On 18 August 1911, the Parliament Act received royal assent, fundamentally reshaping the British constitution by establishing the primacy of the elected House of Commons over the unelected House of Lords. The act was the culmination of a constitutional crisis triggered by the Lords’ rejection of David Lloyd George’s radical ‘People’s Budget’ in 1909.

The House of Lords was dominated by hereditary Conservative/Unionist peers at this time. And by the turn of the 20th century, the Liberal Party had come to view the upper chamber on more and more antagonistic terms.

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In 1892, peers roundly foiled Liberal prime minister William Gladstone’s second attempt to legislate for Irish home rule, rejecting his Irish Government Bill by 419 votes to 41. The first home rule showdown, some six years previously in 1886, provoked Liberal MPs and peers to leave the party en masse and form a new “unionist” faction.

The Liberal Unionists began to act as a unified bloc with the Conservative Party (a merger occurred in 1912). As a result, the upper chamber now boasted an entrenched Conservative-Unionist majority – an in-built impediment to a Liberal legislative programme.

In his final commons speech, Gladstone warned of “tremendous contrariety and incessant conflict” with the Lords, arguing the upper chamber’s treatment of recent bills – notably the 1892 Irish Government Bill – raised “a question of the gravest character.”

The Grand Old Man declared: “The question is whether the work of the House of Lords is not merely to modify, but to annihilate the whole work of the House of Commons.”

He called for a solution to be found for the “tremendous contrariety and incessant conflict” between the Houses.

In 1894, a Liberal MP (Henry Labouchere) proposed an amendment to the queen’s speech that called for an end to the “Lords’ veto”. Its passage, by 147 votes to 145, caused significant embarrassment to the Earl of Rosebery’s new Liberal government.

Rosebery’s tenure as prime minister (1892-1895) was marked by regular conflict with the Tory/Unionist majority in the House of Lords. He subsequently defined the Liberal Party’s 1895 general election campaign in opposition to the unelected chamber. In a campaign address, he attacked the “indefensible, the one-sided, the anomalous, the mediaeval control that [the Lords] exercise over your legislative work”.

Rosebery, upon his party’s landslide defeat in 1895, offered his opponents the “cordial co-operation” of the “six gentlemen who sit behind me” – a sardonic reference to his party’s slight stature in the Lords.

A full 10 years of Unionist domination in parliament followed – only broken by the 1906 general election. Henry Campbell-Bannerman’s Liberal Party had won 397 seats – a net gain of 214. Arthur Balfour’s Conservative/Unionist alliance was reduced to 156 MPs (the party’s worst performance until the 2024 general election).

The 1906 Liberal landslide was always likely to lead to a clash between the commons and Lords. At the time, only 88 members of the Lords, out of 602, were considered Liberals. Conservative appointments from 1895 to 1906 only strengthened the party’s position in the upper chamber.

On 26 June 1907, as tensions rose between the Houses, Liberal MPs endorsed a resolution declaring that the Lords’ veto should be curtailed. The motion, in the name of Campbell-Bannerman as prime minister, argued that “the power of the other House to alter or reject bills passed by this House should be so restricted by law as to secure that within the limits of a single parliament the final decision of the commons shall prevail.”

During the debate, Lloyd George memorably referred to the Lords as Balfour’s “poodle.”

Lloyd George, the president of the Board of Trade, told the House: “It fetches and carries for him. It barks for him. It bites anybody that he sets it on to. And we are told that this is a great revising Chamber, the safeguard of liberty in the country. Talk about mockeries and shams.”

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Even during periods of acute political tension, however, the Lords had exercised restraint in considering financial matters. During Rosebery’s ill-fated administration, peers still did not reject the budget set out by William Harcourt as chancellor in 1894 – despite its controversial introduction of death duties.

The veto of the 1909 People’s Budget, therefore, was unprecedented. Hoping to trigger an election, the Lords had run roughshod over Britain’s delicate, unwritten constitution. The budget, which proposed new taxes on land and wealth to fund wide-ranging social reforms, was rejected by no less than 350 votes to 75 in the unelected House.

H. H. Asquith, who succeeded Campbell-Bannerman as prime minister in 1908, was outraged. Asquith described the rejection of the People’s Budget in the House of Lords as “unexampled in the history of the British parliament”. For the first time in English history, he declared, “the grant of the whole of the ways and means for the supply and service of the year” had been “intercepted and nullified”.

