This House of Lords Library briefing gives a brief overview of the ceremony for the 2017 State Opening of Parliament and how it differs from previous years.
State Openings of Parliament: Reduced Ceremonial (527 KB , PDF)
It has been announced that the State Opening which will take place on 21 June 2017 will be conducted on the following basis:
This briefing gives an outline of the traditional State Opening Ceremony, followed by a description of the State Openings of 1939 and March 1974, setting out how the ceremonies in these years differed from the norm.
State Openings of Parliament: Reduced Ceremonial (527 KB , PDF)
The Northern Ireland (Executive Formation etc) Bill would extend the deadline for forming a Northern Ireland executive to 8 December 2022. It could be extended for another six weeks to 19 January 2023. The bill is due to complete all its stages in the House of Lords on 5 December 2022.
In 2021, the government announced plans to reform the railways in Great Britain, with many of the proposed changes set out in the ‘Williams-Shapps plan for rail’. In the 2022 Queen’s Speech, the government said that it would legislate for them. However, in October 2022 the government announced that it would delay this primary legislation until the next parliamentary session due to a lack of time but said that non-legislative reforms would go ahead.
In recent years there have been three occasions in which leadership of the government has changed without a general election having been called. This has given rise to questions about the relationship between a government’s legislative agenda and its most recent election manifesto. This article looks at how the Salisbury convention has shaped the House of Lords’ treatment of government manifesto bills.
