There were *** members of the House of Lords in the United Kingdom who were aged between 70 and 79 in 2020,the most of any age bracket. By comparison there were only **** members of the House of Lords aged 39 or under.

As of January 2025, there were 799 members of the House of Lords in the United Kingdom, with 272 Lords belonging to the Conservative Party, 185 to the Labour Party, and 184 crossbenchers. The remaining members of the House of Lords belong to smaller political parties, or are not affiliated to a political party.

As of 2025, there were *** men, and *** women in the United Kingdom's House of Lords. The Labour Party had the most female members of the House of Lords at **, followed by the Conservative Party at **.

The database covers all elected Members of the House of Commons, Devolved Governments and the House of Lords. The database also includes Parliamentary contact details, Cabinet and Leadership roles and Political Affiliation categorisation.

Data is refreshed in real time as national and by-elections take place

This statistic shows the results of a survey of British adults in 2018, regarding the future of the House of Lords. Of respondents, ** percent wanted to see the House of Lords replaced by a partly or wholly elected chamber, while ** percent wanted to see it abolished entirely. Only ** percent of respondents were happy with the current system in which members of the House of Lords are appointed.

Abstract copyright UK Data Service and data collection copyright owner. The objectives of the project were: to produce the first ethnography of the House of Lords and contribute to knowledge about Parliament; to explore cultural and political changes within the House of Lords and contribute to anthropological theory about culture and power; to disseminate findings to academics, those involved in reform, and the public. The data collected from the project comprised two parts - a database of information on the experience and expertise of members of the House of Lords, and ethnographic materials - including fieldnotes, interview transcripts and questionnaires. The database aimed to cover the range of experience and expertise of all 714 members of the House of Lords in 2002. Users should note that the database is available from the UK Data Archive, but the ethnographic materials are subject to a 30-year embargo, ending January 2033 (see 'Availability' section).

Abstract copyright UK Data Service and data collection copyright owner. To study the social and economic composition of Parliament (1691 - 1693) and the political behaviour of the men who sat in it. Main Topics: Variables Details of attendance at sessions and parliaments, constituency type and size, and political party of respondent. Number of: second reading committee nominations, committees of investigation nominations, tellerships, speeches, areas of service (data were collected for 1st and 2nd sessions). Please note: this study does not include information on named individuals and would therefore not be useful for personal family history research. 159 MP's were selected as `workers'. A working member was defined as one who reached a high level of activity in at least one of the four areas of service selected for analysis (see publication) Compilation or synthesis of existing material Compilation of published data plus materials from private papers, etc.

Abstract copyright UK Data Service and data collection copyright owner. To study the social and economic composition of Parliament (1852 - 1867) and the political behaviour of the men who sat in it. Main Topics: Variables Political party of respondent, whether married at time of election, nationality, date and place of birth, occupation, social class, whether titled, legal status, career history, office held, membership of clubs, details of elections fought and results, number of relatives involved in politics. Respondent's voting behaviour for issues between 1852 and 1867, for example: franchise, ballot procedures, church rates, Ireland, foreign policy, education, armed forces, taxes, etc. Please note: this study does not include information on named individuals and would therefore not be useful for personal family history research. 51 successful candidates 32 unsuccessful candidates Compilation or synthesis of existing material Compilation of published data plus materials from private papers etc.

Abstract copyright UK Data Service and data collection copyright owner. To study the social and economic composition of Parliament (1841 - 1847) and the political behaviour of the men who sat in it. Main Topics: Variables Details of constituency (location, number of seats, number of registered voters) place of residence, whether father or other relative was a member of Parliament for any constituency, respondent's and father's occupations (affiliation if barrister, banking connection, business interest). Social class, whether title held, date of earliest family title, further education, entry into Parliament (date, age, whether present during 1841 election and/or 1847 dissolution), local offices held. Number of divisions in which respondent participated, the fit of each divisional decision (if it did fit) in each of the 24 scales used in the project. Issues included: political reform, income tax, corn laws, landed interest, working class distress, Ireland, religion, factory legislation, public health, Canada wheat, Poor Law, etc. Please note: this study does not include information on named individuals and would therefore not be useful for personal family history research.