Asquith said the king had accepted his advice that parliament should be dissolved “at the earliest possible moment”. He framed the forthcoming election not just around the People’s Budget, but also the nature of the Lords veto. It came as the Liberal-controlled lower chamber passed a resolution which condemned the budget veto as “breach of the constitution and a usurpation of the rights of the commons”.

In a campaign speech at the Albert Hall, Asquith declared: “The absolute [Lords’] veto which it at present possesses must go.”

He added: “The powers which they claim of compelling us to choose between legislative sterility and dissolution must go also. The people must be able to feel, what they cannot, feel now, that they are sending to Westminster men who will have the power, not only of proposing and debating, but of making laws.

“The will of the people, as deliberately expressed by their elected representatives, must, within the lifetime of a single parliament, be made effective.”

But the January 1910 election did not return a Liberal majority. Rather, the Conservatives under Balfour made significant gains, winning 272 seats – a net gain of 116. Asquith remained prime minister with his Liberal Party relying on the Irish nationalists and Labour MPs for its commons majority.

John Redmond, the leader of the Irish Parliamentary Party (IPP), used his party’s influence to secure commitments from Asquith. Redmond refused to pass the People’s Budget until he had been assured that power of the Lords would be broken. This outcome, Redmond figured, would remove the final obstacle to Irish home rule – his party’s ultimate objective. 

Redmond called on the prime minister to give the IPP “reasonable assurances that he would be able to carry his veto bill into law this year”. Then, he said, “we will not abstain from voting on the budget. We will vote for it.”

Redmond’s “assurances” were a reference to the suggestion that King Edward VII should pack the Lords (appoint hundreds of Liberal peers under the royal prerogative) to force through reform.

Asquith insisted that he had “received no such guarantee” from the monarch. Rather, he argued that to “ask in advance for a blank authority for an indefinite exercise of the royal prerogative… is a request which, in my judgment, no constitutional statesmen can properly make.”

The prime minister insisted that the “first act of the new House of Commons must be to deal with all the exigencies of the financial situation.”

But Asquith, who relied on the IPP’s votes, later appeared to relent. He proceeded to press both measures – on the budget and Lords veto – concurrently.

On 14 April, when the Parliament Bill received its first reading in the commons, Asquith supported it with a “declaration of policy”. He told the House that, were the Lords to reject the government’s policy, “we shall feel it our duty immediately to tender advice to the crown as to the steps which will have to be taken if that policy is to receive statutory effect in this parliament.”

Asquith added: “If we do not find ourselves in a position to ensure that statutory effect shall be given to this policy in this parliament, we shall then either resign our offices or recommend a dissolution of parliament.”

Balfour ridiculed the government’s bargain with Redmond. He said that the IPP would now “accept a budget they dislike… because they think that that policy conduces to that larger object they have in view, namely, home rule for Ireland.”

The Finance Bill was reintroduced to the House of Commons for its first reading on 20 April. This time the Liberal government made considerable use of the parliamentary guillotine to foist the bill into the Lords as swiftly as possible. On 27 April, seven days after its re-introduction, the People’s Budget secured its commons third reading by 324 votes to 231.

It was thereby returned to the Lords.

Peers took the view that the financial package had a mandate and passed it on 28 April 1910.

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But the unelected chamber had crossed a constitutional rubicon and Asquith was now committed to seeing the struggle through.

The Parliament Bill precipitated a predictable constitutional stand-off.

Asquith responded by threatening to advise King Edward VII to create hundreds of new Liberal peers. This was the same threat employed by Earl Grey, Whig prime minister from 1830 to 1834, to secure the passage of the Great Reform Act. In 1711, Queen Anne created 12 Tory peers to vote through the Treaty of Utrecht.

‘Packing the House’ remained the only constitutional mechanism that could resolve such parliamentary stalemate.

Then, in May 1910, Edward VII died. An uneasy truce followed.

Asquith, wanting to avoid a constitutional crisis so early into the reign of King George V, convened a conference to consider the issue. Discussions continued for some months. But after 21 meetings, the constitutional conference ended on 10 November without agreement.

Asquith resolved to call another general election for the following month. The December 1910 general election did not change the parliamentary arithmetic. The Liberals lost two seats; the Conservatives gained one. The Lords remained a “Tory caucus”.

