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The crossbench is shown centrally in the foreground.


United Kingdom[edit]


An "increasing number" of Crossbenchers have been created peers for non-political reasons.[1] Since its establishment in May 2000, the House of Lords Appointments Commission has nominated a total of 67 non-party-political life peers who joined the House of Lords as Crossbenchers.[2]

There are currently 173 Crossbenchers, comprising approximately 22% of the sitting members in the House of Lords and making them the third largest parliamentary group after the Conservative and Labour parties.[3] From April 2007 to 2009, the number of Crossbenchers was higher than the number of Conservatives in the Lords for the first time.[4]



The Crossbenchers do not take a collective position on issues, and so have no whips; however, they do elect from among themselves a convenor for administrative purposes, and to keep them up-to-date with the business of the House. The current convenor is David Hope, Baron Hope of Craighead, who took the office in September 2015.[5] While convenors are not part of the "usual channels" (i.e., the party whips who decide the business of the House), they have been included in their discussions in recent years.[6]







Main article: Third party (Canada)

The term generally is not used for the Canadian Parliament or any of the provincial or territorial legislatures. Instead, any party that is not the governing party is an opposition party, with the largest of these designated the official opposition (and their leader is designated Leader of the Opposition); while all other opposition parties are called third parties, a term derived from American politics. Only parties with 12 or more seats in the House of Commons are officially "parties" for procedural purposes. Although parties with fewer than 12 seats nevertheless behave like political parties, their members are treated as individual members.

Third parties have been common in Canadian legislatures since the 1920s. In particular, legislatures often contain members of an ideological party, such as a labour-based party (Progressive Party, Labour Party, CCF, NDP) or a right-wing party (Socreds, Reform Party, Wildrose Party).

See also[edit]


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