The Resignation from the British House of Commons reference article from the English Wikipedia on 24-Apr-2004
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Resignation from the British House of Commons

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Members of Parliament of the House of Commons in the United Kingdom are forbidden from resigninging. Instead, a legal fiction is used.

The offices of

are "paid offices under the Crown" , appointment to which disqualifies its holder from sitting as a Member of Parliament (MP). It is therefore used to allow MPs to effectively resign their seats, a move which is formally prohibited. A number of offices have been used for this purpose, but only the Chiltern Hundreds and the Manor of Northstead are used today.

The offices are only nominally paid. Generally they are held until the next time it is used to effect the resignation of an MP. The Chiltern Hundreds is usually used alternately with the Manor of Northstead, which makes it possible for two members to resign at exactly the same time. When more than two MPs resign at a time, as for example happened when 15 Ulster Unionist MPs resigned on December 17 1985, the resignations are in theory not simultaneous but instead spread throughout the day, with each member holding one of the offices for a short time. The holder can subsequently be re-elected to Parliament.

In 1623 a rule was declared that said that members of Parliament were given a trust to represent their constituencies, and therefore were not at liberty to resign them. In those days, Parliament was relatively weaker, and service was sometimes considered a resented duty rather than a position of power and honour. However, an MP who accepts an "office of profit" from the Crown was obliged to leave his post, it being feared that his independence was compromised if he be in the King's pay. Therefore, the legal fiction was invented that the MP who wished to quit applied to the King for the post of "steward of the Chiltern Hundreds" or "steward of the Manor of Northstead", obsolescent offices of negligible duties and scant profit, but in the King's gift nonetheless.

The Chiltern Hundreds were first used as a pretext for resignation on January 17, 1751, by John Pitt.

The Manor of Northstead was first used as a pretext for resignation in 1844.

See also: House of Commons Disqualification Act

Table of contents
1 Chiltern Hundreds
2 Northstead
3 External links

Chiltern Hundreds

Northstead

External links