The New House of Lords

1. Purpose¶

This paper proposes replacing the present House of Lords with a fully elected second chamber: the New House of Lords.

The purpose of this reform is to create a constitutional chamber with democratic legitimacy, long-term perspective, and clear authority to scrutinise government, restrain executive overreach, improve legislation, and refer great unresolved questions back to the people.

This paper begins from the principle that Parliament exists to serve each equal free person under God and the Common Law. Parliament is not sovereign over the citizen. No temporary Commons majority should be able to govern without constitutional restraint.

2. The Case for Change¶

The present House of Lords performs useful revising and scrutinising functions, but because it is unelected it must remain subordinate to the elected House of Commons. It may advise, warn, amend, and delay, but it cannot claim an equal democratic mandate.

That changes if the second chamber is elected.

A fully elected second chamber should not merely inherit the limited status of the present House of Lords. Once elected, it would possess democratic legitimacy of its own. It should therefore have a defined constitutional role and meaningful powers.

However, it should not become a rival government. The House of Commons should remain the chamber from which the Government is formed. The New House of Lords should instead become the chamber of longer perspectives, constitutional concern and gathered wisdom.

3. Executive Dominance and Mid-Term Accountability¶

One weakness of the current system is the long gap between general elections.

A government with a large Commons majority can govern for several years while ignoring public concern, parliamentary criticism, poor administration, broken promises, and changing national circumstances. Once elected, a government may treat its majority as a blank cheque.

This danger is increased because the Government controls the Commons timetable, legislative programme, party discipline, and much of the parliamentary machinery. Parliament can become less a check on the executive and more an instrument of it.

4. Composition¶

Each member of this proposed new chamber should represent an area made up of two parliamentary constituencies. This would produce a chamber half the size of the House of Commons while keeping members rooted in recognisable local areas.

Members should serve ten-year terms, with half of the chamber elected every five years.

Elections to the New House of Lords should take place between Commons general elections, creating regular mid-term democratic accountability.

This system would give the chamber democratic legitimacy, independence, local connection, and long-term perspective.

5. Ten-Year Terms¶

Members of the New House of Lords should serve ten-year terms.

The House of Commons is necessarily shaped by short electoral cycles, party discipline, media pressure, manifesto commitments, ministerial ambition, and immediate public controversy. This is unavoidable in a chamber that forms the Government.

The second chamber should have a different character.

A ten-year term would allow members to take a longer view. They would be better placed to consider the long-term consequences of legislation, constitutional change, public debt, war powers, civil liberties, national infrastructure, demographic change, family policy, national sovereignty, and the moral direction of the country.

The purpose is to add constitutional memory, experience, restraint, and statesmanship to national decision-making.

6. Minimum Age¶

Candidates for the New House of Lords should be at least 55 years old at the time of first election.

This requirement is intended to shape the character of the chamber. The New House of Lords should not become a second House of Commons, a training ground for party careerists, or a stepping stone to ministerial ambition.

It should be a chamber of maturity, experience, independence, and long-term judgment.

A minimum age of 55 would encourage the election of people who have already lived, worked, built, failed, served, and learned before entering national constitutional office.

The chamber should draw on people with substantial experience in business, farming, family life, public service, law, medicine, education, the armed forces, local government, trade, engineering, scholarship, charity, industry, and community leadership.

There should be no automatic upper age limit. If voters wish to elect or re-elect an older candidate who is still able to serve effectively, that should be their right.

7. Separation from the House of Commons¶

Sitting Members of Parliament should not be eligible to stand for election to the New House of Lords.

Former MPs should be eligible to stand, but only after a clear break from the Commons. A former MP should be required to spend at least two years out of the House of Commons before standing for the New House of Lords.

This cooling-off period would act as a democratic leveller. It would prevent immediate transfer from one chamber to the other, reduce party patronage, weaken automatic entitlement, and allow voters to judge former MPs as ordinary candidates rather than sitting office-holders.

8. Relationship with the House of Commons¶

The House of Commons should remain the primary political chamber.

It should continue to determine who forms the Government. Confidence, supply, taxation, and the ordinary machinery of government should remain primarily matters for the Commons.

