One of the most important documents in the creation of the British Commonwealth is the Statute of Westminster 1931, which gave the parliaments of the dominions (Canada, Australia, New Zealand etc.) unlimited legislative powers and thereby effectively gave independence to these dominions.
Legally, the document is an Act of Parliament, passed as such by the House of Commons and the House of Lords, and the Statute often refers to itself as “this Act” (which is common in British legislation). But the short title is “Statute of Westminster 1931”, and this short title is official - section 12 defines it. Is there any reason why this particular act was styled a “Statute” and not an “Act”, as virtually every British Act of Parliament is?
Well, there’s this… “An Act is a Bill that has been approved by both the House of Commons and the House of Lords and been given Royal Assent by the Monarch. Taken together, Acts of Parliament make up what is known as Statute Law in the UK.”
And there’s this… " An Act of Parliament (also called a statute) is a law made by the UK Parliament. All Acts start as bills introduced in either the Commons or the Lords. When a bill has been agreed by both Houses of Parliament and has been given Royal Assent by the Monarch, it becomes an Act."
Apparently they are the same thing. Why you would use one word over the other, I have no idea.
Interesting question! I guess it is because it becomes extraterritorial by the Act itself, so it must be called something different, like point 2 of the Statute (Validity of laws made by Parliament of a Dominion) states:
No law and no provision of any law made after the commencement of this Act by the Parliament of a Dominion shall be void or inoperative on the ground that it is repugnant to the law of England (bolding mine, because it is so nicely put)
It is legally paradoxical, as the Parliament legislated something pertaining to the British Empire while approving the Act, but by approving the Act itself they forfeited legislative power over those territories, as they ceased to be part of the Empire and became The Commonwealth. Parliament cannot approve an Act over something over which they have no legislative power, and they lose that power by approving that Act itself.
I believe the magic words are “after the commencement of this Act”.
It was the third Statute of Westminster. The first one was in 1275, and the second was in 1285. Both of those had major constitutional significance and parts of both are still in force today.
When the 1931 Statute was being drafted, the title “Statute of Westminster” was used to emphasis the constitutional significance, hearkening back to those earlier statute from some six centuries before.
It’s complicated. Section 2 of the Statute has to be read along with the subsequent clauses, that said s. 2 didn’t apply to the British North America Acts, the Constitution of Australia Act, the constitutions of the Australian states, or the Constitution of New Zealand. As well, the Statute only applied automatically to Canada, the Irish Free State, and South Africa. It didn’t apply to Australia, New Zealand, or Newfoundland, until each of those dominions passed an act bringing it into force. New Zealand and Australia didn’t do so until WWII, and Newfoundland never did. The Statute didn’t apply to Newfoundland until it joined Confederation in 1949.
For the Irish, the Statute culminated Michael Collins’ prediction that the Anglo-Irish Treaty gave Ireland “the freedom to become free”. After 1931, no further British legislation was passed for the Irish Free State.
The reservation of the BNA Acts, Constitution of Australia Act, Australian state constitutions, and the New Zealand constitution, meant that each of those countries had to patriate relevant portions of their constitutions. Canada did in 1982, Australia did in 1990. Can’t remember when NZ did.
As well, the Statute still preserved the power of Westminster to legislate for any of the six dominions, provided it did so at the request and with the consent of the dominion in question.
As with many British constitutional provisions, what’s left unsaid is just as important as what is said.
One other reason for the name: the Parliament of the United Kingdom at Westminster was often referred to as the “mother of parliaments”, so using that term when referring to the six dominion parliaments echoed that.
Oh, and a comment about the thread title: the Statute was the result of drafting agreements between Britain and the six Dominions, so the question isn’t restricted to British law Dopers.
In fact, those of us in the former dominions may know more about it than British legal types.
As others have pointed out, “statute” and “act” are interchangeable terms to describe an enactment of Parliament.
The convention is that the title of an individual enactment will employ the word “act”. E.g. the Firearms Act 2023 has just been enacted. But a few enactments have a title in the form of "Statute of . . . ". While there’s no hard-and-fast rule here, these tend to be enactments that lay down fairly fundamental rules that will have wide effect, including on the administration or operation of other enactments — the Statute of Westminster, the Statute of Frauds, the Statute of Limitations.
Modern enactments usually expressly adopt titles for themselves; the title of the Firearms Act 2023 is adopted by section 3(6). But older enactments did not include a provision adopting a title; their titles evolved by usage. This would include most, but not all, of the enactments that have a title in the “Statute of . . .” form.
