The House of Lords and Contemporary Politics

Book excerpt: Originally published in 1958, the essential purpose of this book was to present a picture of the unreformed House of Lords at work as part of the effective system of government in Britain at the time, going back to the passing of the Parliament Act of 1911. When the Parliament Act of 1911 was passed, both its advocates and its opponents expected that it would soon be replaced by a comprehensive reform both of the powers and of the composition of the House of Lords. The previous forty years had in fact seen innumerable proposals, modest and ambitious, in Parliament and Party Conferences, but all had been abortive. The powers of the House had been left unchanged until 1958, except by the new Parliament Act of 1949, which merely modified the provisions of the old by reducing from three sessions to two the Lords’ power to delay bills passed by the Commons. The Life Peerages Act, discussed in this book, which authorised the creation of life baronies with no numerical limits, was passed in 1958.