Member

Prior to New Labour’s constitutional creativity, the Lord Chancellor sat on the Woolsack and oversaw our debate. He was akin to the Lord Speaker and was integral to the work of this House, but since the passing of the Constitutional Reform Act 2005—which I continue to describe as something of a mess—the Lord Chancellor and your Lordships’ House have been kept apart. Now the Lord Chancellor invariably sits in the other place. Prior to the passage of the 2005 Act, I believe the last person to serve as Lord Chancellor who was not a Member of your Lordships’ House was Charles Yorke, the Member of Parliament for Cambridge University—in the great days when Oxford and Cambridge Universities returned their own MPs—who died three days after being appointed and before the Great Seal had been affixed to the Letters Patent raising him to the peerage.