Another hung parliament meant the Irish nationalists would once again hold the balance of power. Appeasing the party led by John Redmond meant recommitting to Irish home rule; but the government could not solve the ‘Irish obstruction’ without first dealing with the obstruction of the Lords.

The Liberal Party was pitted ever more squarely against the Lords.

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Parliament reconvened in February 1911 and the Parliament Bill was reintroduced.

Asquith, in his speech at first reading, deferred to Gladstone.

The prime minister declared: “I have all along longed for the day when this House of Commons would be freed from the domination of the House of Lords, and I think perhaps the incident which impressed itself more than any other on my mind was when in 1894 I saw my then revered leader [Gladstone] rise for the last time in this House, and heard his last closing words at the end of a life of work for his country, during which he had been a leading figure in this House, and over which he had exercised a most extraordinary influence.

“He used these words: ‘In some way or other a solution will have to be found for the tremendous contrariety and incessant conflict upon matters of high principle and profound importance between the representatives of the people and those who fill a nominated chamber.’”

Asquith concluded: “We claim to have found that way in the solution which we submit by this Bill for the judgment of the House.”

As expected, the bill faced intense opposition in the Lords. The crisis reached its zenith in the summer of 1911 when, after months of deadlock, it emerged that Asquith had secured a secret commitment from George V that the sovereign would, if necessary, create hundreds of new Liberal peers sufficient to overcome the Conservative/Unionist majority in the Lords.

A list had been prepared; over 400 new Liberal peers were needed.

The commons sitting of 24 July 1911 was extraordinarily bitter.

Asquith, having entered the chamber to cries of “Traitor” from the opposition benches, confirmed that the commons would not accept the Lords’ latest amendments to the Parliament Bill. One amendment sought to exempt “grave” issues like home rule from the bill and subject them to a referendum.

But Asquith was unmoved. Ministers would push the bill through in its original form.

Opposition MPs Lord Hugh Cecil and Frederick Smith refused to be calmed by the commons speaker, who begged for the “ordinary decencies and decorum of debate”.

Cecil shouted that the prime minister had “prostituted ordinary parliamentary usage”, adding: “Therefore, there is no discourtesy to him.”

Smith claimed the opposition was “entitled to apply” such raucous treatment because the “government has degraded the political life of the country.”

Asquith was met with cries of “Write another letter”, a reference to his advice to the king, and “Redmond”, a reference to his supposed master, the Irish nationalist leader.

Unable to deliver his full statement due to opposition heckling, Asquith cut to his conclusion. “A situation has been created from which there is only one constitutional way of escape”, he said, “and that is unless the House of Lords will consent to restore this bill… we shall be compelled to invoke and exercise the prerogative of the crown.”

Balfour branded the threat to create new peers a “revolution” that would destroy the “prerogative of the crown and the independence of the upper House.”

The Conservative leader rejected the view that flooding the House with new peers was justified by precedent.

He declared: “When such revolution has been tried, when it was actually carried in 1711, and when it was threatened in 1832, at all events, there were great causes at stake, and it seemed impossible to find any other issue from a problem on which in one case the whole interests of peace and war were on one side…

“What is the parallel now?”

Balfour said Asquith had advised the king to make him an “absolute dictator”.

In the end, the speaker was forced to adjourn the sitting due to “grave disorder”.

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On 7 August, Balfour presented a motion of censure, condemning Asquith’s advice to the king as “a gross violation of constitutional liberty, whereby, among many other evil consequences, the people will be precluded from again pronouncing upon the policy of home rule”.

Balfour argued that Asquith had been “especially” cruel in his treatment of a “sovereign who had only just come to the throne, and who in the very nature of the case had not, and could not have, behind him that long personal experience of public affairs.”

But Asquith insisted that packing the House was the only constitutional means of “escape”.

He advised any opposition MP “to rise in his place and tell me what is the constitutional solution of this”.

Asquith deferred to Lord Grey, prime minister at the time of the Great Reform Act. Grey told the Lords: “I ask what would be the consequence if we were to suppose that such a prerogative [appointing peers en masse] did not exist, or could not be constitutionally exercised?

