Parliament Act 1911

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For the later amendment, see Parliament Act 1949. For the two acts considered together, see Parliament Acts 1911 and 1949.

Parliament Act 1911
Act of Parliament
Commencement
18 August 1911
Other legislation
Amended byParliament Act 1949
Status: Amended
Text of statute as originally enacted
Revised text of statute as amended

The Parliament Act 1911 (

act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. It is constitutionally important and partly governs the relationship between the House of Commons and the House of Lords, the two Houses of Parliament. The Parliament Act 1949 provides that the Parliament Act 1911 and the Parliament Act 1949 are to be construed together "as one" in their effects and that the two acts may be cited together as the Parliament Acts 1911 and 1949.[1]

The act effectively removed the right of the House of Lords to

Septennial Act 1716
) to five.

Following the House of Lords' rejection of the 1909 "

Irish Home Rule Bill. Following a second general election in December, the act was passed with the assent of the monarch, George V, after the House of Lords conceded due to the government's threat that the Conservative
majority in the Lords could be overcome by creating many new peers.

Background

Until the Parliament Act 1911, there was no way to resolve disagreements between the two houses of Parliament except through the creation of additional peers by the monarch.

W. E. Gladstone won the 1868 election on the issue. However, in practice, this gave the Lords a right to demand that such public support be present and to decide the timing of a general election.[2]

It was the prevailing wisdom that the House of Lords could not amend

money bills, since only the House of Commons had the right to decide upon the resources the monarch could call upon.[2] This did not, however, prevent it from rejecting such bills outright.[2] In 1860, with the repeal of the paper duties, all money bills were consolidated into a single budget. This denied the Lords the ability to reject individual components, and the prospect of voting down the entire budget was seemingly unpalatable. It was only in 1909 that this possibility became a reality.[4] Prior to the act, the Lords had had rights equal to those of the Commons over legislation but, by convention, did not utilise its right of veto over financial measures.[5]

There had been an overwhelming Conservative-

Irish Home Rule.[4] Following the election, the Lords relented on the budget (which had been reintroduced by the government),[6] and it passed the Lords on 28 April, a day after the Commons vote.[11]

Passage

Samuel Begg's depiction of the passing of the Parliament Bill in the House of Lords, 1911

The Lords was now faced with the prospect of a Parliament Act, which had considerable support from the Irish Nationalists.

home rule for Ireland was the main contention, with Unionists looking to exempt such a law from the Parliament Act procedure by means of a general exception for "constitutional" or "structural" bills. The Liberals supported an exception for bills relating to the monarchy and Protestant succession, but not home rule.[13] On 10 November, the discussions were declared to have failed.[12]

The government threatened another dissolution if the Parliament Act were not passed, and followed through on their threat when opposition in the Lords did not diminish. The December 1910 general election produced little change from January.[14] The second dissolution of Parliament now seems to have been contrary to the wishes of Edward VII. Edward had died in May 1910 while the crisis was still in progress. His successor, George V, was asked if he would be prepared to create sufficient peers, which he would only do if the matter arose.[6] This would have meant creating over 400 new Liberal peers.[15] The King, however, demanded that the bill would have to be rejected at least once by the Lords before his intervention.[13] Two amendments made by the Lords were rejected by the Commons, and opposition to the bill showed little sign of reducing. This led H. H. Asquith to declare the King's intention to overcome the majority in the House of Lords by creating sufficient new peers.[16] The bill was finally passed in the Lords on 11 August 1911, by 131 votes to 114, a majority of 17.[17] This reflected a large number of abstentions.[18]

Provisions

At the request of prominent Cabinet member

short title as the "Parliament Act 1911".[21]

The bill was also an attempt to place the relationship between the House of Commons and House of Lords on a new footing. As well as the direct issue of money Bills, it set new conventions about how the power the Lords continued to hold would be used.[22] It did not change the composition of the Lords, however.[15]

The Lords would only be able to delay money bills for one month,

taxation; the imposition for the payment of debt or other financial purposes of charges on the Consolidated Fund, or on money provided by Parliament, or the variation or repeal of any such charges; supply; the appropriation, receipt, custody, issue or audit of accounts of public money; and the raising or guarantee of any loan or the repayment thereof. But it did not cover any sort of local taxes or similar measures. Some finance bills have not fallen within this criterion; Consolidated Fund and Appropriation bills have. The Speaker of the House of Commons would have to certify that a bill was a money bill, endorsing it with a Speaker's certificate.[15][24] The Local Government Finance Act 1988, which introduced the Community Charge ("Poll Tax"), was not certified as a money bill and was therefore considered by the Lords.[25] Whilst finance bills are not considered money bills, convention dictates that those parts of a finance bill dealing with taxation or expenditure (which, if in an act alone, would constitute a money bill) are not questioned.[26]

Other

which?] on amendments to ensure that it is the same bill that has been rejected twice.[27] The 1911 act made clear that the life of a parliament could not be extended without the consent of the Lords.[28]

Parliament had been limited to a maximum of seven years under the

Septennial Act 1716, but the Parliament Act 1911 amended the Septennial Act to limit Parliament to five years, reckoned from the first meeting of Parliament after the election. In practice, no election was absolutely forced by that limitation; until the Septennial Act was repealed by the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011, all parliaments were dissolved by the monarch under the royal prerogative on request of the Prime Minister.[29] The five-year maximum duration in the amended Septennial Act referred to the lifetime of the parliament, and not to the interval between general elections. For example, the 2010 general election was held five years and one day after the 2005 general election; the 1992 general election was held on 9 April 1992 and the next general election was not held until 1 May 1997. The reduction in the maximum length of a parliament was seen as a counterbalance to the new powers granted to the Commons.[16] The Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011, in contrast, called for general elections every five years (unless called sooner, as in 2017
), and provided for an earlier dissolution of Parliament only by certain specified legal procedures. The act was repealed in 2022, restoring the previous system of dissolution under the royal prerogative.

