Members of Parliament sitting in the House of Commons in the United Kingdom are technically forbidden to resign. To circumvent this prohibition, a legal fiction is used. Appointment to an "office of profit under the Crown" disqualifies an individual from sitting as a Member of Parliament (MP).
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Members of Parliament wishing to give up their seats are commonly appointed by the Chancellor of the Exchequer to an office which has the possibility of a payment from the Crown. A number of offices have been used for this purpose historically, but only two are provided for in present legislation.[1] The two offices which currently allow Members to vacate their seats are:
The offices are only nominally paid. Generally they are held until they are again 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 the same time. When more than two MPs resign at a time, as for example happened when 15 Ulster Unionist MPs resigned in protest at the Anglo-Irish Agreement on 17 December 1985, the resignations are in theory not simultaneous but instead spread throughout the day, each member holding one of the offices for a short time. The holder may subsequently be re-elected to Parliament.
In 1624 a resolution was passed that Members of Parliament were given a trust to represent their constituencies and therefore were not at liberty to resign them.[1] In those days, Parliament was a far weaker institution. Members had to travel to Westminster over a primitive road system, a real problem for those who represented more distant constituencies. While at Westminster (and while in transit to and from) an MP could not effectively tend to personal business back home, yet for their services MPs received only nominal pay. Therefore service in Parliament was sometimes considered a resented duty rather than a position of power and honour.
However, by a provision in the Act of Settlement 1701 (repealed in 1705 and re-enacted in modified form by the Place Act 1707), an MP who accepted an office of profit under the Crown was obliged to leave his post, it being feared that his independence would be compromised if he were in the King's pay. The prohibition was on an MP accepting an office of profit under the Crown, but it did not disqualify someone with such an office being elected to the House of Commons. As a result this meant a by-election when anyone became a government minister, including the Prime Minister. The law was partly changed in 1919, and finally in 1926, so that MPs were no longer disqualified by being appointed to government office.
In consequence the legal fiction was invented that the MP who wished to give up his seat applied to the King for a sinecure post of the Stewardship of an estate which had come into the ownership of the Crown. Such offices were obsolescent, involved negligible duties and scant profit, but were in the King's gift nonetheless.
The procedure was invented by John Pitt, who wanted to vacate his seat for Wareham in order to stand for Dorchester but could not be a candidate while he was still an MP. Pitt wrote to Prime Minister Henry Pelham in May 1750 reporting that he had been invited to stand in Dorchester, and asking for "a new mark of his Majesty's favour [to] enable me to do him these further services".[2] Pelham wrote to William Pitt indicating that he would intervene with King George II to help.[3] On 17 January 1751 Pitt was appointed the role of Steward of the Chiltern Hundreds, and was then elected unopposed for Dorchester.
The Manor of Northstead was first used as a pretext for resignation on 6 April 1842, by Patrick Chalmers, Member for Montrose District of Burghs.
The Chancellor can in theory deny an application, although the last time this happened was to Viscount Chelsea in 1842.[4] When Charles Bradlaugh took the Chiltern Hundreds in 1884 in order to seek a vote of confidence from his constituents, Lord Randolph Churchill and the Conservative-supporting press were highly critical of the Gladstone government for allowing Bradlaugh a new opportunity to demonstrate his popularity with the electors of Northampton.[5]
On 20 January 2011, Gerry Adams submitted a letter of resignation to the Speaker, but did not apply for a Crown office, which would be politically unacceptable for a Sinn Féin politician.[6] On 26 January, a Treasury spokesperson said "Consistent with long-standing precedent, the Chancellor has taken [the letter] as a request to be appointed the Steward and Bailiff of the Manor of Northstead and granted the office."[6] Although David Cameron said during Prime Minister's Questions that Adams had "accepted an office for profit under the Crown", Adams denied this; the Prime Minister's Office stood over the claim but apologised for not having informed Adams of his appointment prior to the public announcement.[7]
The law relating to resignation is now codified and consolidated in section 4 of the House of Commons Disqualification Act 1975:
For the purposes of the provisions of this Act relating to the vacation of the seat of a member of the House of Commons who becomes disqualified by this Act for membership of that House, the office of steward or bailiff of Her Majesty's three Chiltern Hundreds of Stoke, Desborough and Burnham, or of the Manor of Northstead, shall be treated as included among the offices described in Part III of Schedule 1 to this Act.[8]
Other offices formerly used for the same purpose are: