Introduction:
Abolishing the House of Lords sounds like a daring and profoundly modern proposition, but it has longstanding historical precedent. The House of Lords was actually abolished once before – in 1649.
On 19 March 1649 it was declared that “The House of Lords is useless and dangerous to the people of England”. This was not some firebrand contribution from an MP. Rather, it was the text on the face of an Act of Parliament: An Act for Abolishing the House of Peers.
When we consider the history of our second chamber, then, we see that calls for reform, abolition, and adjustment to political and social pressures has defined and shaped the House of Lords for at least half a millennium.
Origins:
The origin of the House of Lords is really the origin of the legislative branch itself. Medieval monarchs, faced with the task of managing and commanding increasingly large and complex kingdoms, relied on nobles and clergymen to guide them in decision making; act as their representatives; and bring consensus to their method of government.
The Great Councils consulted by Anglo-Saxon and Norman rulers thus began to evolve into something more akin to the parliamentary system we recognise today. In 1257, Edward I summoned representatives from each shire in a county to meetings; they were split into groups depending on their societal rank and status. Soon after, in 1295, the Model Parliament was called, attended by ecclesiastical, noble, and lay members of the population – representing the Shires and Boroughs.
This Model Parliament established the broad structure of the UK Parliament as we know it today, although Parliament was only summoned when required by the monarch in irregular sittings. By the 1330s and 1340s, under the rule of King Edward III, knights and burgesses began to sit and deliberate together, apart from the Lords Spiritual and Temporal. This was partly for practical reasons: knights and burgesses had more in common with each other than with peers, and their discussions focused more on taxation and local grievances.
The Parliament of 1341 is thought of as the first instance where there is clear evidence that the Commons sat, deliberated, and petitioned separately from the Lords, as attested in the Chronicon Galfridi le Baker. Later, 14th-century rolls of Parliament begin to record petitions and decisions from each House separately. The same model exists today, and the proceedings, decisions and events which occur in each House are reflected separately in current procedure and reporting.
By the sixteenth century, this model of Parliament was well established, and the House of Lords, consisting of Lords Spiritual and Temporal, was regarded as the superior branch. The House of Commons, however, had an undeniable and growing influence in deliberating on matters such as taxation.
Abolition and resurrection:
The fortune of the House of Lords was to suffer a significant decline in the following century, with the Chamber ultimately being abolished in 1649. This followed several moves to sideline the House, including the expulsion of the Lords Spiritual in 1642. However, its demise proved short lived, and the Lords was swiftly reinstated as part of the constitutional re-establishment after the Interregnum, in 1660. Soon after, the Glorious Revolution affirmed the balance of power between Parliament and the Crown, and the Bill of Rights – introduced in the Commons and affirmed in the House of Lords – established that sovereignty resided in the form of the “King-in-Parliament”. By 1690, both the Lords and the Commons were an integral part of the constitutional settlement in what was to shortly become the United Kingdom, and the House of Lords was widely hailed as being a key part of Europe’s pre-eminent political structure.
Throughout the following century, the tripartite model of government attracted the attention, and the praise, of many political thinkers and writers. The age-old problem of balancing the competing demands of the people, the aristocracy and the monarch were, many felt, successfully resolved between the Sovereign, the Lords, and the Commons. John Locke described the ideal legislature as an assembly with a hereditary House of Lords and an elected House of Commons: that a combination of propertied aristocracy and representatives of the people would best serve the public good.
Montesquieu, in The Spirit of the Laws, lauded Britain’s separation of powers and noted that Parliament’s division into two houses provided a critical check: that the nobility and the people could each restrain the excesses of the other. He observed that England’s legislature “was itself divided into the House of Lords and the House of Commons, each checking the other,” with the monarch’s executive power balancing both.
Similarly, the English jurist William Blackstone wrote in 1765 that “In the legislature, the people are a check upon the nobility, and the nobility a check upon the people; by the mutual privilege of rejecting what the other has resolved”, with the King as a further check on both. This theory held that liberty was preserved by the Crown, Lords, and Commons “mutually keeping each other from exceeding their proper limits”, as Blackstone put it. The House of Lords, as the embodiment of the aristocratic element, was thus seen by many early modern theorists as an indispensable part of the constitutional order – a stabilising force against both royal tyranny and populist excess.
Victorian reforms:
However, echoing two centuries before, the fortune of the House of Lords was soon to change.
By the 1800s, Great Britain and Ireland’s societies and politics were changing, and the role of the House of Lords came under increasing scrutiny. The Lords remained dominated by the landed aristocracy, and many government ministers, including some Prime Ministers were drawn from its ranks.
However, the elected House of Commons was gaining democratic legitimacy as pressure mounted to expand the franchise. This culminated in the Great Reform Act of 1832, a watershed moment that also tested the power of the Lords. When the Whig government under the leadership of Earl Grey passed a reforming bill in the Commons to broaden voting rights, the House of Lords initially rejected it, despite a clear public appetite for change. This provoked a national reaction: riots erupted in cities like Nottingham, Derby, and Bristol upon news that the Lords threw out the Reform Bill.
Eventually the crisis was resolved only by the King’s intervention. King William IV, at Grey’s urging, agreed to create enough new pro-reform peers to swamp the House of Lords if the bill failed again. Facing the threat of this “mass creation” of peers, the opposition in the Lords backed down. In June 1832, many Tory Lords abstained and allowed the Reform Act to pass rather than see their chamber flooded with new peers.