Abstract copyright UK Data Service and data collection copyright owner. This project investigated changes in behaviour and attitudes following the reform in 1999 which removed the majority of hereditary peers from the House of Lords. The central research question was whether the (still unelected) second chamber would grow in confidence and strength as a result of its least defensible element being removed, and the resultant change in party balance which saw it become a 'no overall control' chamber. Through study of peers' voting records, and particularly of government defeats in the chamber, the project assessed the impact of the second chamber on policy. It also investigated changing behaviour within the party and Crossbench groups. Sources included the public record, particularly Hansard, postal questionnaire surveys of peers conducted in 2005 and 2007, in-depth interviews with peers and public opinion poll questions on the MORI Omnibus surveys fielded in 2005 and 2007. Users should note that this study includes only the data from the 2005 survey of peers, the 2005 public opinion poll, defeats and divisions from 2000-2006 and publicly-available demographic information on peers. The project also provided some questions to be included in a 2005 survey of Members of Parliament (MPs), which is held separately under SN 5443, Devolution, Elected Representatives and Constituency Representation in Scotland and Wales, 2000-2005. Further information about the project may be found on the ESRC's A more legitimate and more powerful Upper House? The semi-reformed House of Lords award page.

Most democracies allow their Members of Parliament (MPs) to concurrently be employed in the private sector. A widespread worry is that politicians leverage their current or past posts within parliament, for example as ministers or committee chairs, to gain lucrative jobs. However, we know little about whether "moonlighting" income is indeed driven by these positions. I analyze comprehensive new panel data on the private sector earnings of all members of the UK House of Commons 2010--2016. Focusing on within-legislator variation, I find that currently holding an influential position does not cause an increase in income from outside jobs. Politicians do see higher earnings soon after leaving their parliamentary posts, but this effect is concentrated among cabinet ministers. The article advances the literature by identifying which political posts lead to financial benefits in the private sector -- and when.

Parliament has played a long and significant role in the governing of the UK. It can trace its origins to the medieval period and is considered to be one of the oldest continuous representative assemblies in the world. It consists of two chambers; the (upper) House of Lords in which members and peers are generally appointed and the (lower) house of Commons in which all members (often referred to as MPs) are elected. Historically, MP’s represented either a town (referred to historically as a ‘Burgess’ or ‘Borough’) or the county. Prior to the 19th century, only a small portion of the population (usually male landowners) where legally allowed to cast a vote for the appointment of their MP. Between 1660 and 1832, the electoral system became more corrupt as many constituency anomalies became more apparent. Often referred to as ‘Rotten Boroughs’ these where very small towns consisting sometimes of a handful of eligible voters who, due to minimal changes to the electoral system where able to appoint not one but two MPs. Whereas large industrial centres that where burgeoning due to the migration of people at the hight of the industrial revolution has no MPs. There were also the ‘Pocket Boroughs’ where wealthy aristocrats where able to exert control to get their preferred candidates elected. The ‘Great Reform Act’ of 1832 did much to abolish these anomalies and ‘rotten borough’s. By the time the Ordnance Survey undertook their large scale mapping of Britain, many of post 1832 constituencies where recorded. Since 1832, there has been a litany of changes to parliamentary constituencies, with the last being as recent as 2023.

For further information about Members of Parliament in the York area please visit the City of York Council website. *Please note that the data published within this dataset is a live API link to CYC's GIS server. Any changes made to the master copy of the data will be immediately reflected in the resources of this dataset.The date shown in the "Last Updated" field of each GIS resource reflects when the data was first published.

As of 2020, Malta was the country with the highest number of parliament members per 100,000 inhabitants. This Southern European country counted 14.3 members in the parliament. By contrast, the Spanish parliament had the lowest number of members in proportion to the population.

