probably needs to mention the Salisbury convention, and whether the post-1949 acts were pushed through due to violations of this by the Lords.  I believe fox hunting was in Labour's manifesto, dunno about the other stuff.  Morwen - Talk 17:46, 1 Mar 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Salisbury convention

message: The article claims that the PM obtained the permission of the King to create new peers to force the bill through.  However, the E2 writeup on this subject claims that merely the 'threat' of going to the king was enough to force it through. My friend's Law textbook () claims that the Edward VII and George V were reluctant to create new peers.
Does anyone have any reliable sources as to what exactly happened in this conflict? Fragglet 19:23, 2 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  History of the Act 

message: I have removed the text:
:The Countryside Commission and various individuals also brought legal actions on human rights grounds, that the Hunting Act was a disproportionate, unnecessary and illegitimate interference with their rights, and under European Community law, that the Act infringed the rights to free movement of goods, workers and to provide and receive services.  These claims were dismissed by the Administrative Court (The Countryside Alliance and others v. H.M. Attorney General and others [2005] EWHC 1677 (Admin), 29 July 2005), but permission was granted for an appeal to the Court of Appeal, and an appeal is under way.
because it has nothing to do with the Parliament Act. Such information (apart from the reference to the non existent Countryside Commission) should be on the Hunting Act 2004 page. MikeHobday 14:04, 15 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Fair enough.  You also removed the short discussion of the size of the panel in the HL decision - did you think it was not relevant either? -- ALoan (Talk) 22:06, 15 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I thought the section was over long and the detail too much for a relatively short, albeit important incident. Do you disagree? I don't feel strongly. MikeHobday 07:10, 16 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Parliament Act challenge

message: :"The consequences are unclear if the 1949 Act were to be ruled invalid. Certainly, the Hunting Act 2004 and the War Crimes Act 1991 would be then invalid."
Could someone explain why this is the case? If the monarch has given assent to the bill, does it manner that it was created in an inproper manner? If I don't get a reply, I think I'll remove the 'Certainly', and make the statement more uncertain. Dmn € Դմն 13:24, 27 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It certainly does matter.  It is widely accepted that the Queen in Parliament is sovereign - that is, the Queen acting with the consent of both Houses of Parliament.  The first Parliament Act provided a mechanism to pass Acts without the consent of the House of Lords (quite how this is rationalised in constitutional terms is a matter for debate - delegating power or redefining Parliament or whatever - IIRC, there is some interesting discussion of the effect of the Parliament Acts in the speeches delievered in the House of Lords).  If the 1949 Act were held to be invalid, then it would be an easy matter to see that Acts passed in reliance upon its terms would be invalid too.  Quite what it means for a purported Act of Parliament to be invalid is left as an exercise for the reader! -- ALoan (Talk) 13:56, 27 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Invalid?

message: I have a question on the content: 
The Parliament Act 1911:
"imposed a maximum legislative delay of one month for "money bills" (those dealing with taxation) and two years for other types of bill" ; and
The Parliament Act 1949:
"Parliament Act 1949 (12, 13 & 14 Geo. 6. c. 103), which further limited the power of the Lords by reducing the time that they could delay bills, from two years to one<--- Which "bill" does it refer to? the "money bills" or "other types of bills" (as stated in the Parliament Act 1911)?
I would be grateful for your answer. scarlett_tong 15:04, 17 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The 1949 Act decreased the time that the Lords could delay non-money bills from 2 years to 1 year by amending section 2 of the 1911 Act.  The provisions relating to money bills in section 1 were left the same.  See the text of the [amended] Act here - the amendments are in [square brackets]. -- ALoan (Talk) 15:35, 17 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: "other types of bills"

message: I have removed thye following text:
:However, the Liberal government did not follow through with reform of the House of Lords, and the composition of the Lords remained much the same for another 50 years, until life peers were introduced in 1958.  Despite further calls for change, the position remained the same until the Labour government elected in 1997 took the first steps to reform the Lords.  The House of Lords Act 1999 reduced the number of hereditary peers entitled to attend and vote in the Lords; however, as of 2006, there are no directly-elected members of the second chamber.  However, the small number of remaining hereditary peers were elected by a vote of all the hereditary peers in the lead up to the reform (including those who were to lose their seats).
because it doe snot belong as "background to the 1911 Act. Some of it may well belong elsewhere in the article. MikeHobday 08:47, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Removed text