This separation prevents the second chamber from becoming either a rival government or a powerless revising body.

9. Constitutional Role¶

Its principal duties should be to:

continue to scrutinise legislation passed by the Commons;

examine whether Bills are necessary, proportionate, intelligible, and constitutional;

protect civil liberties and fundamental rights;

review emergency powers;

examine treaty commitments and questions of national sovereignty;

scrutinise major public appointments;

review the work of regulators and public bodies;

examine long-term constitutional and moral questions;

act as a mid-term democratic check on the Government;

refer important unresolved questions back to the people where necessary.

The New Lords exists to provide the longer constitutional view within Parliament. Among its leading duties will be examining whether legislation, delegated powers, public expenditure, treaty obligations, institutional reform, and changes to the machinery of government are consistent with the constitutional settlement and the rights and liberties declared within it.

Emergency powers may be necessary to meet real and immediate danger, but they must remain temporary, specific, proportionate, reviewable, and incapable of becoming a permanent method of government. The state may act quickly in a crisis, but it may not use crisis as a second constitution.

It is not principally a constitutional court. It does not govern. It does not compete with the Commons. It serves as the parliamentary chamber of constitutional memory, restraint and review.

10. Foreign Affairs and the Constitutional Threshold¶

Foreign affairs remain the responsibility of ministers answerable to Parliament. The making of ordinary treaties, agreements, protocols, and arrangements concerned with trade, defence cooperation, extradition, travel, fisheries, scientific cooperation, mutual recognition, and other ordinary matters of international relations may continue in the normal way, subject to parliamentary scrutiny and this Constitution.

The constitutional threshold is stated in Article 6 of the Common Law Constitution. Where that threshold is crossed, the matter is no longer merely foreign policy but constitutional alteration.

At that point the matter is no longer merely foreign policy. It is constitutional alteration. It must therefore proceed under the constitutional procedure, requiring the approval of both Houses and, where the Houses disagree or sovereignty is materially transferred, reference to the people.

11. The Parliament Acts and the New Settlement¶

The Parliament Acts solved the problem of their day. They restrained the absolute veto of an unelected hereditary chamber while preserving the ability of an elected Government to govern through the House of Commons.

The Parliament Act 1911 was not framed as the final settlement for a constitution with an elected second chamber. It expressly contemplated the later substitution of the House of Lords by a Second Chamber constituted on a popular rather than hereditary basis, and recognised that the powers of that new chamber would then have to be limited and defined.

The Restore proposals should therefore be understood as the fulfilment, not the repudiation, of the Parliament Act 1911. The Parliament Acts are amended according to their own original logic: Commons primacy for ordinary government, Money Bill protection within the fiscal ceiling, and reference to the people where two elected Houses disagree over matters of sufficient public or constitutional importance.

The Parliament Acts solved 1911. Restore completes the promise left unfinished in 1911.

12. Certification of Bills¶

The Parliament Act procedure shall be retained only in defined cases and shall no longer operate as a general Commons override.

Money Bills shall continue to be certified by the Speaker of the House of Commons in accordance with the existing Money Bill procedure, subject to the additional requirement that the Bill is accompanied by a fiscal impact statement and does not breach the constitutional fiscal ceiling.

A Bill said to give effect to a manifesto pledge shall be certified by the Speaker of the House of Commons before it may proceed under the manifesto procedure. There shall be a presumption that a Bill is not a Manifesto Bill unless the pledge was clear, specific, prominent, and plainly put before the electorate at the general election. A Bill shall not be certified as a Manifesto Bill if it is encumbered with substantial provisions not fairly contained within that pledge.

Before Second Reading, the Speaker of the House in which a Bill is introduced shall certify whether the Bill is a Constitutional Bill. A Bill contains protected constitutional subject matter if any clause, schedule, amendment, provision, or part of it enacts, amends, modifies, suspends, disapplies, overrides, or repeals any constitutional provision, or confers power upon any person or body to do any of those things. A single provision relating to protected constitutional subject matter in a Bill of any length shall make the whole Bill a Constitutional Bill, regardless of its title, principal purpose, other contents, or inclusion in an election manifesto.

