House of Lords

The House of Lords is the upper chamber of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Like the House of Commons, it meets in the Palace of Westminster in London, England. The institution traces its origins back to the early eleventh century, while the development of a two-house parliamentary system emerged during the fourteenth century.

Unlike the House of Commons, members of the House of Lords are not elected by the public. Most members are appointed for life on political or non-political grounds. The House also includes up to twenty-six bishops and archbishops of the Church of England, known as the Lords Spiritual. Since 2014, members have also been allowed to voluntarily resign or lose membership through expulsion.

For much of its history, hereditary peers formed the majority within the House of Lords. Between 1999 and 2026, hereditary representation was reduced to ninety-two excepted hereditary peers. On 29 April 2026, hereditary membership was completely abolished when the House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Act 2026 came into force.

As the upper house of Parliament, the House of Lords performs many functions similar to those of the House of Commons. It reviews legislation, examines government actions, and debates public policy. Members may introduce legislation and suggest amendments to bills. Although the Lords cannot permanently stop most legislation from becoming law, except in limited cases, they may delay legislation for up to one year. Because of this role, the House of Lords is often described as a “revising chamber,” focusing on legislative detail while asking the House of Commons to reconsider aspects of proposed laws.

Members of the House of Lords may occasionally serve as government ministers, although they are generally appointed only to junior ministerial positions, with the exception of the Leader of the House of Lords. The chamber does not control the term of the prime minister or the government, as only the House of Commons has the authority to force a resignation or trigger a general election. Unlike the Commons, which has a fixed number of seats, the House of Lords has no set membership limit. As of 8 May 2026, the chamber had 752 sitting members. The King’s Speech is traditionally delivered in the House of Lords during the State Opening of Parliament. Until the establishment of the Supreme Court in 2009, the House of Lords also served as the highest court of appeal in the United Kingdom through the Law Lords.

The House of Lords is unique among bicameral legislatures because it is larger than the lower house of Parliament. It is also the second-largest legislative chamber in the world, behind the National People’s Congress of China. The House additionally maintains a religious role, as Church of England Measures must be introduced through the Lords Spiritual. The United Kingdom is one of only three countries that grant permanent legislative seats to religious leaders, alongside Iran and Vatican City.

The modern Parliament of the United Kingdom developed largely from the Parliament of England through the Treaty of Union of 1706 and the Acts of Union in 1707. These acts united the Parliaments of England and Scotland into the Parliament of Great Britain. In effect, the English Parliament continued with the addition of forty-five Members of Parliament and sixteen Scottish peers representing Scotland.

The origins of the House of Lords can be traced to the medieval “Great Council” or Magnum Concilium, which advised the king during the early Middle Ages. This royal council included church leaders, noblemen, and representatives from counties and boroughs. The first English Parliament is often identified as either Simon de Montfort’s Parliament of 1265 or the “Model Parliament” of 1295, both of which included bishops, abbots, earls, barons, and representatives from towns and counties.

Parliament gradually increased in power as the authority of the monarchy rose and declined. During the reign of Edward II, the nobility held great influence while the Crown was comparatively weak. Under Edward III, Parliament clearly divided into two chambers: the House of Commons, representing counties and boroughs, and the House of Lords, composed of bishops, abbots, and nobles. During the fifteenth century, both chambers expanded their authority, although the Lords remained significantly more powerful because of the influence of wealthy landowners and church officials.

The power of the nobility weakened during the Wars of the Roses in the late fifteenth century, when many aristocrats were killed or executed and their estates absorbed by the Crown. Feudalism also declined, making baron-controlled armies obsolete. Henry VII firmly established the supremacy of the monarchy, symbolized by the concept of the “Crown Imperial.” Royal authority continued to strengthen during the Tudor period, reaching its height under Henry VIII.

During the seventeenth century, the House of Lords remained more influential than the Commons, although the lower chamber steadily gained power. Tensions between Parliament and the monarchy eventually erupted into the English Civil War during the 1640s. After the defeat and execution of King Charles I in 1649, England became a Commonwealth under the control of Oliver Cromwell. During this period, the House of Lords was largely powerless and was officially abolished on 19 March 1649 through the Act abolishing the House of Peers, which declared the institution “useless and dangerous to the people of England.” The chamber did not meet again until the restoration of the monarchy in 1660, after which it regained its position as the dominant house of Parliament until the nineteenth century.

Following the Acts of Union 1707, Scottish peers elected sixteen representatives to sit in the House of Lords. Elections for these positions occurred during each Parliament until the Peerage Act 1963 granted all Scottish peers hereditary seats in the Lords. The first election of Scottish representative peers took place on 15 February 1707 at Parliament House in Edinburgh, shortly before the Scottish Parliament was dissolved for the final time.

The nineteenth century brought major reforms to the House of Lords. The chamber, once consisting of around fifty members, expanded greatly through the creation of new peerages by George III and later monarchs. Although this reduced the influence of individual peers, the House itself gradually lost political power while the House of Commons grew stronger.

One of the most significant developments was the Reform Act of 1832. Before the reform, the electoral system of the Commons was highly undemocratic, with strict property requirements and outdated constituency boundaries. Some major cities lacked representation, while tiny boroughs with very few voters elected Members of Parliament. When the Commons passed a Reform Bill in 1831, the Lords rejected it twice. Prime Minister Charles Grey advised King William IV to create around eighty new pro-reform peers to force passage of the legislation. Although the king hesitated, opposition within the Lords eventually collapsed, and the bill passed. While the crisis weakened the political authority of the House of Lords, it did not eliminate it. In 1868, the Lords abolished proxy voting through changes to their standing orders.

The twentieth century saw further reductions in the power of the House of Lords. In 1909, Chancellor David Lloyd George introduced the “People’s Budget,” which proposed taxes targeting wealthy landowners. The Conservative-dominated House of Lords rejected the proposal, leading to a constitutional crisis. After two general elections in 1910 and pressure from Prime Minister H. H. Asquith, the Parliament Act 1911 was passed, severely restricting the Lords’ ability to block legislation. Most bills could only be delayed for a limited period rather than permanently vetoed. The Parliament Act 1949 reduced those delaying powers even further.

The Life Peerages Act 1958 transformed the composition of the House by allowing the creation of unlimited life peerages. This gradually shifted the chamber away from hereditary membership. Throughout much of the twentieth century, the Labour Party advocated either abolishing the House of Lords or removing hereditary peers. In 1968, Harold Wilson’s Labour government attempted reforms that would have allowed hereditary peers to remain in the House without voting rights, but the proposal failed in the House of Commons. Under Labour leader Michael Foot, abolition became official party policy, though Neil Kinnock later supported reform instead of abolition.

By the late twentieth century, the creation of hereditary peerages had nearly ceased except for a few granted during Margaret Thatcher’s government. Conservative supporters of the Lords, including Merlin Hanbury-Tracy, 7th Baron Sudeley, strongly defended the institution against reform efforts through articles and publications supporting its preservation.

In the twenty-first century, controversy surrounding the House of Lords continued. In 2019, a seven-month investigation by Naomi Ellenbogen found that one in five House staff members had experienced bullying or harassment but feared reporting it because of possible retaliation. Several peers, including Anthony Lester, Lord Lester of Herne Hill, faced accusations of sexual harassment or abuse.

In 2020, the government of Prime Minister Boris Johnson considered relocating the House of Lords from London to cities such as York or Birmingham in an effort to reconnect with northern England and the Midlands. The proposal raised questions about how traditional ceremonies such as the King’s Speech would function and was met with widespread criticism from many members of the House of Lords.