Lord Speaker the bar, and finish by walking up the Temporal (opposition) side toward the Woolsack. The Mace is placed on the Woolsack, where the Lord Speaker sits after a bishop has led the House in prayers. When the Sovereign appoints Lords Commissioners to perform certain actions on his or her behalf (for example, to open or prorogue Parliament, or formally declare Royal Assent), the Lord Speaker is one of them. The other Lords Commissioners, by convention, are the Leader of the House (who has acted as the principal Commissioner since the Lord Chancellor's functions were transferred to the Lord Speaker), the
History of reform of the House of Lords the number of Scottish peers that could sit in the House of Lords. The House of Lords Act 1999 withdrew the automatic right of hereditary peers to sit in the House of Lords as the first stage of a planned reform by the Labour government of Tony Blair. However 92 hereditary peers were allowed to remain pending completion of the second stage of the proposed reforms. The House of Lords Reform Act 2014 allowed members to resign from the House; previously there was no mechanism for this. It also allowed for the (non-retrospective) exclusion of any peer convicted of a