Crossbencher
independent or minor party member of a legislature
A crossbencher is a minor party or independent member of some legislatures, such as the Parliament of Australia. In the British House of Lords the term refers to members of the parliamentary group of non-political peers. They take their name from the crossbenches, between and perpendicular to the government and opposition benches, where crossbenchers sit in the chamber.
United Kingdom
Crossbench members of the British House of Lords are not aligned to any particular party. Until 2009, these included the Law Lords appointed under the Appellate Jurisdiction Act 1876. In addition, former Speakers of the House of Commons (such as Lord Martin of Springburn and Baroness Boothroyd) and former Lord Speakers of the House of Lords (such as Baroness Hayman and Baroness D'Souza), who by convention are not aligned with any party, also sit as crossbenchers. There are also some non-affiliated members of the House of Lords who are not part of the crossbencher group; this includes some officers, such as the Lord Speaker, and others who are associated with a party but have had the whip withdrawn. Although non-affiliated members, and members of small parties, sometimes physically sit on the crossbenches, they are not members of the crossbench parliamentary group.
An "increasing number" of crossbenchers have been created peers for non-political reasons. 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.
The public source identifies “Crossbencher” as independent or minor party member of a legislature. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Crossbencher, independent and minor.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 13, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q125047. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2009, 1876 and 2000.
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This entry incorporates text from “Crossbencher” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.