Instruct: Given a question, retrieve passages that can help answer the question.
Query: How many members are there of the UK House of Lords?
While the House of Commons has a defined 650-seat membership, the number of members in the House of Lords is not fixed. There are currently 790 sitting Lords. The House of Lords is the only upper house of any bicameral parliament to be larger than its lower house.[8]
At the EU level, prior to the 2009 European Parliament elections, there were a small number of members of the European Parliament who were also members of the House of Lords. However, it is now European law that a member of the European Parliament (MEP) may not be a member of the legislature of a member state. This, with regard to the United Kingdom, therefore applies to the House of Commons and the House of Lords, as the constituent bodies forming that member state's legislature. As it is impossible to disclaim a life peerage, it has been ruled that peers (who sit as members of the House of Lords) must take a "leave of absence" from the Lords in order to be an MEP; this is also the procedure for when a peer is the UK's European Commissioner, which has in recent times usually been the case.
On 24 June 1995, UKIP gained its first member of the House of Lords, The Lord Grantley, who had joined the party in 1993 from the Conservatives and had recently succeeded to his father's titles. However, with the coming House of Lords Act 1999, he decided not to stand for election as a continuing member, and so left the House in November 1999. Earlier in 1999, UKIP had gained a second peer in the House of Lords, The Earl of Bradford, but he, too, left the House in November 1999 because of the House of Lords Act. The Lord Pearson of Rannoch and The Lord Willoughby de Broke both defected to UKIP in 2007, giving the party its first representation in the House of Lords since the departure of Lord Grantley and Lord Bradford. The Lord Pearson of Rannoch went on to serve as party leader from November 2009 to September 2010. On 18 September 2012, The Lord Stevens of Ludgate joined UKIP, having sat as an Independent Conservative since his expulsion from the Conservatives in 2004. In Autumn 2018, Lord Willoughby de Broke left UKIP, reducing the party's representation in the upper house back down to two. Lord Stevens also left the party, in December 2018, leaving former leader Lord Pearson as UKIP's sole peer.
Lord Barker was appointed as the Chairman of the Board of Directors in October 2017. In August 2015, Gregory Barker was made a life Peer and, since October 2015, has been a member of the House of Lords of the UK Parliament. Lord Barker served as member of the British House of Commons from 2001 to 2015. From 2010 to 2014, Lord Barker served as UK Minister of State for Energy & Climate Change, becoming the longest serving British energy minister for a generation.
In a poll released in December 2015, Lord Ashcroft asked 20,000 people in the UK to place themselves on a scale of 0–100 of how likely they were vote to remain or leave. A total of 47% placed themselves in the "leave" end of the scale, 38% in the "remain" end and 14% were completely undecided.In early 2016, Lord Ashcroft polled individuals in each of the other European Union member states to gauge opinion on whether they thought the United Kingdom should leave the EU, whether they thought the UK should remain a member or whether they believed it did not matter. All member states said that they wanted the UK to remain a member, except Cyprus, the Czech Republic and Slovenia, with Lithuania being most in favour, at 78% voting for the UK to remain in the EU.
Howe was opposition spokesman for Health and Social Services in the House of Lords between 1997 and 2010. Howe was unique in being the only member of the Conservative Party to shadow the same portfolio throughout the thirteen years of opposition. Since the House of Lords Act 1999, hereditary peers do not have the automatic right to sit in the Lords. However the Act provides for 92 hereditary peers to remain, and representatives from each faction in the House are elected under Standing Orders of the House. At the election in 1999, Howe was the sixth most popular Conservative peer (Conservatives are by far the largest party grouping of hereditary peers). Apart from his frontbench responsibilities, his special interests include penal affairs and agriculture. He is a member of the all-party groups on penal affairs, abuse investigations, pharmaceuticals, adoption, mental health and epilepsy.