Result

The Lords continued to suggest amendments to money bills over which it had no right of veto; and in several instances these were accepted by the Commons. These included the China Indemnity Bill 1925 and the Inshore Fishing Industry Bill 1947.[25] The use of the Lords' now temporary veto remains a powerful check on legislation.[30]

It was used in relation to the

Second World War. These made special exemptions to the requirement to hold a general election every five years.[32]

Legislation passed without the consent of the Lords, under the provisions of the Parliament Act, is still considered

Jackson v Attorney General,[case 1] in which the lawfulness of the Parliament Act 1949 was questioned.[28] The challenge asserted that the Parliament Act 1911 had delegated power from Parliament as a whole to the Commons, and that the Parliament Act 1949 was therefore delegated rather than primary legislation. If this were the case, then the House of Commons could not further increase its own powers through the Parliament Act 1949 without direct permission from the House of Lords. Since it was passed under the 1911 act, the 1949 act had never received the required consent of the Lords.[33] However, the Judicial Committee of the House of Lords found that the 1911 act was not primarily about empowering the Commons, but rather had the purpose of restricting the ability of the Lords to reject legislation, i.e. altering the process by which Parliament as a whole enacts legislation.[33] The 1949 act had therefore been lawfully enacted.[28] This ruling also appears to mean that efforts to abolish the House of Lords (a major constitutional change) by using the act could be successful, although the issue was not directly addressed in the ruling.[34]

Analysis

The Parliament Act 1911 can be seen in the context of the

British constitution: rather than creating a written constitution, Parliament chose instead to legislate through the usual channels in response to the crisis. This was a pragmatic response, which avoided the further problems of codifying unwritten rules and reconstructing the entire government.[35] It is commonly considered a statute of "constitutional importance", which gives it informal priority in Parliament and in the courts with regard to whether later legislation can change it and the process by which this may happen.[36]

It is also mentioned in discussion of constitutional convention. While it replaced conventions regarding the role of the House of Lords, it also relies on several others. Section 1(1) only makes sense if money bills do not arise in the House of Lords, and the provisions in section 2(1) only if proceedings on a public bill are completed in a single session, otherwise they must fail and be put through procedure again.[37]

See also

References

Case law

  1. ^ Jackson v Attorney General, UKHL 56, [2005] 4 All ER 1253.

Citations

  1. UK Statute Law Database
    . Accessed on 2 December 2011.
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h Bradley, Ewing (2007). p. 203.
  3. ^ Magnus 1964, p540
  4. ^ a b c Keir (1938). p. 477.
  5. ^ Barnett (2002). p. 535.
  6. ^ a b c d e f Jackson, Leopold (2001). p. 168.
  7. ^ Havighurst, Alfred F., Britain in Transition: The Twentieth Century, University of Chicago Press, 1985, pp. 89–90: see Internet Archive
  8. ^ McKechnie, The Reform of the House of Lords p. 2
  9. ^ Magnus 1964, p. 534
  10. ^ Ensor (1952). p. 417.
  11. ^ Ensor (1952). p. 420.
  12. ^ a b Ensor (1952). p. 422.
  13. ^ a b c Ensor (1952). p. 423.
  14. ^ Keir (1938). pp. 477–478.
  15. ^ a b c d e Bradley, Ewing (2007). p. 204.
  16. ^ a b Keir (1938). p. 478.
  17. ^ Joint Committee (2002). Section 6.
  18. ^ Jackson, Leopold (2001). p. 169.
  19. ^ a b "Parliament Act 1911: Introduction". legislation.gov.uk. Retrieved 25 September 2011.
  20. ^ Ensor (1952). pp. 419–420.
  21. ^ "Parliament Act 1911: Section 8", legislation.gov.uk, The National Archives, c. 13 (s. 8)
  22. ^ Bradley, Ewing (2007). p. 27.
  23. ^ a b Joint Committee (2002). Section 7.
  24. ^ "Parliament Act 1911: Section 1", legislation.gov.uk, The National Archives, c. 13 (s. 1)
  25. ^ a b Barnett (2002). p. 536.
  26. ^ Barnett (2002). p. 494–495.
  27. ^ Bradley, Ewing (2007). p. 205.
  28. ^ a b c Bradley, Ewing (2007). p. 68.
  29. ^ Bradley, Ewing (2007). pp. 187–188.
  30. ^ Bradley & Ewing (2007), p. 153.
  31. ^ Bradley, Ewing (2007). p. 40.
  32. ^ Bradley, Ewing (2007). p. 57.
  33. ^ a b Barnett, Jago (2011). p. 445.
  34. ^ Bradley, Ewing (2007). p. 74.
  35. ^ Bradley, Ewing (2007). pp. 5–6.
  36. ^ Bradley, Ewing (2007). pp. 15–16.
  37. S2CID 53581372
    .

Bibliography

Further reading

  • Blewett, Neal. "The franchise in the United Kingdom 1885–1918". Past & Present 32 (1965): 27–56. online
  • Somervell, D.C. (1936). The Reign of King George V. pp. 17–28. online free

External links

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