Protected constitutional subject matter shall take precedence over every other legislative classification. No Bill containing such matter may be treated as a Manifesto Bill, General Bill, Money Bill, or other ordinary measure for the purpose of avoiding the Constitutional Bill procedure. An election may authorise a Government to propose constitutional change; it cannot authorise the Government to bypass the Constitution while changing or repealing it.

Where the Speaker of the other House disputes a failure to certify a Bill as constitutional, the two Speakers shall confer and attempt to agree the proper classification. If they agree that the Bill is constitutional, it shall thereafter proceed only as a Constitutional Bill.

If the two Speakers cannot agree, either Speaker may, within four weeks after the disagreement has been formally recorded, refer the question to the Supreme Court. The Court shall determine only whether the Bill or any provision of it relates to protected constitutional subject matter, having regard to its legal purpose and effect, including whether it modifies, or confers power to modify, the constitutional settlement. The Court shall not consider or express any opinion upon the political merits, wisdom, necessity, desirability, or policy of the Bill or of any provision contained within it.

Until a disputed classification has been agreed by the Speakers, or any reference has been withdrawn or determined by the Supreme Court, the Bill shall not proceed under any procedure capable of overriding either House or avoiding the safeguards applicable to Constitutional Bills.

The Court is used for this narrow purpose because the question concerns the nature and operation of the common-law constitution, upon which the judiciary possesses particular institutional knowledge and expertise. The mechanism draws upon the established pre-enactment referral procedures in section 33 of the Scotland Act 1998 and sections 111A and 111B of the Government of Wales Act 2006, while confining the Court strictly to the question of classification.

No House should be sole judge in its own constitutional cause.

13. Money Bills and the Fiscal Ceiling¶

The House of Commons should remain the money House. It should continue to grant supply, authorise taxation, sustain or dismiss Governments, and determine ordinary spending priorities within the constitutional fiscal ceiling.

The existing Money Bill machinery should substantially remain. A Money Bill should continue to be certified by the Speaker of the House of Commons, and the Speaker’s certificate should remain conclusive. The New House of Lords should not become a rival money House.

A Money Bill sent to the New House of Lords must be accompanied by a fiscal impact statement setting out its expected effect on taxation, expenditure, borrowing, public debt, guarantees, contingent liabilities, and the remaining headroom under the constitutional fiscal ceiling.

The Speaker shall not certify a Bill as a Money Bill where that statement shows that the Bill, whether alone or in combination with other Bills or measures already enacted or authorised, would exceed the fiscal ceiling.

In such a case, the Bill may proceed only after the fiscal ceiling has first been lawfully adjusted in accordance with the constitutional procedure for fiscal alteration.

14. Clear Manifesto Bills and General Public Bills¶

Section 2 of the Parliament Act procedure should no longer apply to any Public Bill merely because it has been passed twice by the House of Commons. It should be limited to Bills giving effect to clear, specific and prominent manifesto commitments upon which the Government was elected, and only where the Bill is not encumbered with substantial matters outside that commitment.

This brings section 2 into line with the proper Salisbury principle. A Government should be able to enact what the people clearly authorised. It should not be able to use Commons override to pass measures which were vague, hidden, implied, post-election, or wrapped together with unrelated provisions.

A General Bill shall ordinarily become law only after being passed by the House of Commons, approved by the New House of Lords, and receiving Royal Assent.

Where the New House of Lords rejects a General Bill, the House of Commons may, consistently with the returning-Bill principle embodied in the Parliament Acts 1911 and 1949, pass the same or a substantially unchanged Bill again in a later Session.

If the New House of Lords rejects that returning Bill for a second time, each House shall hold a recorded National Reference Resolution. The Resolution shall be decided as a free vote, without party whipping and without being treated as a question of confidence.

The National Reference Resolution shall ask only whether the question raised by the Bill is of sufficient national importance that the Bill should be referred to the people by plebiscite. The vote shall concern the question of reference alone and shall not reopen the detailed merits or wording of the Bill.

15. Constitutional Bills¶

A Constitutional Bill may be introduced in either House and shall otherwise pass through the ordinary legislative stages in each House.