In September 2020, a constitutional referendum was held in Italy on the number of parliament members. The Italian Parliament consists of the Chamber of Deputies and Senate of the Republic. The data depicted in the chart show the number of deputies before the referendum, which amounted to 630 members. For every 100,000 individuals, Italy had one deputy, one of the lowest number in the European Union in proportion to country's population. After the referendum, Italy could have just 0.7 members in the Chamber of Deputies per 100,000 population, ranking last in the EU.

Abstract copyright UK Data Service and data collection copyright owner. To study the social and economic composition of Parliament (1841 - 1847) and the political behaviour of the men who sat in it. Main Topics: Variables Topic and date of division, party alignment for each division, use of whips, total votes, party votes. The number of Ayes and Noes for the whole Parliament and for each of the two main party groups. The P-value (the % voting negative) for the whole Parliament, the Conservatives, the Liberals, and the two main groups within the Conservatives, those who were not Peelites and those who were: and a summary statistic showing the proportion voting negative for each of these five groups. The fit of each division (if it did fit) in each of the 24 scales used in the project. Please note: this study does not include information on named individuals and would therefore not be useful for personal family history research. Stratified, systematic sample. All divisions were classified by topic. Divisions in which less than 200 participated were excluded Compilation or synthesis of existing material Compilation of published data and empirically derived scale scores

A data set listing all private members' bills proposed in the UK House of Commons between the 1964 and 2017 general elections.

About 80 percent of democracies allow legislators to be employed in the private sector while they hold office. However, we know little about the consequences of this practice. In this article, I use newly assembled panel data of all members of the UK House of Commons and a difference-in-differences design to investigate how legislators change their parliamentary behavior when they have outside earnings. When holding a private sector job, members of the governing Conservative Party, who earn the vast majority of outside income, change whether and how they vote on the floor of parliament as well as increase the number of written parliamentary questions they ask by 60 percent. For the latter, I demonstrate a targeted pattern which suggests that the increase relates to their employment. The article thus shows that one of the most common, and yet least studied, forms of money in politics affects politicians’ parliamentary behavior.

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MP Religion & Assisted Dying Dashboard

This data powers a dashboard presenting insights into the religious affiliations and Assisted Dying voting patterns of UK Members of Parliament (MPs). It can be found here:

👉 https://davidjeffery.shinyapps.io/mp-religion/.

Please cite all uses of the data.

📊 What is this dashboard?

This dashboard presents insights into the religious affiliations and Assisted Dying voting patterns of UK Members of Parliament. It combines publicly available data to support transparency and understanding of Parliament’s composition.

📂 Where does the data come from?

The data is compiled from publicly available parliamentary records and voting data. You can download it directly from the link in the header or view it in the Raw Data tab of the dashboard.

🙏 How is religion determined?

There are three steps to determining religion. An MP is classified as having a religion based on the following criteria:

1. If the MP is a member of a religiously based group, they are classified as a member of that religion.

2. If a member has publicly spoken about their religion, they are classified as a member of that religion.

3. Finally, the text an MP swore in on is used to help infer their religion.

These sources are used in order of priority. For example, Tim Farron is a member of Christians in Parliament and has spoken about his religious views. However, he did not take the oath on the Bible, but made a solemn affirmation on no text. Regardless, he is still classed as Christian.

🧾 Variable Reference

What do those variable names mean?

• Member ID – member_id – A unique numeric identifier for each MP provided by Parliament.

• Name – display_as – The full display name of the MP.

• Gender – gender – The MP’s gender.

• Party – party – The full political party name.

• Party (Simplified) – party_simple – A shortened or cleaned version of the party name.

• Religion – mp_final_relig – The MP’s classified religion based on multiple criteria outlined above.

• AD: 2nd Reading Vote – ass_suicide_2nd – The MP’s vote (Yes, No, Abstain) on the Assisted Dying Bill 2nd Reading.

• AD: 3rd Reading Vote – ass_suicide_3rd – The MP’s vote (Yes, No, Abstain) on the Assisted Dying Bill 3rd Reading.

• LGBT Status – lgbt – Whether the MP is publicly identified as LGBT (LGBT.MP).

