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 House of Commons is an elected body consisting of 650 members known as members of Parliament (MPs). MPs are elected to represent constituencies by the first-past-the-post system and hold their seats until Parliament is dissolved.
Lunatic is a term referring to a person who is seen as mentally ill, dangerous, foolish, or crazy—conditions once attributed to "lunacy". The word derives from lunaticus meaning "of the moon" or "moonstruck".
As a constitutional convention, members of Parliament (MPs) sitting in the House of Commons of the United Kingdom are not formally permitted to resign their seats. To circumvent this prohibition, MPs who wish to step down are instead appointed to an "office of profit under the Crown"; by law, such an appointment disqualifies them from sitting in Parliament. For this purpose, a legal fiction has been maintained where two unpaid sinecures are considered to be offices of profit: Steward and Bailiff of the Chiltern Hundreds, and Steward and Bailiff of the Manor of Northstead.
Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 7th Earl of Shaftesbury, styled Lord Ashley from 1811 to 1851, was a British Tory politician, philanthropist, and social reformer. He was the eldest son of the 6th Earl of Shaftesbury and Lady Anne Spencer, and elder brother of Henry Ashley, MP. A social reformer who was called the "Poor Man's Earl", he campaigned for better working conditions, reform to lunacy laws, education and the limitation of child labour. He was also an early supporter of the Zionist movement and the YMCA and a leading figure in the evangelical movement in the Church of England.
Charles Pelham Villiers was a British lawyer and politician from the aristocratic Villiers family. He sat in the House of Commons for 63 years, from 1835 to 1898, making him the longest-serving Member of Parliament (MP). He also holds the distinction of the oldest candidate to win a parliamentary seat, at 93. He was a radical and reformer who often collaborated with John Bright and had a noteworthy effect in the leadership of the Anti-Corn Law League, until its repeal in 1846. Lord Palmerston appointed him to the cabinet as president of the Poor-Law Board in 1859. His Public Works Act of 1863 opened job-creating schemes in public health projects. He progressed numerous other reforms, most notably the Metropolitan Poor Act of 1867. Florence Nightingale helped him formulate the reform, in particular, ensure professionalisation of nursing as part of the poor law regime, the workhouses of which erected public infirmaries under an Act of the same year. His political importance was overshadowed by his brother, the Earl of Clarendon, and undercut by the hostility of Gladstone.
Arthur Wellesley Peel, 1st Viscount Peel,, was a British Liberal politician, who sat in the House of Commons from 1865 to 1895. He was Speaker of the House of Commons from 1884 until 1895, when he was raised to the peerage.
Kevan David Jones is a British Labour Party politician, who has been the Member of Parliament (MP) for North Durham since 2001. He served as a defence minister under Gordon Brown, and resigned as a shadow defence minister in January 2016 in protest against a front bench reshuffle by Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn.
The Lunacy Act 1845 or the Lunatics Act 1845 and the County Asylums Act 1845 formed mental health law in England and Wales from 1845 to 1890. The Lunacy Act's most important provision was a change in the status of mentally ill people to patients.
The Mental Health Act 1983 is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. It covers the reception, care and treatment of mentally disordered people, the management of their property and other related matters, forming part of the mental health law for the people in England and Wales. In particular, it provides the legislation by which people diagnosed with a mental disorder can be detained in a hospital or police custody and have their disorder assessed or treated against their wishes, informally known as "sectioning". Its use is reviewed and regulated by the Care Quality Commission. The Act was significantly amended by the Mental Health Act 2007. A white paper proposing changes to the act was published in 2021 following an independent review of the act by Simon Wessely.
The Court of Protection in English law is a superior court of record created under the Mental Capacity Act 2005. It has jurisdiction over the property, financial affairs and personal welfare of people who lack mental capacity to make decisions for themselves.
Charles Leach was a Congregationalist Minister and Liberal Party politician in the United Kingdom. He is notable as the only Member of Parliament to be deprived of his seat after being declared of unsound mind.
The Alleged Lunatics' Friend Society was an advocacy group started by former asylum patients and their supporters in 19th-century Britain. The Society campaigned for greater protection against wrongful confinement or cruel and improper treatment, and for reform of the lunacy laws. The Society is recognised today as a pioneer of the psychiatric survivors movement.
John Bell was a Whig politician in the United Kingdom. He is notable as a Member of Parliament who was declared of unsound mind but there was no way of removing him from his seat until his death two years later.
The Idiots Act 1886 was an act of Parliament of the United Kingdom. It was intended to give "... facilities for the care, education, and training of Idiots and Imbeciles".
In the United Kingdom, a parliamentary by-election occurs following a vacancy arising in the House of Commons. They are often seen as a test of the rival political parties' fortunes between general elections.
The Mental Deficiency Act 1913 was an act of Parliament of the United Kingdom creating provisions for the institutional treatment of people deemed to be "feeble-minded" and "moral defectives". "It proposed an institutional separation so that mental defectives should be taken out of Poor Law institutions and prisons into newly established colonies."
The 1916 Colne Valley by-election was a parliamentary by-election held on 25 August 1916 for the House of Commons constituency of Colne Valley, in the West Riding of Yorkshire.
The Lunacy (Scotland) Act 1857 formed mental health law in Scotland from 1857 until 1913.
The father of the House is a title that is bestowed on the senior member of the House of Commons who has the longest continuous service. If two or more members have the same length of current uninterrupted service, then whoever was sworn in earliest, as listed in Hansard, is named as Father of the House.
Dean Russell is a British politician and author who has been the Member of Parliament (MP) for Watford since the 2019 general election. A member of the Conservative Party, he briefly served as Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Enterprise and Markets from September to October 2022 under Prime Minister Liz Truss.
