The House of Lords Act 1999 is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom that was given Royal Assent on November 11, 1999. The Act reformed the House of Lords, one of the chambers of Parliament. For centuries, the House of Lords had included several hundred members who inherited their seats (hereditary peers); the Act removed such a right. However, as part of a compromise, the Act did permit ninety-two hereditary peers to remain in the House on an interim basis. Another ten were created life peers to enable them to remain in the House.
The Act decreased the membership of the House from 1,330 in October 1999 to 669 in March 2000. As another result of the Act, the majority of the Lords were now life peers, whose numbers had been gradually increasing since the Life Peerages Act 1958. As of November 2019, there were 793 members of the House of Lords, of whom 26 were senior Church of England bishops, whose representation in the House is governed by the Bishoprics Act 1878.
Prior to the 16th century, the Lords was the more powerful of the two Houses of Parliament. A series of developments, including such moments of crisis as the English Civil War, gradually transferred the political control of England, first from the Crown to the House of Lords, and then to the House of Commons. The rising wealth of the Commons eventually allowed it to wage two civil wars, dethrone two kings, and gradually reduce the power of the Lords. Prior to the House of Lords 1999, the power of the Lords had been diminished by the Parliament Acts 1911 and 1949 which stripped the Lords of the ability to block, or veto, adoption of most bills; at most it could delay bills for one year. Furthermore, the Commons have absolute power when it comes to money bills.
After 18 years of Conservative government, the Labour Party led by Tony Blair won a landslide victory at the 1997 general election, inflicting the biggest defeat for the Conservatives since 1832. The Labour Party had for years endorsed abolition of the House of Lords in its election manifesto, though since 1992 this has changed to a policy of reforming the House instead of such a drastic constitutional change.
During the 20th century, Liberal and Labour governments proposed many bills that were opposed by the House of Lords, which had been dominated by Conservatives since the 1890s, leading to some delay and, where proposed before elections, their dropping from legislative agenda. In the first year of the Blair government, the Lords passed back Government bills 38 times. The rejection considered the most contentious was that of the European Elections Bill, against which the Lords voted five times. Blair stated that the Tories were using the hereditary peers to "frustrate" and "overturn the will of the democratically elected House of Commons." Here, Blair found an opportunity to implement one of Labour's campaign promises, reforming the Lords.
On November 24, 1998, in opening the second session of Parliament, the Queen delivered her annual Speech from the Throne; the speech was written for her by the ruling party and outlines that party's legislative agenda for the forthcoming year. In it, she suggested that her government (i.e., the ruling Labour Party) would pursue a reform of the House of Lords. These remarks were followed by shouts of "Hear! Hear!" from supportive Labour Members of Parliament, and by similar shouts of "Shame! Shame!" from Conservative peers; such outbursts were unprecedented, for the Queen's Speech is with few exceptions heard by a silent Parliament.
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