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Ladies for Life or Who Sits Where?
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 January 2009
Extract
The recent death of Baroness Wootton of Abinger, one of the first group of life peeresses who took their seats in the House of Lords after the Life Peerages Act 1958, prompts reflection on the process whereby one of the great male bastions has “gone mixed”, and has, indeed, done so more effectively than the House of Commons. It is a remarkable story, and becomes all the more so when closer consideration of the history and law reveals disturbing questions about how it was done and the consequences of the method adopted.
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References
1 The writer does not know whether any Queen of Scots ever took her place among the Estates of that kingdom, and apologises for his ignorance.
2 Throughout this article, the expression “peeress” will be used to mean “peeress in her own right” and will not include the wife of a peer.
3 [1922] 2 A.C. 339; references to page numbers are to this case.
4 At p. 332.
5 At pp. 361–362.
6 At p. 362.
7 At p. 365.
8 Ibid.
9 Scottish and English Acts of Union 1707; Scottish Representative Peers Act 1707; Union with Ireland Act 1800; Act of Union (Ireland) Act 1800; Parliamentary Representation Act (Ireland) 1800.
10 Appellate Jurisdiction Acts 1876 and 1887.
11 (1889) 23 Q.B.D. 79, cited at p. 371.
12 [1909] A.C. 147, cited at p. 372.
13 At p. 160.
14 At p. 389.
15 At p. 396.
16 At p. 362.
17 At p. 381.
18 At p. 382.
19 At p. 388.
20 At p. 362.
21 At p. 396.
22 At p. 365.
23 Ibid.
24 ibid.
25 At p. 348.
26 Official Report, 25 March 1958, columns 370 to 373.
27 Peerage Law in England, London, 1907.
28 Laws of England, 4th ed., vol. 35, para. 821, n. 2.
29 Cockayne, Complete Peerage, Gloucester reprint, 1982, Vol. X, p. 468.
30 A statutory provision confirming a decision of the House of Lords in a matter of peerage law might seem pointless; but in 1966 the Committee for Privileges reported and the House agreed that the right of the Irish peers to elect twenty-eight of their number to sit in the House no longer existed (Earl of Antrim's Petition [1967] 1 A.C. 691). This decision was confirmed by the Statute Law (Repeals) Act 1971, section 1 and Schedule 1, which repealed the Acts which created and regulated that right. Perhaps section 6 of the Peerage Act was passed with a similar tidy-minded intention.
31 Vol. 197, page 328; 15 June 1965.
32 [1964] 2 Q.B. 257.
33 And remarkably. In 1952 and 1953 the Committee for Privileges allowed the claims of the Right Honourable Alexander Scrymgeour-Wedderburn to have succeeded in 1924 to the Earldom of Dundee and various other Scottish peerages. From 1931 to 1945 he had sat as an M.P., although he was, according to his own petitions, disqualified as a peer; and in December 1949, when he presented his first petition, he would still have been sitting had the electors of West Renfrewshire not returned him to private life in 1945. During the hearing (see HL Papers 129 of 1951–2, p. 83) he gave his Parliamentary service and ministerial office and the wish to avoid precipitating a bye-election as reasons for not making his claim in 1937 when the evidence was ready. Lord Normand (ibidem, p. 131) desribed these as “considerations of the public interest”; it does not appear that the apparent inconsistency of his position was ever put to him.
34 Combined effect of sections 1(4) and 2(4) of the Peerage Act, 1963.
35 Representation of the People Act 1983, s.122.
36 [1964] 2 Q.B. 257.
37 See the remarks of Gorman J. in the Bristol South-East case, at page 303.
38 Iolanthe, Act II.