Every Constitutional Bill shall be committed to a Committee of the Whole House in both Houses. Constitutional change is the responsibility of Parliament as a whole and shall not be delegated to a small committee selected by party managers.

The ordinary Commons override procedure shall not apply to Bills altering the Constitution, the composition or powers of either House of Parliament, the franchise, electoral law, constituency boundaries, the conduct of elections, the maximum term of Parliament, the independence or jurisdiction of the courts, the constitutional fiscal ceiling, emergency powers, treaty subordination, national sovereignty, ancient liberties, due process, trial by jury, habeas corpus, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, property rights, or the right of effective redress against public power.

The classification rule is intended to ensure that constitutional issues are identified before introduction. A Government that includes even one constitutional provision in an otherwise ordinary Bill must accept that the whole Bill will receive constitutional scrutiny.

Apart from the mandatory Committee of the Whole House in each House, a Constitutional Bill shall follow the same returning-Bill, second-rejection, National Reference Resolution, and plebiscite procedure as a General Bill.

A Constitutional Bill may therefore be passed by the originating House, rejected by the other House, passed again in identical form by the originating House in a later Session, and rejected a second time by the other House. Both Houses shall then hold recorded free votes on the National Reference Resolution.

No manifesto commitment, electoral mandate, confidence vote, declaration of urgency, or other political claim shall alter that procedure. A proposal to enact, amend, suspend, disapply, override, or repeal the Constitution remains constitutional in character however clearly it appeared in a manifesto.

Constitutional legislation remains legislation, but it carries consequences so serious that every member of both Houses must have the opportunity to take part in its detailed scrutiny.

16. Deadlock, Second Rejection, and Reference to the People¶

The new settlement should avoid both paralysis and domination. It should not create a second governing chamber, but neither should it allow a temporary majority in either House to be mistaken for the settled will of the nation.

For a General Bill, the returning-Bill procedure develops the traditional principle embodied in the Parliament Acts 1911 and 1949. The House of Commons must pass the Bill again in a later Session, and the New House of Lords must reject it twice, before any exceptional procedure becomes available.

For a Constitutional Bill introduced in either House, the same sequence applies: the originating House must pass the identical Bill again in a later Session, and the other House must reject it twice. The only additional legislative requirement is that the Bill must have been considered by a Committee of the Whole House in both Houses.

After the second rejection, both Houses shall vote independently on the short National Reference Resolution. The Resolution shall be decided as a recorded free vote, without party whipping and without being treated as a question of confidence. It shall ask only whether the question raised by the Bill is of sufficient national importance that the Bill should be referred to the people by plebiscite.

The vote shall concern the question of reference alone and shall not reopen the detailed merits or wording of the Bill. Parliament is thereby given one final opportunity to settle the matter without a public vote, and neither House may force a plebiscite unilaterally.

If both Houses approve the National Reference Resolution, the Bill shall be submitted to the people by plebiscite. The Bill submitted to the people must be identical in every detail to the Bill rejected for the second time. No amendment, addition, omission, supplementary provision, ministerial modification, or alternative text shall be permitted after that rejection.

If the people approve the Bill, that identical Bill shall proceed for Royal Assent. If the people reject it, the Bill shall fall.

If the originating House approves the National Reference Resolution but the House that rejected the Bill does not, the rejecting House shall be taken to have yielded, and the identical Bill rejected for the second time shall proceed for Royal Assent.

If the originating House does not approve the National Reference Resolution, the Bill shall fall, irrespective of the vote in the other House.

Plebiscite is a constitutional safety valve, not a routine stage of legislation. It is available only where both Houses independently conclude that Parliament has reached the limit of its authority on a matter of exceptional national importance.

Ordinary disagreement normally ends in Parliament. Only exceptional disagreement, affirmed by both Houses, ends in popular decision.

17. Delegated Legislation and the Administrative State¶

Delegated legislation must be put back in its proper constitutional place.

The administrative state exists to carry out the law, not to make law in its own right. Ministers, departments, regulators, agencies, inspectorates, and public bodies may administer Acts of Parliament. They may not use delegated powers as a routine means of governing the citizen without primary legislation.