A commencement order for transitional provisions was made in July 2010 by Mark Harper, (Parliamentary Secretary, Minister for Political and Constitutional Reform, in the Cabinet Office). Sections in Part 3 of the Act, for amending the Parliamentary Standards Act 2009, were brought into force in April or May 2010. As a result of the provisions concerning the tax status of members of either the House of Commons or the House of Lords (ss. 41 and 42 in Part 4), some of the lords temporal lost their seats in the upper house. The Act requires members of the House of Lords to be domiciled in the United Kingdom for tax purposes. Five exited the House of Lords in order to retain non-dom status for UK tax purposes,
namely:
Lord Grenfell first entered the House of Lords on his father's death in 1976. He was a member of the UK Delegation to Parliamentary Assemblies of the Council of Europe and Western European Union from 1997 to 1999. He lost his seat in Parliament after the House of Lords Act 1999 removed the automatic right of hereditary peers to sit in that body. However, in 2000 he was created a life peer as Baron Grenfell of Kilvey, of Kilvey in the County of Swansea, which allowed him to return to the House of Lords. He was Principal Deputy Chairman of Committees from 2002 to 2008, a Deputy Speaker from 2002 to 2008, Chairman of the Select Committee on the European Union from 2002 to 2008 and a member of the Procedure Committee from 2003 to 2007. Lord Grenfell took formal voluntary retirement from the House of Lords on 31 March 2014, under a procedure laid down in a Resolution of the House of 27 June 2011. In addition, on 1 October 2014 he became the first peer to retire permanently under the statutory provisions of the House of Lords Reform Act 2014. He retired to Paris.
Since 1909—and for important votes before then—"Hansard" has listed how members have voted in divisions. Furthermore, the proceedings and debates in committee are also published in separate volumes. For many years the House of Commons "Hansard" did not formally acknowledge the existence of parties in the House, except obliquely, with Members' references to other Members of the same party as "hon. Friends", but in 2003 this changed and members' party affiliations are now identified. The "Hansard" of the House of Lords operates entirely independently of its Commons counterpart, but with similar terms of reference. It covers parliamentary business in the House of Lords Chamber itself, as well as the debates in the Moses Room, known as Grand Committee. Parliamentary Written Answers and Statements are also printed. Emma Crewe notes that "Editors view reporters in general as a hive of revolution and anti-establishment attitudes, while they perceive themselves as calm and uncomplaining". The Internet, with the help of volunteers, has made the UK "Hansard" more accessible. The UK "Hansard" is currently being digitised to a high-level format for on-line publication. It is possible to review and search the UK "Hansard" from 1803, with the exception of Standing Committees.
The Lord Speaker is the presiding officer of the House of Lords. The commonly used "Speaker of the House of Lords" is not correct. The presiding officer of the House of Lords was until recently the Lord Chancellor, who was also a member of the government (a cabinet member) and the head of the judicial branch. The Lord Chancellor did not have the same authority to discipline members of the Lords that the speaker of the Commons has in that house. The Lord Speaker is elected by the members of the House of Lords and is expected to be politically impartial.
Natalie Evans, Baroness Evans of Bowes Park– Leader of the House of Lords and Lord Privy Seal (Conservative; Cabinet member) Frederick Curzon, 7th Earl Howe– Minister of State for Defence and Deputy Leader of the House of Lords (Conservative; unpaid) John Taylor, Lord Taylor of Holbeach– Lords Chief Whip and Captain of the Honourable Corps of Gentlemen at Arms Patrick Stopford, 9th Earl of Courtown– Government Deputy Chief Whip and Captain of the Queen's Bodyguard of the Yeomen of the Guard
On 1 March, the House of Lords, debating in Committee, made an amendment to protect EU nationals living in the UK regardless of the rights of UK nationals continuing to live in member states of the EU. The amendment was voted for by 358 with 256 against. Eight other major amendments were rejected. The amendment adds to the bill a requirement that the government will introduce proposals within three months of the withdrawal notification to ensure EU citizens in the UK have the same residence rights after Brexit as before. Published statistics show many more EU nationals live in the UK (the greater numbers coming from Poland and the Republic of Ireland) than UK nationals living in other EU member states (the greater numbers in Spain and the Republic of Ireland). After the Committee debate, the bill was formally reported to the House with the amendment.
