The House of Lords Act 1999 (c. 34) is an act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom which reformed the House of Lords, one of the chambers of Parliament. The act was given royal assent on 11 November 1999. For centuries, the House of Lords had included several hundred members who inherited their seats (hereditary peers). The act removed this as a right, but as part of a compromise allowed 92 hereditary peers to remain in the House until further reforms. Another ten were created life peers to enable them to remain in the House.
The act decreased the membership of the House from 1,330 in October 1999 to 669 in March 2000. As another result of the act, the majority of the Lords were thence life peers, whose numbers had been gradually increasing since the Life Peerages Act 1958. As of June 2023, there were 796 members of the House of Lords, of whom 25 were senior Church of England bishops, whose representation in the House is governed by the Lords Spiritual (Women) Act 2015.
Prior to the 16th century, the Lords was the more powerful of the two houses of Parliament. A series of developments, including such moments of crisis as the English Civil War, gradually shifted the political control of England, first from the Crown to the House of Lords and then to the House of Commons. The rising wealth of the Commons eventually allowed it to wage two civil wars, dethrone two kings, and gradually reduce the power of the Lords. Prior to the House of Lords Act 1999, the power of the Lords had been diminished by the Parliament Acts 1911 and 1949 which removed the Lords of the ability to veto most bills; at most it could delay bills for one year. Furthermore, the Commons have absolute power over money bills.
After eighteen years of Conservative government, the Labour Party led by Tony Blair won a landslide victory at the 1997 general election, inflicting the biggest defeat for the Conservatives since 1832. The Labour Party had for years endorsed abolition of the House of Lords in its election platforms, though since 1992 this had changed to a policy of reforming the House instead of such a drastic constitutional change.
During the 20th century, Liberal and Labour governments proposed many bills that were opposed by the House of Lords, which had been dominated by Conservatives since the 1890s, leading to some delay and, where proposed before elections, their dropping from the legislative agenda. In the first year of the Blair government, the Lords passed back Government bills 38 times. The rejection considered the most contentious was that of the European Elections Bill, against which the Lords voted five times. Blair stated that the Conservatives were using the hereditary peers to "frustrate" and "overturn the will of the democratically elected House of Commons". Here Blair found an opportunity to implement one of Labour's campaign promises, reforming the Lords.
On 24 November 1998, in opening the second session of Parliament, Queen Elizabeth II delivered her annual Speech from the Throne; the speech was written for her by the government and outlines its legislative agenda for the forthcoming year. In it, she stated that her government would pursue a reform of the House of Lords. These remarks were followed by loud mumbles of "Hear! Hear!" from supportive Labour Members of Parliament, which led to similar utterances of "Shame! Shame!" from Conservative peers; such outbursts were unprecedented, as the Queen's speech is usually heard by a silent Parliament.
The House of Lords Bill was expected to face a tough fight in the House of Lords. Several Lords threatened to disrupt the Government's other bills if they continued with the plan to abolish the hereditaries' right to sit in the House of Lords. Michael Onslow, 7th Earl of Onslow, for instance, said, "I'm happy to force a division on each and every clause of the Scotland Bill. Each division takes 20 minutes and there are more than 270 clauses."
Stuart Randall, Baron Randall of St Budeaux put forward the idea of phasing out the hereditary peers by disqualifying their heirs.
Margaret Jay, Baroness Jay of Paddington reminded the House that under the Salisbury Convention they could not block the bill.
In order to convince some peers to vote for reform, Tony Blair announced that he would compromise by allowing a number of hereditary peers to remain in the House of Lords on an interim basis. On 2 December 1998, the Conservative Leader of the Opposition, William Hague, rose in the House of Commons to attack Blair's plans. He suggested that Blair's changes indicated his lack of principles, claiming that Blair wanted to turn the House of Lords into a "House of Cronies". Hague further suggested that the Conservative Party would never agree to such constitutional reforms that were "based on no comprehensive plan or principle." Hague's remarks backfired when Blair revealed that the Conservative Party in the House of Lords, rather than oppose his reforms, would definitely support them, and that he had done a secret deal with the Conservative leader in the House of Lords, Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, Viscount Cranborne. Hague immediately removed Cranborne from office, but, in protest, several Conservative Lords who held front-bench positions resigned.
On 19 January 1999, the Leader of the House of Commons, Margaret Beckett, introduced the House of Lords Bill into the House of Commons. The House of Commons passed the bill by a vote of 340 to 132 on 16 March. The next day it was presented to the House of Lords, where debate on the bill was far longer. One significant amendment made to the Bill was the so-called Weatherill Amendment, named after Bernard Weatherill, Lord Weatherill, the former Speaker of the House of Commons. The Weatherill Amendment put into place the deal agreed to by the Prime Minister and Viscount Cranborne, and allowed 92 hereditary peers to remain members of the House of Lords.
Several controversies relating to the technicalities of the bill were brought up in the House of Lords. One issue regarded the language used in clauses 1 to 7, which was described by Patrick Mayhew, Lord Mayhew of Twysden as "uncertain in its effects and would leave the position of most hereditary Peers uncertain if the Bill was enacted." A second issue was related to the Acts of Union 1707 uniting Scotland and England into the Kingdom of Great Britain. After lengthy debates, both matters were referred to the House of Lords Committee on Privileges.
Under the Acts of Union 1707, Scottish Lords would be entitled to elect 16 Scottish representative peers to sit on their Lordships' behalf in the House of Lords. In 1963, the Peerage Act 1963 was passed, allowing all Scottish peers to sit in the House, not just 16 of them. It was felt that removing all Scottish representation would breach the Articles. The Government, however, responded that the Articles did envisage a change in the election of representative peers. It was argued that some portions of the Treaty were entrenched, while others were not. For instance, Scotland and England were united "forever," the Scottish Court of Session was to "remain in all time coming within Scotland as it is now constituted," and the establishment of the Church of Scotland was "effectually and unalterably secured." However, it was suggested, the election of Scottish representative peers was not entrenched, and therefore could be amended. Furthermore, the Government argued that Parliament was entirely sovereign and supreme, and could at its will change the Articles of Union. For example, the Treaty of Union joining Great Britain and Ireland required that the two nations be united "forever". Nonetheless, in 1922, by an act of Parliament, most of Ireland was made independent as the Irish Free State. Thus, even entrenched clauses were argued to be open to amendment by the authority of Parliament. The Committee agreed and reported to the House on 20 October 1999 that the Bill was indeed lawful in this regard.
After the Committee's first and second reports were considered, the Lords passed the bill 221 to 81 on 26 October 1999. During the session, Charles Beauclerk, Earl of Burford, son of the Duke of St Albans, launched a protest at the constitutional implications of the bill while standing on the Woolsack, and was ejected from the chamber. Once the Lords settled the differences between their version of the bill and the Commons version, the Bill received royal assent on 11 November 1999 and became an act of Parliament. The act came into force the same day.