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House of Lords
House of Lords chamber

The House of Lords chamber

The House of Lords is the upper house of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, meeting in Westminster Palace in London, England. The house has 840 seats, divided between the 26 Lords Spiritual (bishops from the Church of England) and the Lords Temporal (people with peerage titles that do not outlive them, appointed by the monarch with the advice of the Prime Minister or the House of Lords Appointments Commission), with just four dukes being counted among the lords. The House of Lords has the distinction of being the only upper house to have more members than the lower house (in Britain's case, the House of Commons), and the House of Lords is responsible for delaying bills to force the Commons to reconsider their decisions, checking the elected Commons as the non-elected upper house. The House is usually divided between the UK Conservative Party and UK Labor Party, with the Liberal Democrats having a smaller percentage of seats; the bishops always sit with the government.

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