act of Parliament

Title page of an Elizabethan act of Parliament 1585.

In Britain, a change in the law originating in Parliament and called a statute. Before an act receives the royal assent and becomes law it is a bill. The US equivalent is an act of Congress.

An act of Parliament may be either public (of general effect), local, or private. The body of English statute law comprises all the acts passed by Parliament: the existing list opens with the Statute of Merton, passed in 1235.

A bill may be introduced in either House of Parliament, with the exception of money bills, which the House of Lords cannot initiate and can delay for only one month when such a bill has been passed by the Commons. The Parliament Act 1911 leaves to the Speaker of the House of Commons the decision as to what constitutes a money bill, and, in the case of the other bills, provides for the final passage of a bill into law without the assent of the House of Lords if for three successive sessions (reduced to two by the Parliament Act 1949) it has obtained a majority in the Commons. No bill can be introduced more than once in a session, and it has sometimes been necessary to prorogue (discontinue meetings of) Parliament in order that a bill which has been rejected may be reintroduced without delay.

A public bill may be introduced by any member of Parliament, but usually only government bills, or bills with government support, have much chance of passing into law. Public bills are debated in principle on the second and third readings, and in detail in committee or on report from committee to the whole house. A private bill, affecting only some individual or corporation, is introduced by the petition of the parties concerned, and passes through the same stages. If, however, the preamble of a private bill is not ‘proved’ – that is, if the special committee to which it is referred after its second reading finds that there is no prima-facie cause for it – it is thrown out. All acts are public unless otherwise stated. They are binding on all, and do not need to be publicly promulgated since every citizen is presumed to know what is in them. The public acts of the UK do not apply to the crown (unless specifically made so applicable), the Isle of Man, or the Channel Islands. An act may be temporary, and many temporary acts (100 or so) are renewed from year to year by the Expiring Laws Continuance Act. An act (unless it is stated to be for a definite period and then to come to an end) remains in force in England until repealed, but in Scotland acts that have never been repealed are sometimes held to have lost their force owing to lapse of time.