Nigel Farage's pledge to declare a "national emergency" on his first day in Downing Street and to pass Reform UK's programme within 100 days runs into mechanisms that, on the parliamentary record, cannot do the work he has assigned them.
In his keynote to the Reform UK conference at the Birmingham NEC on Friday, the party leader said Parliament would be made to sit round the clock, that he would create hundreds of peers if the House of Lords obstructed his bills, and that he would consider changing how judges are appointed. He posted on X the same evening: "On my first day as Prime Minister, I will declare a national emergency. Parliament will sit 24 hours a day until all necessary bills have been passed."
There is no statutory act of declaring a national emergency in current UK law. The formal proclamation step existed under the Emergency Powers Act 1920, which was superseded by the Civil Contingencies Act 2004. Under that Act the trigger is simply the making of emergency regulations, and section 19 defines an emergency as serious damage to human welfare or the environment, or war or terrorism threatening the security of the United Kingdom. Regulations made under it must be approved by both Houses within seven days or they lapse, so the route runs through the Lords rather than around them. They expire after 30 days, though fresh regulations may be made, and section 23 bars them from amending the Human Rights Act 1998. Reform UK has not said on the record which legal instrument a "national emergency" would be.
On the sitting hours, Farage told delegates: "Parliament will sit, if necessary, for 24 hours a day, for six days a week until we pass the necessary legislation." Sitting times are set by the House itself. Standing Order No 9 fixes the meeting times and the moment of interruption, and Standing Order No 15 allows exempted business to be taken at any hour though opposed; the meeting times set by Standing Orders No 9 and No 11 run from Monday to Friday only. A government with a majority can secure late or weekend sittings by a business of the House motion, as it did for the Falklands debate on Saturday 3 April 1982 and for the Brexit sitting of Saturday 19 October 2019, between which parliament.uk records no Saturday sitting at all. The Lords, by contrast, is self-regulating, has no programme motions and no effective guillotine, so longer Commons hours do not compress the second chamber's timetable. Peers can take two stages of a bill in one day by suspending their own standing order, as they did for the Coronavirus Act, but only by consent.
In extracts released before the speech, Farage said: "Within days of winning the general election, we will introduce dozens of Bills and force Parliament to sit all through summer for seven days a week to pass them", according to LBC. Introducing a bill is a formality at first reading. Passing one at speed is possible, as with the Coronavirus Act 2020, which cleared all Commons stages between 19 and 23 March and the Lords by 25 March. Contested bills take far longer: the Rwanda legislation ran four and a half months from first reading to Royal Assent, five weeks of that in exchanges between the two Houses.
The ultimate override is slower still. The House of Commons Library states that under the Parliament Acts 1911 and 1949 a bill must pass the Commons in two successive sessions with at least a year between the first Commons second reading and the third reading in the second session. That is more than three times the 100-day window.
Farage said he expected the Lords to defer to Reform's manifesto "as they've done with the Salisbury Convention for over a century". The House of Lords Library dates the convention to an understanding reached between Viscount Addison and Viscount Cranborne after the 1945 general election, 81 years ago. The same Library traces an older referendal doctrine to the third Marquess of Salisbury from 1869, but that doctrine held the Lords entitled to send a measure back to the electorate rather than to defer to a manifesto. As the Joint Committee on Conventions set it out in 2006, the convention accords a manifesto bill a second reading and protects it from wrecking amendments; it does not prevent amendment, delay or repeated exchanges of the kind the Rwanda bill met.
Failing that, he said: "We'll appoint hundreds of new peers so that we have a majority in the House of Lords." He gave no figure. He offered a third course as well, a referendum on the composition of the House, after which peers "would be swept away by a British public appalled by them". There is no statutory cap on appointments and a prime minister may disregard the advice of the House of Lords Appointments Commission, but letters patent, writs of summons and introductions take weeks for each tranche. The only precedent is a conditional one. Edward VII told Asquith in 1910 that he would not create peers until after a second general election, and the undertaking George V gave on 16 November 1910 held good only "in the event of the policy of the Government being approved by an adequate majority in the new House of Commons". The government fought and won that election. No peers were created, and the Lords gave way in August 1911.
The first day is the harder claim. After the 2024 general election, polling was on 4 July, the Commons first met on 9 July to elect a Speaker, the State Opening followed on 17 July, and the first Order Paper of the new session, on which bills could be presented, appeared the day after the King's Speech, according to the Hansard Society. On a new prime minister's first day Parliament is not sitting, members have not been sworn in and no Speaker has been chosen.
City AM, writing the day before the speech, said Reform UK officials had been approached for comment on whether the King's Speech, without which no government bill can proceed, would take place on Farage's first day in office. The paper reported no reply.
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