“The commons have a control over the power of the crown by the privilege, in extreme cases, of refusing supply. The crown has, by means of its power to dissolve the House of Commons, a control upon any violent and rash proceedings on the part of the commons. If a majority of this House [the Lords] is to have the power whenever they please of opposing the declared and decided wishes both of the crown and the people without any means of modifying that power, then this country is placed entirely under the influence of an uncontrollable oligarchy.”

Asquith insisted: “That is the true constitutional doctrine.”

He added: “I am accustomed, as Lord Grey in his day was accustomed, to be accused of breach of the constitution and even of treachery to the crown. I confess, as I have said before, that I am not in the least sensitive to this cheap and ill-informed vituperation.”

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The Lords debated the commons counter-amendments on 9 and 10 August 1911.

The Conservative leadership under Lord Lansdowne reluctantly advised his colleagues to abstain rather than risk the destruction of the hereditary peerage’s character.

But the opposition bloc in the upper chamber was divided between those, like Lansdowne, who believed further opposition would be the end of the Lords (the “hedgers”) – and those who wanted to oppose Asquith until the death (the “ditchers”).

The Earl of Halsbury assumed the de facto leadership of the latter camp.

With his party divided, Lansdowne told his fellow Lords that “if we persist in our proposals, we are to be voted down by a body of newly-created peers.”

He called on Conservative peers to abstain, arguing “this House is no longer in a position to offer effectual resistance… further insistence on our amendments would be not only unprofitable, but detrimental to the public interest.”

Lansdowne announced his intention to “withdraw from this House, leaving the modest battalion commanded by the [Liberal leader Viscount Morley] in occupation of the field.”

Halsbury rejected his leader’s argument. He did not “draw any distinction between the responsibility of a person who votes for it and a person who abstains from voting”

Halsbury spoke against the idea that he would be responsible for the creation of peers, stating: “It is as if a highwayman came and said, ‘Give me your watch or I cut your throat’, and if you did not give him your watch that you are the author of your own throat being cut.”

The Archbishop of Canterbury (Randall Davidson), speaking on 10 August, was apparently appalled by Halsbury’s posturing. In a decisive speech, Davidson revealed he had come to the House intending to abstain.

However, he was so appalled by the “callousness… with which some noble Lords seem to contemplate the creation of some five hundred new peers” that he had “changed his mind.”

He said such a new torrent of peers “would make this House, and indeed our country, the laughing stock of the British dominions beyond the seas and of those foreign countries whose constitutional life and progress have been largely modelled upon our own.”

The Parliament Bill passed the Lords by 131 votes to 114 – a majority of 17.

In all, 13 bishops, including Davidson, voted for the bill – as did 37 Conservative/Unionist peers.

As peers finally relented in the Lords, the commons was – at that exact moment – considering a government motion that proposed a standardised salary for MPs. Arthur Lee, the leading Unionist opponent of MP salaries, said historians of the future would regard the reforms as marking a “black week” in British politics.

The Parliament Act received royal assent eight days later.

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The act introduced two key changes. Firstly, it completely removed the Lords’ power to veto ‘Money Bills’ (those certified by the speaker as relating solely to taxation or public spending). Secondly, for other public bills, it replaced the Lords’ absolute veto with a power to delay legislation for a maximum of two years, spread over three parliamentary sessions.

The act also reduced the maximum duration of a parliament from seven years to five.

Asquith’s 1911 Parliament Act marked a decisive shift in the balance of power between the two Houses. While the Lords retained a significant delaying and revising role, its ability to permanently block legislation, its ‘veto’, was removed.

It established a constitutional settlement that, modified by the Parliament Act 1949 (which reduced the delaying power further to one year over two sessions), remains in place today.

However, the act was not intended to produce a permanent settlement. Its foreword referred to the government’s plan to “substitute for the House of Lords as it at present exists a second chamber constituted on a popular instead of hereditary basis”.

The act regretted that “such substitution cannot be immediately brought into operation”.

Asquith’s promised reforms were not completed, however.

As expected, the Parliament Act 1911 was first used to resolve the constitutional standoff over the Government of Ireland Act 1914 – legislation that provided for Irish home rule.

Under the terms of the Parliament Act, the Government of Ireland Bill (passed by the commons in 1912) was delayed for two years. But two years was too long for the island of Ireland and the European continent. War and revolution meant the Government of Ireland Act 1914 never came into force.