Factortame I, where the High Court and then the House of Lords both made a reference to the European Court of Justice on the legality of the Merchant Shipping Act 1988's ("MSA") requirement for UK fishing vessels to be 75% UK owned. After the ECJ confirmed the incompatibility of the Act with EU law, Factortame saw the House of Lords confirm the supremacy of EU law over national law in the areas where the EU has competence because of the UK acceding to the EU treaties.[2] Factortame II, where the ECJ held that the provisions of the MSA were required to be disapplied by the UK courts if they contravened EU law. Factortame III, where the ECJ held that a member state could be liable for damages in an action by the European Commission for breach of EU law. Factortame IV, where the House of Lords ruled that damages could be awarded against a member state like the UK for losses suffered by private parties under the Francovich v Italy[3] principle, that wrongs by violation of a public body generate a private law claim from anybody who has suffered a directly connected loss (also known as the doctrine of state liability). Factortame V, holding that claims after 1996 were statute-barred, since claims against a member state were like other claims in tort under the Limitation Act 1980.
Eight types of bird have become extinct due to human interference since Lord Howe Island was discovered, including the Lord Howe pigeon ("Columba vitiensis godmanae"), the Lord Howe parakeet ("Cyanoramphus subflavescens"), the Lord Howe gerygone ("Gerygone insularis"), the Lord Howe fantail ("Rhipidura fuliginosa cervina"), the Lord Howe thrush ("Turdus poliocephalus vinitinctus"), the robust white-eye ("Zosterops strenuus") and the Lord Howe starling ("Aplonis fusca hulliana"). The extinction of so many native birds is similar to extinctions on several other islands, such as the Mascarenes.
Members of Fountain Court Chambers have appeared in many landmark cases and high-profile commercial disputes, such as the well-known House of Lords’ case of "Caparo v Dickman", in which all counsel on both sides were from Fountain Court. Several members of the Chambers were also prominent figures in acting for the Bank of England in the celebrated Three Rivers litigation, a case which led to several appeals to the House of Lords. Numerous members of Fountain Court Chambers were involved in the Lloyds litigation which dominated the work of the Commercial Court in the 1990s, and produced two significant appeals in the House of Lords. More recently, many members have been involved in Bank Charges litigation (a test case which ended up in the House of Lords), and, most recently, in the PPI litigation. Other recent substantial cases in which members of Fountain Court appeared include "Springwell Navigation v JP Morgan Chase" and "Stone & Rolls Ltd v Moore Stephens" (House of Lords). Additionally, several members of Chambers have appeared (for three different parties, including intervening professional bodies) before a seven-member panel of the Supreme Court in R (on the application of Prudential PLC) v HMRC and a nine-member panel of the Supreme Court in "Bank Mellat v Her Majesty's Treasury (No. 2)".
It had been thought, for many years, that the House of Lords voted by division. But research has demonstrated that the vote in the case was taken by a collective voice vote, and thus without knowing how many Lords voted, their names, or how they each voted.
Frederick Richard Penn Curzon, 7th Earl Howe, (born 29 January 1951) is a Conservative front bench member of the House of Lords. He is Minister of State for Defence and Deputy Leader of the House of Lords.
In February 2017, Lord Lamont publicly urged Prime Minister Theresa May, that in the event of the UK House of Lords attempting to "obstruct" the Brexit enabling legislation already passed in the House of Commons, 'She should immediately call a General Election in which she makes it clear first that we are definitely leaving the European Union and second that the House of Lords would be abolished.'
Regarding the prospect of the abolition of the House of Lords, Lamont (formerly Chancellor of the Exchequer and presently himself a member of the Lords) commented that 'I would be sorry to see it go. In many ways it does a fine job. But if it over-reaches itself, its days will deservedly be numbered.'
