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
Reform of the House of Lords the 1997 general election, it had in its manifesto the promise to reform the House of Lords: The House of Lords must be reformed. As an initial, self-contained reform, not dependent on further reform in the future, the right of hereditary Peers to sit and vote in the House of Lords will be ended by statute... The Blair government subsequently passed the House of Lords Act 1999. On 7 November 2001 the government undertook a public consultation. This helped to create a public debate on the issue of Lords reform, with 1,101 consultation responses and numerous debates in Parliament and