e the House of Lords as the ultimate court of appeal for most purposes from most parts of Britain. This appeal court does not consist of the whole House of Lords, but only some nine Law Lords who have held senior judicial office, who are under the chairmanship of the Lord Chancellor, and who form a quorum of three to five when they hear appeal cases . are some 1,200 members of the House of Lords, but the active daily attendance varies from a handful to a few hundred. Peers receive no salary for their parliamentary work, but are eligible for attendance and travelling expenses should they wish to claim them. The House is presided over by the Lord Chancellor, who is a political appointee of the sitting government, who sits on the Woolsack (or stuffed woollen sofa) as Speaker (Chairman) of the House, and who controls the procedure and meetings of the House . are frequent demands that the unrepresentative, unelected House of Lords should be abolished and replaced by a second democratically elected chamber. The problem consists of which alternative model to adopt, and there is little agreement on this point. Meanwhile, the House of Lords does its job well as an experienced and less partisan corrective to the House of Commons. It retains an important revising, amending and delaying function. This may be used either to block government legislation for a time, or to persuade governments to have a second look at bills. In this sense, it is a safeguard, against over-hasty legislation by the Commons, and fulfils a considerable constitutional role at times when governments may be very powerful. This function is possible because members of the Lords tend to be more independently minded than MPs in the Commons, and do not suffer such rigid party discipline. Indeed, the House has a considerable number of Independents (or crossbenchers) who do not belong to any political party, although there appears to be a nominal Conservative majority in the total membership.to reform the House of Lords were made several times in the course of the 20 th century.Parliament Act of 1911 removed from the House of Lords the power of veto a bill, except one to prolong the lifetime of a parliament. Instead, the Lords could delay a bill by up to two years. The Parliament Act of 1949 further reduced the Lord's delaying powers to one year.Labour government came tp power in 1997 on a manifesto which stated that the House of Lords must be reformed. As an initial, self-contained reform, the right of hereditary peers to sit and vote in the House of Lords will be ended by statute. This will be the first stage in process of reform to make the House of Lords more democratic and representative. The legislative powers of the House of Lords will remain unaltered.
The House of Lords Bill to remove the right of hereditary peers to sit and vote in the house was introduced in the 1998-1999 parliamentary session. The amendment allowed that 75 hereditary peers would retain their seats, and be elected by party groups in proportion to their strengths. Responsibility for further reform was given to the Royal Commission on the Reform of House of Lords. The House of Commons consists of Members of Parliament (MPs) who arc elected by the adult suffrage of the British people, and who are said to represent the citizen in Parliament. In practice, this means that a government can be elected with a minority of the popular vote and is able to carry out its policies (the mandate theory) because it has achieved a majority of the seats in the House of Commons. The Commons has 650 MPs, of whom under 10 per cent are women. There are 523 parliamentary seats for England, 38 for Wales, 72 for Scotland and 17 for Northern Ireland. p align="justify"> Traditional constitutional theory has suggested that Parliament is supposed to control the government or the executive. This might have been true to some degree in the past. But the contemporary reality seems to be that a strong government with a reasonable overall majority in the Commons should be able to carry its policies through Parliament. This is irrespective of what Parliament as a collective body can do to oppose it. It is government that governs in Britain today. Unless there is a small-majority government or rebellion by government MPs, Parliament appears unable to affect that rule in any substantial way. The opposition parties can only oppose in Parliament in the hope of persuading the electorate to dismiss the sitting government at the next general election. Some critics would like to see stronger parliamentary control over the executive, which has been described as an elective dictatorship. But, given the existing electoral system and the present organization of Parliament, there seems little chance of this without a fundamental reform of the whole apparatus.parliamentary electoral system (general...
