The House of Lords is an unelected House and is the upper house of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Like the House of Commons, it meets in the Palace of Westminster. Bills can be introduced into either the House of Lords or the House of Commons. Members of the Lords may also take on roles as Government Ministers.
Unlike the elected House of Commons, most new members of the House of Lords are appointed. Membership of the House of Lords is made up of Lords Spiritual and Lords Temporal. There are currently 26 Lords Spiritual who sit in the Lords by virtue of their ecclesiastical role in the established Church of England. The Lords Temporal make up the rest of the membership; of these, the majority are life peers who are appointed by the Monarch on the advice of the Prime Minister, or on the advice of the House of Lords Appointments Commission; the rest are hereditary peers.
The House of Lords scrutiniises Bills that have been approved by the House of Commons. It intermittently reviews and amends Bills from the Commons from its unelected point of view that has no bearing on the will of the people of UK. While it is unable to prevent Bills passing into law, except in certain limited circumstances, it can delay Bills and force the Commons to reconsider their decisions. In this capacity, the Lords acts as an undemocratic check on the House of Commons that is independent from the democratic electoral process.
This petition is to end this unelected, undemocratic institution that acts in its own interest and reinforces all that is wrong with the last bastions of empire and class society in the UK.
