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Transcript 5 Transcript House of Lords: an audio collection What specifically happened to the Lords over the course of the 20th century? Interviewer: What specifically happened to the Lords over the course of the 20th century? Richard Heffernan: Well, the Lords became subordinate to the Commons, largely through a series of incremental developments and statute laws. There was a huge fight between the elected Common – the partially elected Commons, because of course women didn't get the vote until 1918 in the UK, and they didn't get the vote on equal basis at the age of 21 with men until the general election of 1929. But there was a big fight between the liberal majority in Parliament in the House of Commons and a conservative majority in the House of Lords over a series of measures, particularly culminating in a fight over the 1909 budget, the People's Budget, Lloyd George's budget, which did many things, but two things: it raised the income tax in order to provide some degree of social welfare for people, and to rearm in the face of what was perceived to be a gathering threat from a resurgent Germany. The Lords majority, led by the conservative majority, did not like that and so threw out the budget, and then there was a general election held in 1910 which saw the re-election, on a smaller majority, of the liberal government, which then insisted that the Lords pass its budget. A second election was then held on the question of Lords reform. The liberals were again successful, and the Parliament Act of 1911 established the supremacy of the House of Commons for all time by restricting the power of the House of Lords. The Parliament Act of 1911 established the supremacy of the House of Commons over the House of Lords by establishing that the Lords had a power of delay, but not ultimate veto. That if they opposed a House of Commons bill, they could do so for two years, after which time if the Commons insisted on its law, it would then be enacted into law. And it also ensured that financial measures such as budgets, such as getting and spending, taxing and spending, would not be subject to Lords review. So very much what we established as a result of the Parliament Act of 1911 was an asymmetrical bicameral system – an upper house, the House of Lords, which revised and reviewed the work done by the more powerful chamber, the lower house, the House of Commons. In 1949 a second Parliament Act was passed, which agreed that the Lords would have a power of delay of only one year, reduced from two. So, a very significant change which again empowered the House of Commons over the House of Lords. Another series of changes in the 20th century was that it was established by convention that the prime minister, who had previously come from either the House of Lords or the House of Commons, would come exclusively from the House of Commons. In 1923, the conservatives had to choose a new leader and prime minister following the resignation of Bonar Law. They were faced with the choice of Baldwin and Curzon. They chose Baldwin for many reasons, but one reason was that Baldwin was a member of the House of Commons, representing a constituency elected to Parliament, and Curzon, George Curzon, Lord Curzon, was not an MP, but was a peer. Subsequent to that decision, in 1963, when legislation was passed by Parliament to allow peers to renounce their peerage, when Harold MacMillan left Downing Street he was replaced by Alec Douglas Hume who explicitly had to resign from the House of Lords and be elected to the House of Commons to become prime minister, and now it's inconceivable that a prime minister of Britain would be taken from any other position in Parliament other than being an elected member of the House of Commons. In 1945 the Salisbury Convention was passed, which was an agreement, a convention, that the House of Lords would not reject at second reading any government legislation that had been passed by the House of Commons that reflected a manifesto commitment that had been given by the party which had won the previous election. The Salisbury Convention also ensured that there would be no attempt by the Lords to wreck, by passing critical amendments, government legislation, and that they would pass legislation quickly and simply, and allow the House of Commons to act very quickly on legislation that had been passed by the Parliament, that reflected a manifesto commitment. So for example, the Conservative majority in the House of Lords in 1945 would have objected to the creation of the National Health Service, to the nationalisation of coal and railways and electricity, the establishment of a welfare state, but because these were commitments that Labour had presented in its manifesto in 1945, these were commitments that the House of Lords, decided by the Salisbury Convention, that they would not interfere with, and they would not prevent the House of Commons from passing. In 1958, Parliament found that the House of Lords was very weak, and almost irrelevant in national debates. And Parliament decided to try to reinvigorate the Lords by moving away from the hereditary principle, and creating life peers by the passage of the Life Peerages Act 1958. And this allowed for people to be appointed to Parliament for their lifetime as life peers, but they would not be able to pass the right to be a member of Parliament down to their heirs and successors through the male line, as had been the case in the hereditary nature of the Lords before, and this meant that women entered Parliament in the House of Lords for the first time. And this was a significant change in terms of establishing a slightly more representative chamber, but still a non-democratic, unaccountable part of the legislature, that was a key part of the way in which government operated. Finally, the House of Lords Act 1999 established the principle that the House of Lords would move towards being an appointed chamber by removing the hereditary peers. 550-odd hereditary peers were removed from the House of Lords, a residue 92 were allowed to stay in order to allow the legislation to be passed without the House of Lords proposing a veto of a year. And this was a temporary measure that to this day remains in place. But the overwhelming majority of the 800-odd peers now are appointed for their lifetime by successive prime ministers using the crown prerogatives, and they are a different chamber, because they are now appointed in their own right rather than inherit the right through the hereditary principle, to be a Member of Parliament because of who their father was. .
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