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
Members of the House of Lords Lords in accordance with the Resolution of the House of 27 June 2011, under which peers were granted the option to signal their intention to voluntarily retire and have their service recognised in the House and marked informally outside the House, and are either still living or have died since December 2017. Under section 2 of the House of Lords Reform Act 2014, peers who fail to attend any sittings of the House during a whole parliamentary session cease to be members of the House at the start of the next session. The following peers have been subject to this