Parliament of the United Kingdom

• 1. Introduction

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  The Parliament of the United Kingdom holds a distinction that few legislative bodies on earth can claim: it has been called the "mother of parliaments." The Westminster system it developed over centuries shaped the political structures of nations once ruled by the British Empire, spreading its procedural DNA across the globe. Yet for all its influence, the institution itself is surprisingly hard to pin down. It has no single founding moment, no written constitution of its own, and its powers have been reshaped repeatedly by crises, rebellions, and reluctant monarchs. Three elements together form Parliament: the sovereign, the House of Lords, and the House of Commons. What makes one of them genuinely supreme? What happens when they collide? And why does a medieval ceremony involving a slammed door still open every new parliamentary session? The answers run from 1215 to the present day, through fire, civil war, a people's budget, and a hereditary chamber that was finally stripped of most of its ancient rights.

• 2. From Two Kingdoms to One

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  In 1707, the Treaty of Union was ratified, and the separate Parliaments of England and Scotland ceased to exist. Both had been ancient bodies: the Parliament of England traced its origins to 1215, the Parliament of Scotland to around 1235. Their merger produced the Parliament of Great Britain, with both Acts of Union using the identical phrase that "the United Kingdom of Great Britain be represented by one and the same Parliament to be styled The Parliament of Great Britain." That was still not the body it is today. At the start of the 19th century, a further merger absorbed the Parliament of Ireland, adding 100 Irish members of parliament and 32 Lords to the existing body and creating the Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, which formally came into being on the 1st of January 1801. The name changed once more in 1927, when the Royal and Parliamentary Titles Act formally replaced "Ireland" with "Northern Ireland" in the institution's official title, five years after the secession of the Irish Free State.

  All of this legislative merger played out in a single building: the Palace of Westminster, which had housed the English Parliament before the unions and has continued to house the combined Parliament ever since. It has not always been undamaged. A fire in 1834 destroyed large parts of the chambers, forcing the Lords to sit in the Painted Chamber and White Chamber while the Commons occupied the former Lords Chamber for seventeen years, until 1851. A century later, German bombing during the Blitz in 1941 destroyed the Commons Chamber again. Both houses then relocated to the Church House annexe before the Commons took over the Lords Chamber and the Lords withdrew to the Robing Room, an arrangement that lasted nine years, until 1950.

• 3. The Long Road to Reform

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  Before the reforms of the 19th century, the electoral system for the House of Commons was, in the source's own word, "antiquated." Constituencies of vastly different sizes elected the same number of members: the borough of Old Sarum, which had just seven voters, could return two MPs, as could the borough of Dunwich, a place that had largely eroded into the sea. Small constituencies called pocket or rotten boroughs were frequently controlled by Lords, who installed relatives or supporters as members of parliament.

  The Reform Act 1832 began the process of regularising the electoral system, and it triggered a shift in the balance of power. MPs who no longer owed their seats to peers grew more assertive, and the Chartist movement grew alongside them. Made up mostly of working class people, the Chartists presented their People's Charter petition to Parliament in 1838, 1842, and 1848, setting out six demands: universal male suffrage from age twenty-one, the secret ballot, the removal of property qualifications for MPs, payment for members, equally populated constituencies, and annual elections. Parliament resisted the charter in its entirety, but most of its demands were eventually enacted piecemeal over the following decades. The Ballot Act 1872 introduced the secret ballot. The Abolish Property Qualifications Act 1858 removed property requirements for MPs. The Parliament Act 1911 introduced payment for members, initially set at £400 annually. The Representation of the People Act 1918 gave the vote to all men over twenty-one and women over thirty. The Reform Act 1928 extended universal suffrage to women on equal terms, setting the voting age at twenty-one. And the Reform Act 1969 lowered that voting age to eighteen, making the United Kingdom the first major democratic country to do so.

• 4. Taming the Lords

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  In 1909, the Liberal-dominated House of Commons passed what was called the "People's Budget," a package of tax changes specifically targeting wealthy landowners. The House of Lords, which consisted mostly of those same powerful landowners, rejected it outright. Their unpopularity in the fallout was severe enough that the Liberal Party narrowly won two general elections in 1910 on the back of it.

  Liberal Prime Minister H. H. Asquith then introduced the Parliament Bill, aimed squarely at curtailing the Lords' power. Before the second of those two 1910 elections, Asquith had extracted a secret promise from the King: if needed, the sovereign would create several hundred new Liberal peers, erasing the Conservative majority in the upper chamber. Faced with that threat, the Lords narrowly passed the bill. The Parliament Act 1911 that resulted prevented the Lords from blocking a money bill at all, and allowed them to delay any other bill for a maximum of three parliamentary sessions. The Parliament Act 1949 tightened that delay further, reducing it to two sessions over a year. Even with both Acts in force, the Lords have always retained one unrestricted veto: they can block any bill that seeks to extend the life of a parliament.