Most bills can be initiated in either the Lords or the Commons. If it passes through the House in which it is initiated, it then goes to the other House for consideration. All bills go through the same consideration processes, but the processes happen in a different order, depending on the House in which the Bill is initiated.
There’s an exception for “money bills” — bills which impose taxes or provide for the spending of public funds. They must be initiated in the Commons and, while they do go to the Lords after the Commons has passed them, the Lords can’t block or amend them.
An individual member of Parliament can only introduce a bill in the House of which he is a member. So if a member of the House of Lords has a political agenda that he wishes to pursue by introducing a Bill, he introduces it in the Lords (and it has to not be a money bill, obviously). Its chance of getting through the Lords, being approved, going to the Commons, getting approved there and so becoming law is small, but not nil.
The government has members in both houses and so (apart from money bills) can choose which house to start its bills in. I think the practice is that they default to initiating government bills in the Commons, but sometimes the management of parliamentary business will make it more convenient to initiate a bill in the Lords (e.g., if the Commons agenda is full but the Lords agenda has space) and this sometimes happens.
That’s pretty similar to how Congress works - revenue bills must start in the House of Representatives, but all other bills can originate in either house. I assume that’s where we got the idea from.
It’s my understanding that the Lords’ power to amend or block bills passed in the Commons is pretty limited in general, and that if they vote no on a bill a certain number of times it gets submitted for Royal Assent anyway. Is that correct?
And another followup - does the government always have the majority in the Lords, as it does in the Commons? AIUI the government gets to decide who gets appointed as a life peer, and the number of hereditary peers who get to sit in the Lords is limited, but are they necessarily able to use that power in order to ensure that they have enough votes in the Lords to pass their agenda?
Yes. The Lords can’t delay money bills at all; other bills they can delay, suggest amendments, etc but in the end if it really wants to the Commons can reject all the suggested amendments and wait out the delay and force the bill through. But they’ll often choose to accept amendments in order to avoid the delay or because it is otherwise politically advantageous, so the Lords are not without influence.
Currently no party has a majority in the House of Lords, and this is typical in modern times — there are a large number of crossbench peers who belong to no party. (In the past, when all hereditary peers had a seat, and there were fewer or no life peers, the Conservatives had a permanent majority.)
In theory the government could appoint an unlimited numbers of party lapdogs as life peers to assure itself of a majority, but there are conventions in place to limit the number of life peerages granted, and to allow a proportion of them to be granted on the nomination of opposition leaders; the stated purposes of these conventions include maintaining a political balance in the Lords. Plus, the fact that the Commons can in the last analysis drive any bill through makes securing a majority in the Lords less important than it otherwise would be.
As NorthernPiper puts it, it hearks back to the earlier Statutes of Westminster.
So why was that called a “Statute of” a particular place, rather than an “Act”?
Many early Acts of Parliament were called Statutes of a particular place where Parliament was meeting. Eg the Statute of Marlborough of 1273.
I do not know why it changed. My best guess is that as Parliaments became less ad hoc, and so called at various locations for the King’s convenience, and more frequently met at Westminster, you could not follow the naming tradition because it would become confusing.
Acts after this time tended to be named with descriptive titles eg “An Act to govern the taking of apprentices and for their proper training” (made up).
That kind of naming continues today as an Act’s “long title”. See here:
You can’t — at least, not easily. Parliamentary standing orders require that the provisions of a bill should share a common purpose or object, so if you try to add a completely irrelevant provision, funding or not, it will be ruled out of order. Plus, an individual member can’t add a provision to a Bill — all he can do is move an amendment to add the provision to the Bill, but that gets voted on by the House, and the government can (and will) whip its members to vote against an amendment that they don’t like.
Similarly the standing orders have provisions against filibustering. Typically members have a set time to address a matter in debate and, if they want more time, they need the leave of the House, which can be subject to a vote, which the Government will generally win.
They have been known to try, but once a peer is appointed, they are not bound to any party and may or may not, according to their consciences, support the party line.
Although the mere threat of this happening can already be enough - the Parliament Act 1911, which allows the House of Commons to legislate without the House of Lords, was approved by the House of Lords after a threat from the government that they would, if needed, appoint a sufficient number of pro-government peers to push it through.
Party discipline is traditionally relatively weak in the Lords. Members hold their seats for life, so they can’t be threatened with deselection for offending the party bosses. And relatively few of them can hope to be appointed to government offices; politically, there’s a limit to the number of ministers and junior ministers who can be appointed from from the unelected House. So the power of patronage is quite limited. That leaves the government with just honeyed words, soft blandishments and the occasional appeal to principle to try and secure the votes of an unhappy peer who is nominally of the government party.