Although the doctrine of separation of power plays a role in the United Kingdom's constitutional doctrine, the UK constitution is often described as having "a weak separation of powers" A. V. Dicey, despite its constitution being the one to which Montesquieu originally referred. For example, in the United Kingdom, the executive forms a subset of the legislature, as did—to a lesser extent—the judiciary until the establishment of the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom. The Prime Minister, the Chief Executive, sits as a member of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, either as a peer in the House of Lords or as an elected member of the House of Commons (by convention, and as a result of the supremacy of the Lower House, the Prime Minister now sits in the House of Commons) and can effectively be removed from office by a simple majority vote. Furthermore, while the courts in the United Kingdom are amongst the most independent in the world, the Law Lords, who were the final arbiters of judicial disputes in the UK sat simultaneously in the House of Lords, the upper house of the legislature, although this arrangement ceased in 2009 when the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom came into existence. Furthermore, because of the existence of Parliamentary sovereignty, while the theory of separation of powers may be studied there, a system such as that of the UK is more accurately described as a "fusion of powers".
The main functions of the Lord Speaker are to take the chair in debates held in the chamber of the House of Lords, to advise the House of Lords on procedural rules, to take formal responsibility for security in the areas of the Palace of Westminster occupied by the House of Lords and its members, to speak for the House of Lords on ceremonial occasions, and to represent the House of Lords as its ambassador in the UK and overseas.
Tricornes survive today as part of the traditional dress of the Chelsea Pensioners (UK) and the Old Guard Fife and Drum Corps of the United States Army, and the distinctive hat of the Spanish Guardia Civil, called a "tricornio" in Spanish, originates from the tricorne. In the UK, a black feathered tricorne hat is part of the ceremonial dress of most Lord Mayors; at the annual Lord Mayor's Show in November, the newly elected Lord Mayor of the City of London can usually be seen enthusiastically waving his tricorne at the crowds. In the British Parliament until recently, both the Lord Chancellor and the Speaker of the House of Commons used to carry plain black tricornes as part of their formal dress each day when on duty; only on rare occasions was it worn (on top of the full bottomed wig): by the Lord Chancellor when acting as a Lord Commissioner of the Sovereign, and by the Speaker when rebuking a Member at the Bar of the House.
The UK Parliament website lists the following "Non-affiliated" members of the House of Lords, excluding those on leave of absence or suspended:
There are other members listed with an "Independent" designation within the House of Lords:
In addition to the 18 members elected, the Leader (Neil Kinnock), Deputy Leader (Roy Hattersley), Labour Chief Whip (Derek Foster), Labour Leader in the House of Lords (Cledwyn Hughes), Chief Whip in the House of Lords (Thomas Ponsonby), House of Lords Shadow Cabinet representative (Joe Dean) and Chairman of the Parliamentary Labour Party (Stanley Orme) were automatically members.
Elections to the Labour Party's Shadow Cabinet (more formally, its "Parliamentary Committee") occurred in November 1960. In addition to the 12 members elected, the Leader (Hugh Gaitskell), Deputy Leader (George Brown), Labour Chief Whip (Herbert Bowden), Labour Leader in the House of Lords (A. V. Alexander), and Labour Chief Whip in the House of Lords (Lord Faringdon) were automatically members.
Although there is no casual access to the interior of the Palace, there are several ways to gain admittance. UK residents may obtain tickets from an MP for a place in the viewing ("strangers") gallery of the House of Commons, or from a Lord for a seat in the gallery of the House of Lords. It is also possible for both UK residents and overseas visitors to queue for admission to them at any time of the day or night when either House is in session, but capacity is limited and there is no guarantee of admission. Either House may exclude "strangers" if it desires to sit in private. Members of the public can also queue for a seat in a committee session, where admission is free and places cannot be booked, or they may visit the Parliamentary Archives for research purposes. Booking an appointment is necessary in the latter case, along with a proof of identity.
Free guided tours of the Palace are held throughout the parliamentary session for UK residents, who can apply through their MP or a member of the House of Lords. The tours last about 75 minutes and include the state rooms, the chambers of the two Houses and Westminster Hall. Paid-for tours are available to both UK and overseas visitors during the summer recess. UK residents may also tour the Elizabeth Tower, by applying through their local MP; overseas visitors and small children are not allowed.
Architectural historian Dan Cruickshank selected the Palace as one of his five choices for the 2006 BBC television documentary series "Britain's Best Buildings".