House of Lords

This article was last updated in February 2012.

The House of Lords is the upper chamber of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Its current membership consists of

• 630 "life peers", who had been appointed by current and previous administrations, including eminent professionals and members of previous governments;
• 26 "lords spiritual", who are current bishops and archbishops of the Church of England: and,
• 90 "elected hereditary peers", who have been elected by and from members who had been granted or inherited hereditary peerages granted by monarchs down the ages. (The exclusion of hereditary peers is among the legislative proposals for the reform of the House of Lords that are currently under consideration.)
• the Earl Marshal, the Duke of Norfolk
• the acting Lord Great Chamberlain, the Marquess of Cholmondeley

The principal functions of the House of Lords are to initiate, scrutinise and amend legislation. It has no general power of veto, but it attaches importance to its ability to return proposed legislation to the House of Commons for further consideration

History

Strictly speaking, the House of Lords originated in the fourteenth century when the Commons took to meeting separately. For most practical purposes, however, it is identical to the Great Council, the Norman continuation of the Anglo-Saxon Witan or Witenagemot.

In the Middle Ages the Lords Spiritual were the majority. This changed in the reign of Henry VIII, when the dissolution of the monasteries removed abbots, priors and masters of orders, leaving the bishops outnumbered by the Lords Temporal. When new bishoprics were created in the nineteenth century to cope with shifting populations, an act was passed limiting the number of Church of England bishops in the House to 26: the Archbishops of Canterbury and York, the Bishops of London, Durham and Winchester, and the 21 other diocesan bishops in office for longest, excluding the Bishop of Sodor and Man, whose diocese is outside the United Kingdom proper.