Parliament Act 1911

The Parliament Act 1911 (1 & 2 Geo. 5. c. 13) is an 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.

The act effectively removed the right of the House of Lords to veto money bills completely, and replaced its right of veto over other public bills with the ability to delay them for a maximum of two years (the Parliament Act 1949 reduced this to one). It also reduced the maximum term of a parliament from seven years (as set by the Septennial Act 1716) to five.

Following the House of Lords' rejection of the 1909 People's Budget, the House of Commons sought to establish its formal dominance over the House of Lords, which had broken convention in opposing the bill. The budget was eventually passed by the Lords, after the Commons' democratic mandate was confirmed by holding a general election in January 1910. The following Parliament Act, which looked to prevent a recurrence of the budget problems, was also widely opposed in the House of Lords, and cross-party discussion failed, particularly because of the proposed act's applicability to the passage of an 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 Liberal 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. Queen Anne had created twelve Tory peers to vote through the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713. The Reform Act 1832 had been passed when the House of Lords dropped their opposition to it: King William IV had threatened to create eighty new peers by request of the prime minister, Earl Grey. 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.

There had been an overwhelming Conservative-Liberal Unionist majority in the Lords since the Liberal split in 1886. for example, Augustine Birrell introduced the Education Bill 1906, which was intended to address nonconformist grievances arising from the Education Act 1902, but it was amended by the Lords to such an extent that it effectively became a different bill, whereupon the Commons dropped it. This led to a resolution in the House of Commons on 26 June 1907, put forward by Liberal Prime Minister Henry Campbell-Bannerman, declaring that the Lords' power ought to be curtailed. In 1909, hoping to force an election, the Lords rejected the financial bill based on the government budget (the "People's Budget") put forward by David Lloyd George, This action, according to the Commons, was "a breach of the constitution and a usurpation of the rights of the Commons".

Passage

thumb|right|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. The discussions considered a wide range of proposals, with initial agreement on finance bills and on a joint sitting of the Commons and the Lords as a means by which to enforce Commons superiority in controversial areas; the number of members of the Lords present would be limited so that a Liberal majority of fifty or more in the House of Commons could overrule the Lords. However, the issue of 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. 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. The King, however, demanded that the bill would have to be rejected at least once by the Lords before his intervention. The bill was finally passed in the Lords on 11 August 1911, by 131 votes to 114, a majority of 17. This reflected a large number of abstentions.

Provisions

At the request of prominent Cabinet member Sir Edward Grey, the preamble included the words:

The long title of the act was "An Act to make provision with respect to the powers of the House of Lords in relation to those of the House of Commons, and to limit the duration of Parliament." Section 8 defined the short title as the "Parliament Act 1911".

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. It did not change the composition of the Lords, however. effectively ending their ability to do so. 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. 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.

Other public bills could no longer be vetoed; instead, they could be delayed for up to two years. This two-year period meant that legislation introduced in the fourth or fifth years of a parliament could be delayed until after the next election, which could prove an effective measure to prevent it being passed. The 1911 act made clear that the life of a parliament could not be extended without the consent of the Lords.

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; it later turned out that that particular parliament would last about eight years due to election postponements related to World War I. 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. 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. Amendments to the Parliament Act 1911 were made to prolong the life of the 1910 parliament following the outbreak of the First World War, and also that of the 1935 parliament due to the Second World War. These made special exemptions to the requirement to hold a general election every five years.

Legislation passed without the consent of the Lords, under the provisions of the Parliament Act, is still considered primary legislation, i.e. a fully valid act of Parliament. The importance of this was highlighted in Jackson v Attorney General, in which the lawfulness of the Parliament Act 1949 was questioned. 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.

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. 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.

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.

Parliament Act 1911

Background

Passage

Provisions

Analysis

See also

Notes

References

Case law

Citations

Bibliography

Further reading

External links