The Reform Act 1832 was a turning point. It substantially increased the electorate, roughly doubling the electoral roll, and began the transfer of political authority toward the Commons. Thereafter, the House of Lords generally yielded to the elected chamber on major bills, though it remained influential as a revising chamber. Throughout the Victorian era, the Lords continued to exercise a formal right to veto legislation, but it did so often at the cost of public criticism.
Internally, the composition of the Lords also evolved. The Bishopric of Manchester Act 1847 and related laws gradually reduced the representation of Anglican bishops. Meanwhile, the judicial role of the Lords was enhanced: under the Appellate Jurisdiction Act 1876, Parliament created a cadre of salaried judges called the Law Lords, formally Lords of Appeal in Ordinary, who sat in the House of Lords to hear final appeals. This gave the Upper House a dual identity by the late nineteenth century – it was not only a legislature but also functioned as the Supreme Court does today – a role it would keep until 2009.
Whilst the Upper Chamber by this stage generally accepted that it was expected to defer to the Commons, further disagreement with the Lower Chamber would land it in trouble, culminating in the reforms made by the Liberal Government at the beginning of the twentieth century.
Twentieth century reforms:
The constitutional crisis of 1909–1911 arose when a Liberal government, under H.H. Asquith and David Lloyd George, introduced the “People’s Budget” – a finance bill with new taxes on land and high incomes to fund social welfare. The Lords rejected the budget in 1909, and in response, the Government resolved to curtail the Lords’ powers.
After two general elections in 1910 on the issue, the Parliament Act 1911 was passed. The Act stripped the House of Lords of its absolute veto over legislation, and provided that any money bill passed by the Commons would become law after one month, with or without Lords approval. For other public bills, the Lords’ rejection could only delay enactment – if the Commons passed the same bill in three successive sessions over at least two years, it would become law regardless of Lords opposition. In effect, the Lords were left with a suspensive veto. This was a historic curtailment of the Lords’ authority, establishing the elected Commons’ legislative primacy once and for all. A further Parliament Act in 1949 would reduce the Lords’ delaying power on non-money bills from two years to one year. It is worth remembering that, with all these reforms, their passage and enactment was contingent on the agreement of both the House of Commons, and the House of Lords.
These changes worked to reduce the power of the Lords, but they also altered the constitutional role of the House in the UK’s governance. The Chamber, from 1911, was one of revision, amendment, scrutiny, and consultation. And it is this role that the House of Lords continues to play today, shaped by the passage of subsequent Acts, such as the Life Peerages Act 1958 and the Peerage Act 1963, which allowed women to sit in the House and hereditary peers to renounce their titles.
Recent reforms:
The most substantial recent reform to our second chamber was the House of Lords Act 1999, which removed the automatic right of most hereditary peers to sit and vote in the House. Out of roughly 750 hereditary nobles, only 92 were allowed to remain on an interim basis. Those 92 consisted of a group elected internally by the hereditary peers themselves, plus two hereditary office-holders – the Earl Marshal and Lord Great Chamberlain – who continue by custom. All other hereditary peers lost their seats in November 1999.
In the twenty-first century, the House of Lords has continued to adapt. The Constitutional Reform Act 2005 removed the judicial functions of the Lords by establishing a new UK Supreme Court in 2009 to take over the role of final court of appeal, and the Law Lords ceased to sit as legislators and instead became the first Justices of the Supreme Court, symbolically and physically separating the judicial branch from Parliament.
The Hereditary Peers Bill currently going through its final stages of parliamentary scrutiny will likely remove the right of the remaining hereditary peers to sit and vote in the House. In the grand scheme of proposals to reform the Lords, this is an incremental step, but the threat of total abolition is not far from the lips of many of those politicians who champion it.
The future of the House of Lords:
The House of Lords has undeniably played an essential role in the UK’s governance. Its roots are deeply embedded in the constitutional and legislative evolution of the nation. The tri-partite framework of which the House became an integral part, while subject to reform and transformation, was, and remains for many, an embodiment of the balance and stability required of a successful nation.
Across this long and storied history, the key characteristic of the House of Lords has been its adaptability, and its ability to respond to public opinion and political realities, moving from a largely hereditary body to a more meritocratic and consultative chamber. Its current form, primarily composed of life peers, continues to perform the crucial functions of scrutiny and revision with great expertise, and to great effect. Governments across time, whether Labour or Conservative, have recognised the value of the Lords as a crucial check against poor legislation.
The House of Lords is not without its flaws today, but its influence on UK governance remains positive. Incremental changes have allowed it to remain a relevant, dynamic institution, responsive to the evolving needs of the nation. When reforms to the House are gradual and reflective of the broader constitutional landscape, they have, and will continue, to foster an effective and balanced political system.
Oliver Bramley.
Oliver Bramley graduated from Cambridge in 2023, and now works in the House of Lords. He formerly worked as a Senior Communications Adviser in the House of Commons. He has been published in several academic journals on elements of modern history and macroeconomics.
The Constitution Society is committed to the promotion of informed debate and is politically impartial. Any views expressed in this article are the personal views of the author and not those of The Constitution Society.