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The Parliamentary Monitoring of Science and Technology in Britain

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2014

P. D. G. Hayter
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Extract

THROUGHOUT THE TWENTIETH CENTURY THE HOUSE OF Lords has been looking for a role. It lost its original power base with the decline in influence of the landed aristocracy and the growth of the party system. At the same time the composition of the House became increasingly difficult to justify; membership based on the accidents of birth no longer seemed an adequate justification for the right to legislate or to overrule the people's elected representatives.

The Parliament Act 1911, which took away the Lords' absolute right to veto legislation, promised reform. But nothing happened. In 1968 the Labour government introduced a reform bill. It failed, the victim of assaults from Left and Right in the House of Commons.

Type
Articles
Information
Government and Opposition , Volume 26 , Issue 2 , 01 April 1991 , pp. 147 - 166
Copyright
Copyright © Government and Opposition Ltd 1991

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References

1 The number of government defeats in the House of Lords in the sessions 1979–89 was 156. The positive changes to legislation by agreement were much more numerous.

2 2nd Report, 1979–80, HL97.

3 Energy Committee, Sixth Report (1988–89), HC 192.

4 For a general outside view see T. St J. N. Bates, ‘Select Committees in the House of Lords’, in Drewry, Gavin (ed.), The New Select Committees: A Study of the 1979 Reforms, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1985, pp. 37–54 Google Scholar.

5 Science and Government, para. IV. 57

6 ibid., para IV. 10.

7 Cm 185.

8 Civil R & D, para. 1.6.

9 London, HMSO.

10 Engineering Research and Development, Supplementary Report (1983–84) HL 218, p. 36.

11 ibid., p. 5.

12 ibid., p. 18.

13 London, HMSO.

14 Engineering Research and Development, 1983, para. 16.2.

15 Civil R & D, 1986, para. 6.91.

16 Definitions of R & D, 1990, para. 2.5.

17 Civil R & D, para. 17.

18 Cm 902.

19 Hazardous Waste Disposal, 1981, para. 186.

20 Local Government Bill – Scientific and Technical Services, 1985, para. 77.