  The 20th century brought further constraints. The Life Peerages Act 1958 authorised the regular creation of life peers, and by the 1960s the creation of hereditary peerages had effectively ceased. The House of Lords Act 1999 removed the automatic right of hereditary peers to sit in the upper chamber, though it preserved an exception for ninety-two of them, chosen by the other hereditary peers for life terms, with by-elections held upon their deaths. In 2023, a commission led by former Prime Minister Gordon Brown described the existence of the House of Lords in its current form as "indefensible" and recommended replacing it with an "Assembly of the Nations and Regions."

• 5. Ceremony and Its Meaning

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  Every new parliamentary session opens with a ritual whose most dramatic moment is a door being slammed in someone's face. The State Opening of Parliament takes place in the House of Lords Chamber. When the monarch arrives, the Lord Great Chamberlain raises a wand of office to signal to an official called Black Rod, who waits in the Commons lobby. Black Rod walks toward the Commons Chamber accompanied by the Door-keeper of the House of Lords and a police inspector. Before they can reach the doors, those doors are shut against them. Black Rod then strikes the closed doors three times with their ceremonial staff before being admitted.

  The reason for this theatrics goes back to the 3rd of January 1642, when King Charles I entered the House of Commons in an attempt to arrest five members, including the prominent Parliamentarian John Hampden. The attempt failed, the episode helped trigger the English Civil War, and no British monarch has entered the Commons while it is in session since. The slamming door enacts that constitutional principle every year.

  Once admitted, Black Rod summons the Commons to the Lords Chamber to hear the Speech from the Throne, a text prepared by the Prime Minister and Cabinet outlining the government's legislative agenda. Before the Speech, each House first considers a bill introduced purely as a formality: the Select Vestries Bill in the Lords and the Outlawries Bill in the Commons. Neither bill progresses or becomes law. Their sole purpose is to demonstrate each House's right to deliberate independently of the Crown. Before 2012, the State Opening typically took place in November or December; since then it has moved to May or June.

• 6. How Laws Are Actually Made

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  A bill introduced by a minister is called a Government Bill; one introduced by any other member is a Private Member's Bill. Private Members' Bills make up the majority of all bills introduced, but they pass far less frequently. MPs can introduce them through three routes: a ballot held once per session, the Ten Minute Rule giving an MP ten minutes to outline a proposed law, or a method under Standing Order 57 allowing introduction without debate after one day's notice. Bills to decriminalise homosexuality and abortion both passed as Private Members' Bills.

  Every bill passes through the same sequence in each House: a first reading as a formality, a second reading where general principles are debated and the House may vote to reject it, committee stage where it is examined clause by clause, a report stage for further consideration, and a third reading. In the Commons no further amendments may be made at the third reading; in the Lords they can be. If both Houses pass a bill in identical form, it goes to the sovereign for royal assent. If they cannot agree, the bill normally fails, though the Parliament Acts 1911 and 1949 allow the Commons to override Lords rejection under specified conditions.

  Royal assent, once granted in person by the monarch inside the House of Lords, has not been given in that form since 1854. It is now formally conveyed by the monarch or counsellors of state signing letters patent sealed with the Great Seal of the Realm, prepared by the clerk of the Crown. The last time assent was actually refused was in 1708, when Queen Anne withheld it from a bill for the settling of the Militia in Scotland, responding in the Norman French formula "La reyne s'avisera," meaning the Queen will consider it. The assent formula used today, "Le Roy le veult" or "La Reyne le veult," has appeared on every Act of Parliament since.

• 7. The Crowned Portcullis

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  The badge of Parliament is a crowned portcullis, officially granted by the Queen in 1996. The portcullis itself is far older: it served as the badge of various English noble families from the 14th century before being adopted by the Tudor kings in the 16th century, during whose reigns the Palace of Westminster became Parliament's permanent home. The crown was added later to make the symbol explicitly royal.

  The portcullis most likely became associated with the Palace through its use in the rebuilding that followed the fire of 1512. For centuries it was only one among many decorative motifs. Its dominance across the Palace dates to the 19th century, when Charles Barry and Augustus Pugin used it extensively throughout the new Palace they designed after the 1834 fire. The crowned version became accepted as the emblem of both houses in the early 20th century through accumulated custom rather than any formal decision. It now appears on all official stationery, publications, and papers of Parliament, and is stamped on items in everyday use throughout the Palace, including cutlery, silverware, and china. Red is the identifying colour of the House of Lords; green serves the same function for the House of Commons.