Changing the House of Lords
The recent attempt at House of Lords’ reform and the capacity of the issue to do serious damage to the cohesion of the governing coalition invites comparisons with the past, says Jeremy Black.
The Peerage Bill of 1719 aimed to transform the composition of the House of Lords to the political advantage of King George I and his supporters. It did not create or threaten to create more peers, a tactic used to ensure the passage of the Peace of Utrecht in 1713 and, later, the Great Reform Act of 1832. Nor was it a case of altering the power of the Lords while not transforming its composition, as with the Parliament Acts of 1911 and 1949. As for the recent proposals, they were clearly designed to ensure that the Liberal Democrats, the governing coalition’s junior partner, had a more prominent role in the political system and, indeed, might have enabled them to introduce a system of proportional representation.
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