Hereditary Peers to be Removed from House of Lords

The last 92 hereditary peers are to be removed from the House of Lords after the Hereditary Peers Bill passed on Tuesday evening, completing a reform that began under Tony Blair more than 25 years ago.

The move fulfils one of Labour's key manifesto pledges and ends a system under which Dukes, Earls, Viscounts and other titled nobles could sit and vote on legislation purely by virtue of their birth. For hundreds of years, that right had been passed down, mostly from fathers to sons, through some of Britain's oldest families. Blair stripped over 600 hereditary peers from the Lords in 1999, calling their presence an "anachronism," but 92 were kept on as a temporary compromise that ultimately lasted more than two decades.

Cabinet Office minister Nick Thomas-Symonds said the old system amounted to "an archaic and undemocratic principle," adding: "Our Parliament should always be a place where talents are recognised and merit counts. It should never be a gallery of old boys' networks, nor a place where titles, many of which were handed out centuries ago, hold power over the will of the people."

Lords Leader Baroness Smith acknowledged the personal dimension of the change, saying: "This has never been about the contribution of individuals but the underlying principle that was agreed by Parliament over 25 years ago that no-one should sit in our Parliament by way of an inherited title." She confirmed that further Lords reforms are in the pipeline, including possible minimum participation requirements and a retirement age for members.

The bill passed with a compromise that defused Conservative opposition. The government offered to convert around 15 hereditary Tory peers into life peers, in exchange for the Conservatives dropping their resistance to the legislation. A Lords source said the deal also involves the Conservatives delivering a number of retirements from among their existing life peers. Conservative Lords leader Lord True confirmed his party would no longer fight the bill, saying he had always believed in reducing "eternal [parliamentary] ping-pong," even if the compromise would be "a bitter pill for some on his side to swallow." The final number of life peerages on offer will be confirmed by the prime minister.

The peers will formally leave when the current parliamentary session ends, which is expected to be in May.

Not everyone is going quietly. The Earl of Devon, whose family has held a place in the Lords for 900 years, described the bill as "regrettable" and complained that the notice period was shorter than the minimum required by employment law. "I think this House, Parliament, and the public more widely will miss us," he said. He added that he would "love to return, but only on merit and not by dint of my hereditary privilege." 

The Lord Speaker, Lord Forsyth of Drumlean, offered a more measured farewell: "Whatever views people may have of this constitutional change, it is sad to say goodbye to friends, who in many cases have contributed significantly to debate and scrutiny and to our institutional memory."

Outside Parliament, reformers welcomed the change. Dr Jess Garland of the Electoral Reform Society said there was "no place in a modern democracy for people influencing our laws due to an accident of birth," calling the removal of peers "gifted a job for life legislating in the House of Lords purely due to who their parents were" a long-overdue step. "No part of Parliament should be a gated community from which the public are excluded," she said.

The Lords currently has around 800 members in total, most of whom are life peers that were appointed on the advice of political parties or an independent commission, alongside Church of England bishops. It can amend but not block legislation, and any changes it makes can be overruled by the elected Commons. The chamber is already larger than the 650-seat House of Commons, and critics have long argued that the appointments system has fuelled cronyism. Britain's upper house, was until now one of only two legislative bodies in the world that still contained a hereditary element.