Representative peer

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Representative peers in the UK were those peers elected by members of the Peerage of Scotland and the Peerage of Ireland to sit in the UK House of Lords . Members of the Peerage of England , the Peerage of Great Britain and the Peerage of the United Kingdom , however, had the right to sit in the House of Lords until 1999.

Representative peers were introduced in 1707 when the Kingdom of England and the Kingdom of Scotland were united to form the Kingdom of Great Britain . At that time there were 168 English and 154 Scottish peers. Since Scotland at that time was only one fifth of the English population and the English peers feared that the Scottish peers would be over-represented in the British House of Lords, negotiations were made to limit the Scottish members of the House of Lords to a limited number of representatives, the Scottish ones Should choose peers from within their own ranks. A similar arrangement was made when the Kingdom of Great Britain and the Kingdom of Ireland were united to form the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland in 1801 .

Scotland was allowed to choose sixteen Representative Peers while Ireland could choose twenty-eight. The Scottish Representative Peers were each given their mandate for the duration of a parliament, so that a new parliament was elected after each dissolution of parliament. In contrast, Irish Representative Peers were elected for life. The Irish peer election ended when the Irish Free State was established as the Dominion in December 1922 . However, all twenty-eight previously elected Irish peers continued to sit in the House of Lords until their deaths. The election for Scottish peers ended with the Peerage Act of 1963 , which gave all Scottish peers the right to sit directly in the House of Lords.

When the House of Lords Act of 1999 largely abolished the inheritance of parliamentary seats, a new form of “Representative Peers” was introduced to allow some hereditary peers to remain in the House of Lords.

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literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Lord Nicholls of Birkenhead : Opinions of the Committee. Committee on Privileges Second Report, 2000 ( publications.parliament.uk ).
  2. ↑ Thomas Erskine May: A practical treatise on the law, privileges, proceedings and usage of Parliament. Butterworths, London 1851, pp. 6-8.
  3. ↑ James Fergusson: The Sixteen Peers of Scotland. An Account of the Elections of the Representative Peers of Scotland, 1707-1959. Clarendon Press, Oxford 1960, pp. Vii.
  4. ↑ Thomas Erskine May: The Constitutional History of England since the Accession of George III 1760-1860. Crosby & Nichols, Boston 1862, p. 228.
  5. ^ House of Lords Briefing: Membership. Types of Member. ( PDF ) parliament.uk, 2009, p. 2.