The House of Lords Act 1999 (c. 34) was an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom that was given Royal Assent on 11 November 1999. The Act reformed the House of Lords, one of the chambers of Parliament. For centuries, the House of Lords had included several hundred members who inherited their seats; the Act removed such a right. However, as part of a compromise, the Act did permit ninety-two hereditary peers to remain in the House on an interim basis. 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 (October 1999) to 669 (March 2000). As another result of the Act, the majority of the Lords were now life peers, whose numbers had been gradually increasing since the Life Peerages Act 1958.
Read more about House Of Lords Act 1999: Background, The House of Lords Bill, Membership of The House of Lords
Famous quotes containing the words house, lords and/or act:
“The house a woman creates is a Utopia. She can’t help it—can’t help trying to interest her nearest and dearest not in happiness itself but in the search for it.”
—Marguerite Duras (b. 1914)
“The lords of life, the lords of life,—
I saw them pass
In their own guise,
Like and unlike,
Portly and grim,—
Use and surprise,
Surface and dream,
Succession swift, and spectral wrong,
Temperament without a tongue,
And the inventor of the game
Omnipresent without name;—”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“One need not be a great beau, a seductive catch, to do it effectively. Any man is better than none. To shrink from giving so much happiness at such small expense, to evade the business on the ground that it has hazards—this is the act of a puling and tacky fellow.”
—H.L. (Henry Lewis)