• Ethnic Minority – ethnic_mp – Whether the MP identifies as an ethnic minority.

• Religious Group: Christian – relig_christian – MP belongs to a Christian group (1 = Yes).

• Religious Group: Muslim – relig_muslim – MP belongs to a Muslim group (1 = Yes).

• Religious Group: Jewish – relig_jewish – MP belongs to a Jewish group (1 = Yes).

• Religious Group: Sikh – relig_sikh – MP belongs to a Sikh group (1 = Yes).

• Oath Taken – mp_swear – Whether the MP took the Oath or made an Affirmation.

• Oath Book – mp_swear_book – The specific religious text (e.g., Bible, Quran) used when swearing in.

• Inferred Religion – mp_inferred_relig – The religion inferred from the swearing-in text.

• Election Outcome – elected – Whether the MP was re-elected in the most recent election.

• Majority – majority – The MP’s vote share margin.

• Constituency Type – constituency_type – Type: Borough or County.

• Claimant Rate – cen_claimant – % of constituents claiming unemployment benefits.

• % White (Census) – cen_eth_white – Proportion of white ethnicity in the constituency.

• % Christian – cen_rel_christian – Constituency Christian population from the Census.

• % Buddhist – cen_rel_buddhist – Constituency Buddhist population.

• % Hindu – cen_rel_hindu – Constituency Hindu population.

• % Jewish – cen_rel_jewish – Constituency Jewish population.

• % Muslim – cen_rel_muslim – Constituency Muslim population.

• % Sikh – cen_rel_sikh – Constituency Sikh population.

• % No Religion – cen_rel_no religion – Constituents identifying as non-religious.

• % No Qualifications – cen_qual_none – Constituents with no formal qualifications.

• % Graduates – cen_qual_grad – Constituents with degree-level education.

• % Some Disability – cen_disab_some – Constituents reporting a form of disability.

✝️ Why are Catholics separate from Christians?

Don’t worry, I’m not suggesting we bring back the Test Acts. The logic here is that more granular data is better.

When swearing in, there are versions of the Bible specific to Catholics — typically the New Jerusalem Bible or the Douay–Rheims Bible — whereas if someone just asks for “the Bible”, they are given the King James Version and could be from any Christian denomination.

It would be a shame to lose that detail, so I provide the option to break out Catholic MPs separately.

📚 Where can I find more information about swearing in and the parliamentary oath?

The Parliament website has a great guide:

👉 https://www.parliament.uk/about/how/elections-and-voting/swearingin/

👤 Who created this dashboard?

This dashboard was created by Dr David Jeffery, University of Liverpool.

Follow me on Twitter/X or Bluesky.

❓ Why did you create this dashboard?

I needed to know MPs’ religion, and the text MPs used to swear in seemed like a valid proxy. This information was held by Humanists UK and when I asked for it, they said no.

So I did what any time-starved academic would do: I collected the data myself, by hand, and decided to make it public.

The historical development of rules of debate in the UK House of Commons raises an important puzzle: why do members of parliament impose limits on their own rights? Despite a growing interest in British Political Development (BPD) and the institutional changes of nineteenth-century UK politics, the academic literature has remained largely silent on this topic. Three competing explanations have emerged in studies of the US Congress, focusing on efficiency, partisan forces, and non-partisan (or: ideology-based) accounts. This paper falls broadly in the third category, offering a consensus-oriented explanation of the historical development of parliamentary rules. Working from a new dataset on the reform of standing orders in the House of Commons over a period spanning 205 years (1811-2015), as well as records of over six million speeches, I argue that MPs commit more quickly to passing restrictive rules in the face of obstruction when legislator preferences are proximate within both the opposition and government, and when polarisation between both sides of the aisle is low. The research represents, to my knowledge, the first systematic and directional test of a range of competing theories of parliamentary reform in the UK context, shedding light on the process of parliamentary reform over a prolonged period of Commons history, and advancing several new measures of polarisation in the UK House of Commons.