Will Labour usher in a new era for the House of Lords? (Part One)

Today’s blog will focus on the House of Lords, a key institution on both the AQA and Pearson Edexcel A level Politics specifications. Labour went into the 2024 general election campaign with a series of proposals designed to reform the upper chamber. Now in power with a large Commons majority, Keir Starmer’s party has the opportunity to implement these proposals to bring about significant constitutional change. We will assess the government’s record so far regarding House of Lords’ reform and the likely impact of the measures already set in motion. A second blog will examine Labour’s reform proposals for the upper chamber which have not yet been introduced.

Labour’s 2024 General Election Manifesto commitments on the House of Lords

Labours 2024 election manifesto pledged to introduce ‘immediate reform’ of the House of Lords by (1) removing the right of hereditary peers to sit and vote in the House of Lords at the end of the current parliamentary session (2) introducing a mandatory retirement age for peers so that members retire from the upper chamber at the end of the parliament in which they reach the age of 80 (3) introducing a new participation requirement and strengthening the circumstances in which disgraced peers can be removed (4) reforming the appointments process to ensure the ‘quality of new appointments’ (5) improving the national and regional balance of the second chamber (6) eventually replacing the House of Lords with an ‘alternative second chamber that is more representative of the regions and nations.’

The House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill 2024-25

So far, the Labour government has only introduced a measure to remove right of hereditary peers to sit and vote in the House of Lords. In the July 2024 King’s Speech, the government argued that the ‘continued presence of hereditary peers in the House of Lords is outdated and indefensible’ and gave notice that it would introduce a narrowly focused bill to remove the remaining hereditary peers from the upper house. This would be the ’first step in wider reform to the second chamber’. The government justified its stance by maintaining that (1) the measure effectively completed the work House of Lords Act 1999 which removed all but 92 hereditary peers from the upper house (2) no similar Western democracy permitted membership of the legislature by right of birth (3) such a reform would improve the gender balance of the Lords, and (4) hereditary peers (unlike life peers) were not subject to suitability checks. In September 2024, the government introduced the House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill and by November the proposal had completed its Commons stages with Labour able to mobilise its large majority to secure a 435-73 vote in favour of the measure. The Bill has now gone to the Lords where it is expected to face tough opposition, notably from some Conservative peers who view the proposal as politically partisan, piecemeal and likely to remove experienced peers and weaken the hereditary principle underpinning the British monarchy.

The likely impact of removing the remaining hereditary peers

Assuming that the House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill passes through all its parliamentary stages and becomes law, it will have at least four consequences. The table below highlights some of them.

a) A smaller upper chamber

There is no legal cap on the size of the House of Lords and it currently has 804 members. As the table shows, the removal of the 88 surviving hereditary peers (a few recent vacancies have not been filled) will reduce the size of the Lords. However, it will still be the second largest chamber in the world after Communist China’s National People’s Congress. It will also remain the only upper house that is bigger than the first chamber in a bicameral political system.

b) Party political balance

The party political balance will be affected to some extent by the removal of the remaining hereditary peers because around half of them (45) sit as Conservatives, Labour and the Liberal Democrats have four each and the rest are independents. Undoubtedly, the Labour government considered this ‘political’ aspect as well as the principled argument against right of birth before introducing the measure. Having said this, the Conservatives will still be the largest party in the Lords after the removal of the hereditary peers.

c) A better gender balance

It is also important to note that all the remaining hereditary peers are men mainly because their titles are usually passed down through the male family line. The removal of this category of upper chamber member will marginally improve the gender balance in the Lords but, even after the reform, only about one-third of the peers will be female.

d) A more assertive body

Professor Meg Russell of the Constitution Unit also suggests that the removal of the surviving hereditary element may make the upper chamber feel more legitimate and confident and, in turn, this may encourage the Lords to adopt a more assertive role in holding the government to account. She notes that this happened after most hereditary peers were removed in 1999 and considers that bicameralism might be similarly strengthened if the Labour government can carry their current reform proposal through parliament successfully.