Parliament Acts 1911 and 1949

The Parliament acts are two Acts of Parliament of the United Kingdom, passed in 1911 and 1949 respectively. They form part of the Constitution of the United Kingdom. The first Act 1911 limited the powers of the House of Lords to block House of Common legislation, asserting the supremacy of the Commons. The Parliament Act 1911 was amended by the second Act 1949, which reduced the power of the Lords further by cutting the time they could delay bills from two years to one.

The Parliament Acts have been used only a handful of times. Since Tony Blair's Labor government came to power in 1997, there has been repeated speculation that the government would rely on the Parliament Acts to reverse a check from the Lords. In the event, the Parliament Acts were not required to enact, for example, the Criminal Justice Bill in 2000 (which originally proposed to give magistrates, not defendants, the choice of where an "either way" offence would be tried). The threat of the Parliament Acts has been employed by British governments on a number of occasions to force the Lords to accept its legislation.

Statute of Westminster (1931)

The Statute of Westminster 1931 was the enactment of the United Kingdom Parliament which established the legislative equal statute of the self-governing dominions of the British Empire and United Kingdom. The Statute applied to the dominions of Canada, New Zealand, Newfoundland, the Irish Free State, the Commonwealth of Australia, the Union of South Africa and except in relation to revision of the acts of parliament upon which the constitutions of Canada, Australia and New Zealand were founded. Today the Statue of Westminster is relevant for outlining the powers which Commonwealth Realms hold over any changes to the structure of their Monarchy.

Statute of Equality. The Statute gave effect to certain political resolutions passed by the Imperial Conferences of 1926 and 1930. One of the effects was removing the last imperial bond of power of British Parliament over dominions. After the Statute was passed, the British government could no longer make ordinary law for the dominion, otherwise than at the request and with the consent of that dominion.

The key passage of the Statute provides that:

No Act of Parliament of the United Kingdom passed after the commencement of this Act shall extend or be deemed to extend, to a Dominion as part of the law of that Dominion, unless it is expressly declared in that Act that that Dominion has requested, and consented to, the enactment thereof.

It was also enacted that:

No law and no provision of any law made after the commencement of this Act by the Parliament of a Dominion shall be void or inoperative on the ground that it is repugnant to the law of England, or to the provisions of any existing or future Act of Parliament of the United Kingdom, or to any order, rule, or regulation made under any such Act, and the powers of the Parliament of a Dominion shall include the power to repeal or amend any such Act, order, rule or regulation in so far as the same is part of the law of the Dominion.

Commonwealth powers over the monarchy. The preamble to the Statute of Westminster sets out conventions which impact on attempts to change the rules of succession to the Crown. This means that any change to the Act of Settlement's provisions barring Roman Catholics from the throne or giving males precedence over females would require the unanimous consent the Parliaments of the Commonwealth realms. Note, however, that preambles to an Act of Parliament do not form part of the act itself and has no force in law, so the preamble merely expresses a constitutional convention, albeit one fundamental to the basis of the Commonwealth. In any case, there can be no effective restriction on the powers of those Parliaments which recognize the doctrine of Parliamentary supremacy, namely the United Kingdom and New Zealand.

The UK Parliament Today

The UK Parliament is one of the oldest representative assemblies in the world, having its origins in the mid-13^th Century. The United Kingdom Parliament today comprises members from England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. The present two-chamber system began in the 14^th Century in England: the House of Lords (the upper house) and the House of Commons (the lower house) sit separately and are constituted on entirely different principles. The relationship between the two Houses is governed largely by convention but is defined by the Parliament Acts.