 In August 2014, former Speaker of the House of Commons Baroness Betty Boothroyd requested that "older peers should retire gracefully" to ease the overcrowding in the House of Lords.She also criticised successive prime ministers for filling the second chamber with "lobby fodder" in an attempt to help their policies become law.She made her remarks days before a new batch of peers were due to be created and several months after the passage of the House of Lords Reform Act 2014 which enabled peers to retire or resign their seats in the House, which had previously been impossible.