message: If House of Commons enactes a bill to abolish the House of Lords, can House of Commons use the Parliament Acts to bypass Lords' veto ?
Siyac 13:02, 23 Jan 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes. MikeHobday 12:11, 23 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: A question

message: One concern I have about the Parliament Acts is this: although the 1911 Act takes a self-denying ordnance on extending the life of a parliament, it says nothing about entrenching this safeguard.
The limit on the life of a parliament (and government) is set at five years by the Septennial Act 1715 (as amended by the 1911 Act). Section 2(1) of the 1911 Act forbids its use on any Bill intended to extend this limit, But it would be quite possible, following the precedent of the 1949 Act, for a government to stay in power indefinitely first by re-wording s. 2(1) appropriately, leaving it free to set up a dictatorship. In other words, any government since 1911 could, in theory, have passed, say, an Emergency Powers Act of Self-Perpetuation.
Do contributors believe that this point is made strongly enough on the article?
Steve-o 16:48, 23 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I think it's too theoretical to need space in the article. It might make an interesting footnote if you have a reliable third-party source that makes the same supposition. (Anyway, there's bound to be an alternative method laying around to subvert the intent of the law: an Order-in-Council or something equally undemocratic) Yomanganitalk 17:01, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

text: There was some discussion on this very point in the court decisions in the Jackson case following the enactment of the Hunting Act 2004 (follow the links to the decisions of the High Court, Court of Appeal and House of Lords for further edification).  There was some discussion of whether the Act could be construed as including an implied restriction preventing the Act from being used to amend itself to remove that sort of safeguard (although that is precisely what happened with the 1949 Act, together with special tweaking of the "sessions" of Parliament to ensure the provisions of the 1911 Act were met) or to make other wide-ranging changes to the British constitution.  Typically, the courts refused to give a definitive answer to this question, as it was not necessary for the case before them. -- ALoan (Talk) 17:20, 23 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: The Parliament Acts and constitutional change

message: I wanted to explain a minor amendment I made to the first section.  Technically, the Septennial Act never set a maximum time between general elections.  Indeed, the general election of May 1997 was more than five years after the one of April 1992.  What the legislation does is mandate that any Parliament will automatically dissolve the day after the fifth anniversary of the day it was first called.  In practice, each Parliament is called within a few days of being elected and a new election is called immediately on Parliament being dissolved (and the campaign is usually just a few weeks), this sets the maximum time between elections as just over five years (as with the 1992 Parliament), but this is not statutory.  The Triennial Act means that a new Parliament must be called within three years of the old one being dissolved, not the few weeks that is normal these days.  Of course, a government that did not call an election when Parliament was dissolved would not be able to legislate, and its right to levy taxes would lapse within a year. Qlangley (talk)  —Preceding undated comment was added at 18:33, 25 October 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Septennial Act and general elections 

message: I think that this page should be moved to Parliament Acts 1911 and 1949 (currently a redirect) since that is the correct collective title of these two Acts and avoids confusion with the new article Parliament Act (this is a list) and with other "Parliament Acts", such as the Parliament Act 1660. James500 (talk) 13:36, 25 February 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  The title of this page 

message: I'd like to suggest that we merge Parliament Act 1911 and Parliament Act 1949 into Parliament Acts 1911 and 1949. Both the 1911 and 1949 articles have very little content - mostly an infobox, links to the full text, and a link to this excellent article - which could be moved here without too much trouble. The pages are essentially redirects where you have to find and click the link here (also making this page harder to find), when it merging them here would mean we could send people to this page directly. --h2g2bob (talk) 23:22, 11 December 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: didn't seem to be consensus to merge, remove tag, Tom B (talk) 01:13, 28 March 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Suggested merge of 1911 and 1949 articles to here 

message: This article isn't totally correct.  It represents one view.  But there are others, held by people who are acknowledged experts in the field.  The one held by Albert Venn Dicey, in the edition of Introduction to the Study of the Law of the Constitution that was published after the 1911 Act is:
On other words, it is incorrect and inaccurate to say, as this article states, that Parliament delegated anything at all. Uncle G (talk) 04:48, 26 July 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Accuracy 

