In 1870, 1874, and 1880 he was elected to Parliament, where he promoted a number of laws. Lubbock was elected the first president of the Institute of Bankers in 1879; in 1881 he was president of the British Association, and from 1881 to 1886 president of the Linnean Society of London. In March 1883 he founded the Bank Clerks Orphanage, which in 1986 became the Bankers Benevolent Fund – a charity for bank employees, past and present and their dependants. In January 1884 he founded the Proportional Representation Society, later to become the Electoral Reform Society.