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 Peerage Act 1963 allowed hereditary peers to disclaim their peerage, allowing them to vote and stand for elections to the House of Commons. It also permitted hereditary peers in the Peerage of Scotland and female hereditary peers to sit in the House of Lords without the election of representative peers as had been the procedure in Scotland prior to the Act. In 1968, Harold Wilson's Labour Government published a white paper on reform of the House of Lords. Main proposals made in the white paper were: The Parliament (No. 2) Bill, which embodied proposals of the white paper, was introduced