message: I nominated this article for a featured article review overlooking the usual talk page period because of what I considered to be very significant failings in the article against what are stringent standards. This omission has been challenged, and although I believe that it should be omitted because of the blatant failings of the article, I would like to outline the objections here (as would be proper procedure) so if any editor is able to being the article up to the required standard, they can:
*On 1a): well written. My prose has come under fire before, so I'm not the best judge, but I think the prose could be improved considerably. The are for example, vague terms and sentences like "the Conservative opposition, many of whom were large landowners themselves" and "hundreds of new Liberal peers". Sentences like "One of the reasons for the Irish Parliamentary Party MPs' support for the Parliament Act, and the bitterness of the Unionist resistance, was that the loss of the Lords' veto would make possible Irish Home Rule (i.e. a devolved legislature)." lack clarity and a clear understanding.
*On 1b) Comprehensive. I do not believe that the subjects as covered in enough depth. As two of the most important documents in British parliamentary history, there is a lack of thorough discussion of what was being brought it, how, the audience, critical reception (in the press, for example) and only a thin discussion present of the effects of the act on future events. Whilst this sort of detail would be suitable for a GA (perhaps) it is not comprehensive. The 1949 act is given one paragraph where I believe it is possible to write an entire article on it (which I hopefully will do).
*On 1c) well researched. There are large areas left unreferenced, and the sources used are mixed, with some (eg. "Epolitix.com") not appropriately scholarly.
*On 1d) neutral. Quite possibly. It's hard to form and opinion without a thorough text. For example, the weight given to Labour's plans in the 1997-2010 period may or nay not be justified.
*On 2a) The lead. Not a poor representation, by any means; I don't think it's the main problem with the article. The weight on the 2004/5 events seems disproportionate, however.
*On 2b) Layout. I'm not sure whether this is included under 2b, but I think the use of bullet points in the text could be improved with prose.
*On 2c) citation style. Some of it could be improved, with different date styles and ways of referencing web pages used in the notes, as well as being a mix of 'notes' and 'citations'. Overall they use ref tags rather than inline bracketed forms, but are not in teh thorough style (ISBNs, dates, publisher info, that sort of thing) that are required by FA reviewers, if not by the criteria per se.
These are the main points. I wanted to be thorough because of what I see as the magnitude of the problem. I'd really like this article to be an FA and I appreciate the time editors have put in, it's just not there. It was passed as an FA in looser times, and fells well short of the standards expected of FAs. I think it's currently around a 'B', with a GA nomination possible with some work. I hope to find the time to improve it and that's part of the reason I'm sorry I've had to lay everything out here. I hope very much that these things will not be true of the article in the future. Grandiose (me, talk, contribs)  14:54, 28 July 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Featured article status 

message: The second sentence of this article is exceedingly awkward.  It reads:
"It is provided that they are to be construed as though they were a single Act."
This construction is passive voice (what provides this?) and is unnecessarily wordy besides.
I suggested changing the sentence to:
"The 1949 Act provides that the two laws are to be construed as a single Act."
Apparently my use of the term "law" was objectionable (I was trying to avoid using "Act" three times in the same sentence).  Also, the reverter commented, "being construed as one Act isn't the same thing as being a single Act."  But I fail to see how the modification from "construed as though they were a single Act" to "construed as a single Act" takes anything out of the sentence.  
Hopefully someone with more knowledge of the subject matter can fix this issue.  It's a glaring problem for a supposedly featured article's opening paragraph. AgnosticAphid talk 18:11, 16 September 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  second sentence exceedingly awkward 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: Ref name "AB2R" is defined as   and as , and is called in two other places with no indication of which version is intended. This error has existed since the 9th of October 2006. The editor who introduced the error has not edited Wikipedia for over 6 months. DuncanHill (talk) 09:38, 7 June 2019 (UTC)
replies: text: OK, after close perusal of too many diffs to mention, I have been able to correct the error. We should all be ashamed that such an error should have persisted for so long. DuncanHill (talk) 09:44, 7 June 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Duff references for over 12 years.