Hereditary peers will not be banned from re-joining the Lords as life peers under government reforms to the upper chamber.
Abolishing the 92 seats reserved for hereditary members was one of Labour’s manifesto commitments.
But Baroness Smith of Basildon, the leader of the Lords, today confirmed there could be a route back for those individuals – as life peers.
“I can confirm that if members leave this House as hereditary peers, there is no block at all of them coming back as life peers if their party so wishes to introduce them,” Baroness Smith said.
A life peer is nominated by the prime minister, though by convention the Leader of the Opposition and other party leaders can propose a certain number.
Traditionally, the title is awarded to individuals on retirement from important public office and allows them to be a member of the House of Lords for life.
This is different to hereditary peers, whose right to sit in the Lords is due to their title being inherited from their family, usually their father.
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Every single hereditary peer in the Lords now is a man, with an average age of just under 70.
The last Labour government got rid of most of the hereditary peers in 1999 – but it allowed 92 to remain in what was initially intended to be a short-term compromise to get the legislation through.
When one of them has retired or dies, a replacement is chosen through a by-election, in which only people with hereditary titles can stand.
About half of those still in the chamber are Conservatives, with the rest mainly independent crossbenchers and a small number of Labour and Liberal Democrat peers.
Current hereditary peers in the House of Lords include Lord Attlee, grandson of the former Labour prime minister Clement Attlee and the Duke of Wellington, whose great-great-great-grandfather defeated Napoleon at Waterloo in 1815.
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‘Shoddy political act’
One of the 92, Tory peer Lord Strathclyde, said Labour’s plan was a “high-handed shoddy political act, removing some of our most senior and experienced peers”.
Former cabinet minister Lord Forsyth, now a Conservative life peer, called the removal of hereditary peers a “naked attempt to disable opposition in this House”.
He said that given the size of Labour’s majority in the House of Commons, the Lords is the only part of Parliament that would properly scrutinise legislation.
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Abolishing hereditary peers is expected to be followed by the imposition of a retirement age of 80 on members of the Lords.
In the longer term, Labour pledged to replace the House of Lords with an elected second chamber.
The House of Lords currently has 805 sitting members, making it the second largest parliamentary chamber in the world behind China’s National People’s Congress.
Earlier, Nick Thomas-Symonds, the minister for the constitution, said abolishing hereditary peers was a “landmark reform to our constitution”.
He said: “The hereditary principle in law-making has lasted for too long and is out of step with modern Britain.
“The second chamber plays a vital role in our constitution, and people should not be voting on our laws in Parliament by an accident of birth.
“This bill shows this government’s commitment to delivering on our manifesto and is an important part of putting politics in the service of working people.”
