Last night at 10.20PM, the committee of the whole House of Lords on the House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill was finally adjourned. There were five days of committee, close to 150 amendments put forward, and there has been close to forty hours of debate so far. We watched it all, so you don’t have to.
All of this for a Bill only five sections long that fits onto two pages.
To give it its full title, the House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill 2024, will finally remove the remaining 87, all-male, members of the House of Lords who have a right to sit in the House of Lords and govern the UK purely because of a hereditary birthright. A.K.A. they are there just because of who their parents and grandparents were. The Hereditary Peers, the ultimate nepo-baby.
A Labour manifesto commitment, this Bill has been a long time coming after Tony Blair half completed the job in 1999. He removed over 600 Hereditary Peers but settled with the compromise of keeping 92 spots open for them.
Despite the 26-year notice period that the Hereditary Peers have had, there has been an awful lot of effort put in to make sure this debate takes up as much time as possible. The Committee stage of the Hereditary Peers Bill has been a crash course in why it has taken so long to reform the House of Lords, even minutely, in the last quarter-century.
150 amendments to a two-page bill
In the close to 150 amendments put forward by Lords from all parties, the majority were ‘probing’ amendments about what other reforms the government intends to bring. There was a sudden, huge uptake in the cause for an elected second chamber. You can imagine our surprise when stalwart defenders of the current system were suddenly laying amendments on issues such as regional representation in the second chamber and even what voting system we should use in an elected house!
Despite the wording of the Bill, there were few amendments laid that disagreed in principle with the removal of the hereditary peers. They ranged widely from what voting system we could use in an elected chamber to attempts to make sure that daughters of those in the aristocracy are entitled to receive the title of Lady or Baroness upon their Father’s death.
There is no denying that many amendments were genuine, and part of the job of the Lords in holding the government to account on their proposed policy. The Leader of the House herself remarked on how much easier the extensive debate on various other Lords reforms would make the next stages. However, it is hard to believe some are anything but delaying tactics, and their behaviour points to the wider reasons as to why it is crucial we reform the second chamber.
Lords appear to be trying to delay their own reform
A significant portion of the unelected Lords appear to have spent five days doing their best to stall, delay, and disrupt the government’s agenda which – despite their low vote share – they have a clear mandate from the public to carry out.
On this, we agree with Keir Starmer, the current make-up of the House of Lords is indefensible. It is a gated community for unelected politicians who are not properly representative of the regions of the country, nor its people.
As the second-largest legislative chamber in the world, second only to China’s National People’s Congress in Beijing (or Peking according to one Lord, who could do with a new atlas), the Lords is unable to carry out their role of scrutiny of their government with proper legitimacy.
The people of this country should be the ones who decide who writes the laws of the country that govern us. Not the hereditary principle and not the Prime Minister.
This Bill faces many more hurdles yet, as it will now pass to report stage in the Lords where some of the already withdrawn amendments are expected to be raised a second time. Then back to the Commons for the uniquely British rigmarole of ‘ping-pong’ between the two Chambers, as they try to settle on a final text.
Most importantly as this Bill goes forward, we will continue to call on the Government to bring this Bill to a close swiftly and get on with the vital job of further reforming the Lords.
Don’t let the Lords stop reform of the Lords
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