Where a minister requires legal power to affect the citizen, impose duties, restrict liberty, interfere with property, create offences, levy money, alter eligibility, confer enforcement powers, or change the legal position of any person, the minister shall bring forward primary legislation.

Delegated instruments may remain only for matters which do not alter the substantive rights, duties, liabilities, liberties, property, livelihood, or constitutional position of the citizen: commencement, prescribed forms, appointed days, purely internal administrative arrangements, and technical schedules whose legal effect has been fully specified in the parent Act.

The New House of Lords shall be under no constitutional duty, convention, or presumption to approve delegated legislation. Delegated legislation is not manifesto legislation, not primary legislation, and not protected by Commons primacy.

Where delegated legislation is rejected by the New House of Lords, the instrument shall fail. If the Government considers the matter sufficiently important, the responsible minister may bring forward primary legislation and ask Parliament to enact it in the ordinary way.

18. Christian Heritage¶

This paper recognises the historic importance of the Lords Spiritual and the Christian foundations of the United Kingdom’s constitutional order.

However, if the second chamber is reformed into a fully elected New House of Lords, unelected religious office-holders should not retain voting legislative power. A chamber whose authority rests on election must not contain unelected members with equal voting rights.

This paper therefore proposes that a limited number of senior Christian prelates should have the right to attend and speak in the New House of Lords, but not the right to vote.

This could include the Archbishops of Canterbury and York, the Moderator of the Church of Scotland, and senior representatives of the Churches in Wales and Northern Ireland.

Their role would be to offer moral, spiritual, historical, and constitutional reflection, particularly on legislation affecting life, conscience, family, religious liberty, education, civil society, and the moral foundations of law.

They would not be legislators. They would not be able to block, amend, or pass laws. Their influence would depend on the force of their argument, not on institutional power.

This preserves Christian witness without creating an unelected religious authority.

19. Christian Heritage and Equal Citizenship¶

This paper affirms equal citizenship for people of all faiths and none.

Members of every religious tradition, and those of no religious faith, should be free to vote, stand for election, speak in public debate, form associations, influence policy, and serve in Parliament through the ordinary democratic process.

The proposed speaking rights for senior Christian prelates are not intended to give Christians superior political rights. Christians, like everyone else, would exercise legislative power through elected representatives.

The purpose of retaining a limited formal Christian presence is different. It recognises the historic Christian inheritance of the United Kingdom: its monarchy, Parliament, common law tradition, moral vocabulary, parish life, universities, charities, schools, public ceremonies, and constitutional development.

equal citizenship for all; formal recognition of Christian constitutional heritage; no unelected religious voting power.

20. Summary of the Proposal¶

This paper proposes:

replacing the present House of Lords with a fully elected New House of Lords;

electing one member for every two parliamentary constituencies;

giving members ten-year terms, with half elected every five years;

holding New Lords elections between Commons general elections as mid-term democratic accountability;

setting a minimum first-election age of 55 and imposing no automatic upper age limit;

requiring separation from the House of Commons, including a cooling-off period for former MPs;

retaining the Commons as the chamber from which Government is formed;

making the New House of Lords an elected constitutional chamber rather than a rival government;

retaining Money Bill primacy for the Commons, subject to the constitutional fiscal ceiling;

limiting the section 2 Parliament Act procedure to clear manifesto Bills not encumbered with unrelated matter;

excluding constitutional Bills from Commons-only override;

requiring, after the second rejection of a returning General Bill, recorded free votes in both Houses on a National Reference Resolution, with a plebiscite only where both Houses independently approve reference;

giving senior Christian prelates the right to attend and speak, but not vote;

affirming equal citizenship for people of all faiths and none;

preserving Christian constitutional heritage without creating unelected religious rule.

Reforms to the House of Commons and the New Lords concern the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Devolved assemblies do not hold authority over the composition, powers or procedures of either House, and cannot opt out of Westminster parliamentary reform while remaining represented in the House of Commons. The separate question of England’s lack of its own devolved chamber is recognised but left for another day.

21. Core Principle¶

It should be an elected constitutional chamber.

Its purpose should be to restrain executive overreach, improve legislation, provide mid-term accountability, protect the constitutional settlement, bring wisdom and experience into national decision-making, and return the greatest questions to the people.