Salisbury Convention

The fifth Marquess of Salisbury (grandson of the third) announced that the Lords "would not seek to thwart the main lines of Labour's legislation provided it derived from the party's manifesto for the previous election".

As Clement Attlee's Labour government had a clear electoral mandate to deliver the policies of nationalisation and welfare state measures, supporters and commentators supposed that the unelected House of Lords would not oppose the second reading of such legislation.

Ministers and ex-ministers in the Lords echoed that the destruction and social plight caused by World War II called for more state spending.

Baroness Evans of Bowes Park, Leader of the House of Lords, claimed that the convention applied to the Conservative manifesto, but not to their DUP confidence-and-supply partners.

[9] Baroness Smith of Basildon, Shadow Leader of the House of Lords, said it was "far from clear that the Salisbury-Addison Convention was ever intended to apply to minority governments".