the prime minister appoints life peers in the house of lords.
who appoints life peers in the house of lords?
the prime minister
along with a hereditary monarch, the house of lords remains an historical curiosity in the uk constitution. traditionally it represented the landed aristocracy, and political allies of the monarch or the government, and has only gradually and incompletely been reformed. today, the house of lords act 1999 has abolished all but 92 hereditary peers, leaving most peers to be "life peers" appointed by the government under the life peerages act 1958, law lords appointed under the appellate jurisdiction act 1876, and lords spiritual who are senior clergy of the church of england. since 2005, senior judges can only sit and vote in the house of lords after retirement. the government carries out appointment of most peers, but since 2000 has taken advice from a seven-person house of lords appointments commission with representatives from the labour, conservatives and liberal-democrat parties. a peerage can always be disclaimed, and ex-peers may then run for parliament. since 2015, a peer may be suspended or expelled by the house. in practice the parliament act 1949 greatly reduced the house of lords' power, as can only delay and cannot block legislation by one year, and cannot delay money bills at all. nevertheless, several options for reform are debated. a house of lords reform bill 2012 proposed to have 360 directly elected members, 90 appointed members, 12 bishops and an uncertain number of ministerial members. the elected lords would have been elected by proportional representation for 15 year terms, through 10 regional constituencies on a single transferable vote system. however, the government withdrew support after backlash from conservative backbenches. it has often been argued that if the lords were elected by geographic constituencies and a party controlled both sides "there would be little prospect of effective scrutiny or revision of government business." a second option, like in swedish riksdag, could simply be to abolish the house of lords: this was in fact done during the english civil war in 1649, but restored along with the monarchy in 1660. a third proposed option is to elect peers by work and professional groups, so that health care workers elect peers with special health knowledge, people in education elect a fixed number of education experts, legal professionals elect legal representatives, and so on. this is argued to be necessary to improve the quality of legislation.
united kingdom constitutional law
the largest group of lords temporal, and indeed of the whole house, are life peers. as of june 2019 there are 661 life peers. life peerages rank only as barons or baronesses, and are created under the life peerages act 1958. like all other peers, life peers are created by the sovereign, who acts on the advice of the prime minister or the house of lords appointments commission. by convention, however, the prime minister allows leaders of other parties to nominate some life peers, so as to maintain a political balance in the house of lords. moreover, some non-party life peers (the number being determined by the prime minister) are nominated by the independent house of lords appointments commission.
house of lords