What are the limitations of the House of Lords?

In an earlier post we discussed how the House of Lords was in fact more effective than many people believe. However, there are many limitations on the Lords which prevent it from being able to challenge the government effectively.

Firstly, the Lords cannot block or veto legislation. The Lords can amend legislation but these amendments can be rejected. If the Lords insists on blocking a piece of legislation, then the Commons can wait a year and use the Parliament Act of 1949 to bypass the Lords. This has only happened on 4 occasions, for example in 2000, the Sexual Offences Act was passed despite the Lords failing to vote in favour.

A second limitation on the Lords is that it cannot amend money bills. Usually this would mean that the Lords cannot vote against the governments budget. However, in recent years this has been a source of some controversy with the government claiming a wider number of pieces of legislation as ‘money bills’ thereby trying to prevent the Lords from blocking them. For example, in 2015, the Conservative government sought to cut tax credits which they claimed was a money bill as it impacted upon public spending. The Lords sought to block this legislation which caused some controversy.

Perhaps the most famous limitation on the Lords in the Salisbury Convention. The Salisbury Convention says that if a piece of legislation is in the governments manifesto then the Lords cannot block it. This is because it would present issues for our democracy if an unelected House of Lords was blocking a pieces of legislation which the public had backed (by voting for the party who proposed it) at an election. The Salisbury Convention has been called into question in recent times whereby we have had a period of coalition government (2010-2015) and a minority government (2017-2019). Despite this, the Lords has rarely sought to challenge government legislation which was included in their manifestos even in these periods of coalition or minority government.

The limitations of the Lords are important to understand and help to reinforce the idea that the Lords is effective at amending and debating legislation but that ultimately, the Commons will always prevail if they are determined to do so.