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The House of Lords, also known as the House of Peers, is the upper house of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Membership is by appointment, heredity or official function. Like the House of Commons, it meets in the Palace of Westminster in London, England.
The House of Commons is the lower house of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Like the upper house, the House of Lords, it meets in the Palace of Westminster in London, England.
The Parliament of the United Kingdom is the supreme legislative body of the United Kingdom, the Crown Dependencies and the British Overseas Territories. It alone possesses legislative supremacy and thereby ultimate power over all other political bodies in the UK and the overseas territories. Parliament is bicameral but has three parts, consisting of the sovereign (Crown-in-Parliament), the House of Lords, and the House of Commons. Both houses of Parliament meet in separate chambers at the Palace of Westminster in the City of Westminster, one of the inner boroughs of the capital city, London.
The Bill of Rights 1689 is an Act of Parliament seen as a crucial landmark in English constitutional law that sets out certain basic civil rights and clarifies who would be next to inherit the Crown. It received the Royal Assent on 16 December 1689 and is a restatement in statutory form of the Declaration of Right presented by the Convention Parliament to William III and Mary II in February 1689, inviting them to become joint sovereigns of England.
Acts of parliament, sometimes referred to as primary legislation, are texts of law passed by the legislative body of a jurisdiction. In most countries with a parliamentary system of government, acts of parliament begin as a bill, which the legislature votes on. Depending on the structure of government, this text may then be subject to assent or approval from the executive branch.
A statutory instrument (SI) is the principal form in which delegated legislation is made in Great Britain.
The Intelligence and Security Committee of Parliament (ISC) is a statutory joint committee of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, appointed to oversee the work of the UK intelligence community.
In the United Kingdom, representative peers were those peers elected by the members of the Peerage of Scotland and the Peerage of Ireland to sit in the British House of Lords. Until 1999, all members of the Peerage of England held the right to sit in the House of Lords; they did not elect a limited group of representatives. All peers who were created after 1707 as Peers of Great Britain and after 1801 as Peers of the United Kingdom held the same right to sit in the House of Lords.
A joint committee is a committee made up of members of the two chambers of a bicameral legislature. In other contexts, it refers to a committee with members from more than one organization.
The parliamentary committees of the United Kingdom are committees of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Each consists of a small number of Members of Parliament from the House of Commons, or peers from the House of Lords, or a mix of both, appointed to deal with particular areas or issues; most are made up of members of the Commons. The majority of parliamentary committees are select committees. The remit of these committees vary depending on whether they are committees of the House of Commons or the House of Lords.
In British politics, parliamentary select committees can be appointed from the House of Commons, like the Foreign Affairs Select Committee; from the House of Lords, like the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee; or as a joint committee of Parliament drawn from both, such as the Joint Committee on Human Rights. Committees may exist as "sessional" committees – i.e. be near-permanent – or as "ad-hoc" committees with a specific deadline by which to complete their work, after which they cease to exist, such as the Lords Committee on Public Service and Demographic Change.
The Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee is a committee of UK parliamentarians. Members are drawn from the House of Lords. The committee has several primary functions.
Pepper v Hart [1992] UKHL 3, is a landmark decision of the House of Lords on the use of legislative history in statutory interpretation. The court established the principle that when primary legislation is ambiguous then, in certain circumstances, the court may refer to statements made in the House of Commons or House of Lords in an attempt to interpret the meaning of the legislation. Before this ruling, such an action would have been seen as a breach of parliamentary privilege.
The Joint Committee on Tax Law Rewrite Bills was a joint committee of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. The remit of the committee was to scrutinise bills intended to make the language of tax law simpler, while preserving the effect of the existing law, subject to minor changes. It scrutinized the Tax Law Rewrite Project.
In the United Kingdom an act of Parliament is primary legislation passed by the Parliament of the United Kingdom.
The Joint Committee on Consolidation Bills is a joint committee of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. The Committee was first established in 1894 with a remit to consider consolidation bills. The Committee, which also considers Statute Law Revision Bills and bills prepared by the Law Commission or Scottish Law Commission to repeal outdated laws, is made up of 12 members of each House. Bills considered by the Committee originate in the Lords and are referred to it after second reading. After the Committee reports, the remaining stages in both Houses proceed formally.
The royal prerogative is a body of customary authority, privilege, and immunity attached to the British monarch, recognised in the United Kingdom. The monarch is regarded internally as the absolute authority, or "sole prerogative", and the source of many of the executive powers of the British government.
Erskine May is a parliamentary authority originally written by British constitutional theorist and Clerk of the House of Commons, Thomas Erskine May.
The Government of the United Kingdom, officially His Majesty's Government, is the central executive authority of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. The government is led by the prime minister who selects all the other ministers. The country has had a Conservative-led government since 2010, with successive prime ministers being the then leader of the Conservative Party. The prime minister and their most senior ministers belong to the supreme decision-making committee, known as the Cabinet.
Impeachment is a process in which the Parliament of the United Kingdom may prosecute and try individuals, normally holders of public office, for high treason or other crimes and misdemeanours. First used to try William Latimer, 4th Baron Latimer during the English Good Parliament of 1376, it was a rare mechanism whereby Parliament was able to arrest and depose ministers of the Crown. The last impeachment was that of Henry Dundas, 1st Viscount Melville in 1806; since then, other forms of democratic scrutiny have been favoured and the process has been considered as an obsolete—but still extant—power of Parliament.
References
- 1 2 "Joint Committees". UK Parliament. Retrieved 12 March 2019.
- ↑ "Joint Select Committees". UK Parliament. Retrieved 12 March 2019.
- ↑ "Former Joint Select Committees". UK Parliament. Retrieved 12 March 2019.