Outgoing Hereditary Peers Criticise "Nasty" Plans To Abolish Them
Lord True is Shadow Leader of the House of Lords (Alamy)
3 min read
A group of hereditary peers on Wednesday tried to make the case for why they should not be removed from the House of Lords, with one affected peer describing Labour's reforms as "nasty". The legislation will almost certainly pass, however.
Peers today took part in the second reading of the House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill.
The legislation seeks to abolish the 92 hereditary seats in the unelected chamber.
The plan, which was part of the Labour Party's election manifesto pledge to modernise the House of Lords, would essentially complete the reforms first put forward by former Labour prime minister Tony Blair in the late nineties. It is ultimately expected to become law thanks to Labour's massive majority in the House of Commons.
However, the Bill has faced fierce opposition within the Upper Chamber, with hereditary and some non-hereditary peers keen to defend the role the former play in the parliamentary process.
Almost 100 Lords signed up to speak in the debate, including a maiden speech from Lord Brady of Altrincham, former chair of the Tory party 1922 committee.
Opposing the plans, he said it was not "immediately obvious" to him why peers like him, who were appointed to the House of Lords by a prime minister, were "inherently superior" to hereditary members.
The legislation has created tension between the Labour Government and opposition and crossbench Lords, who emphasise that the former Labour administration led by Blair had promised to keep the 92 remaining hereditary peers as a compromise.
Baroness Smith, Labour's leader in the Lords, opened by saying the "change started" under Blair and had “still not been completed”, adding that further reform was "long overdue".
Conservative peer Lord True, the shadow leader in the Lords, lamented that it was “sad” to hear the Bill’s arrival be met with applause by some peers. He said "that is not who we are" and "not what we should ever become".
True said the legislation risked “destabilising” the House of Lords with “far-reaching consequences”, claiming that the 26 seats reserved for Church of England bishops would be the next to be abolished. “They will be on an exposed slope if the north wind should blow,” the Conservative peer said.
The Earl of Kinnoull, a Tory hereditary peer, compared the UK constitution to a three-legged stool divided between the executive, legislature and judiciary, and warned that the move to scrap hereditary peers would shift the balance of power towards central government.
He was interrupted before he started his speech. “I haven’t said anything yet," he said, prompting laughter on the benches around him.
Other hereditary peers were less restrained.
“This is a thoroughly nasty little Bill,” said Tory peer Lord Strathcylde, “rushed through the House of Commons and brought to us with little thought about the future”.
He argued that it broke a “fundamental” and “solemn” agreement made in 1998 by the then-Blair government that the remaining hereditary peers would only be scrapped once Labour had produced an effective alternative.
"We have been waiting 25 years for that and the Labour Party has demonstrated no thought, no thinking and no progress whatever," he complained.
Lord Falconer of Thoroton, a Labour peer, said many hereditary peers had made a “worthwhile” contribution to public life.
However, he said he wanted to remind colleagues that the debate was not about the quality of their contributions, but the principle of their remaining in the House of Lords.
Lord Grocott, a Labour peer who has long campaigned for the abolition of hereditary peers, described the compromise Tory peers reached with Blair in 1999 as "blackmail" brought about by threats to block the then-Labour government's legislative agenda.
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