Latest news with #HereditaryPeersBill
Telegraph
03-04-2025
- Politics
- Telegraph
Abolishing the hereditary peers? Then let's dump the titles, as well
The thing about Britain, at least since 1649, is that it does revolutions nice and quietly, ideally by committee. And so it is with the removal of the hereditary peers from the House of Lords. The Lords this week finished the fifth and final committee day of the Hereditary Peers Bill, which abolishes the hereditary principle in the Upper House. I asked the Duke of Wellington when I met him the other day if he was going to miss it. 'Terribly', he said. 'It has been a great privilege to serve for the last 10 years. I shall miss it very much.' I suggested that at least now he would be able to vote in general elections (peers aren't allowed to). 'A consolation', he admitted. Personally I think that the Lords will be a less fun, less representative and possibly less civil place without the Duke and his peers. But once they're gone, these real peers, these dukes, earls and barons, the really big question is, why on earth should any of the remaining members of the Upper House be called lords at all? The House of Lords gets its name from its members. Formerly if you inherited an earldom, it meant you had to turn up for the State Opening of Parliament and do your bit in the chamber. The peerage carried the job with it. Now that the link between the upper chamber and the hereditary peerage has been cut, there is no reason whatsoever why MUHs – members of the Upper House – should have a title. Given that the Government has decided it's against all the flummery of hereditary peerages, they should do away with titles altogether. No more scarlet and ermine for the new members, then. Instead the intake can be introduced as 'The Honourable Stakeholder' if we want to retain civility. The Earl of Devon, one of the doomed hereditaries, has introduced explosive amendments to the Bill (including incendiary changes to bring gender equality into the inheritance of peerages, which is, I think, a rubbish idea). But the most interesting one asks for a 'Review of and consultation on appropriateness of name of House'. So, 'The Secretary of State must, within six months of the day on which this Act is passed, lay before Parliament a report based on a public consultation on the implications of the provisions in this Act for the appropriateness of the name of the House of Lords.' In other words, why have a House of Lords if there are no proper hereditary peers in it? The dignity of being a member of the Second Chamber would have to be enough. Let's examine what that would actually look like in practice. The wives of the male members wouldn't be called Lady any more; the member himself or herself wouldn't have quite the same pull booking a restaurant and travelling abroad, and Americans wouldn't get quite as excited. On the bright side, they would still get £361 plus travel expenses for every day they turn up, enough to sort out the utility bills. And they would still have a lovely subsidised restaurant and access to umpteen post offices within Parliament, which is more than the rest of us. I say the Government should fully back the amendment. If they are Roundhead enough to get rid of the hereditaries, let them get rid of the titles and ermine as well. The thing is, they might find far fewer takers for the Upper Chamber without all of the regal pomp and circumstance.
Yahoo
03-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Abolishing the hereditary peers? Then let's dump the titles, as well
The thing about Britain, at least since 1649, is that it does revolutions nice and quietly, ideally by committee. And so it is with the removal of the hereditary peers from the House of Lords. The Lords this week finished the fifth and final committee day of the Hereditary Peers Bill, which abolishes the hereditary principle in the Upper House. I asked the Duke of Wellington when I met him the other day if he was going to miss it. 'Terribly', he said. 'It has been a great privilege to serve for the last 10 years. I shall miss it very much.' I suggested that at least now he would be able to vote in general elections (peers aren't allowed to). 'A consolation', he admitted. Personally I think that the Lords will be a less fun, less representative and possibly less civil place without the Duke and his peers. But once they're gone, these real peers, these dukes, earls and barons, the really big question is, why on earth should any of the remaining members of the Upper House be called lords at all? The House of Lords gets its name from its members. Formerly if you inherited an earldom, it meant you had to turn up for the State Opening of Parliament and do your bit in the chamber. The peerage carried the job with it. Now that the link between the upper chamber and the hereditary peerage has been cut, there is no reason whatsoever why MUHs – members of the Upper House – should have a title. Given that the Government has decided it's against all the flummery of hereditary peerages, they should do away with titles altogether. No more scarlet and ermine for the new members, then. Instead the intake can be introduced as 'The Honourable Stakeholder' if we want to retain civility. The Earl of Devon, one of the doomed hereditaries, has introduced explosive amendments to the Bill (including incendiary changes to bring gender equality into the inheritance of peerages, which is, I think, a rubbish idea). But the most interesting one asks for a 'Review of and consultation on appropriateness of name of House'. So, 'The Secretary of State must, within six months of the day on which this Act is passed, lay before Parliament a report based on a public consultation on the implications of the provisions in this Act for the appropriateness of the name of the House of Lords.' In other words, why have a House of Lords if there are no proper hereditary peers in it? The dignity of being a member of the Second Chamber would have to be enough. Let's examine what that would actually look like in practice. The wives of the male members wouldn't be called Lady any more; the member himself or herself wouldn't have quite the same pull booking a restaurant and travelling abroad, and Americans wouldn't get quite as excited. On the bright side, they would still get £361 plus travel expenses for every day they turn up, enough to sort out the utility bills. And they would still have a lovely subsidised restaurant and access to umpteen post offices within Parliament, which is more than the rest of us. I say the Government should fully back the amendment. If they are Roundhead enough to get rid of the hereditaries, let them get rid of the titles and ermine as well. The thing is, they might find far fewer takers for the Upper Chamber without all of the regal pomp and circumstance. Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
Telegraph
02-03-2025
- Politics
- Telegraph
Starmer accused of ‘stuffing' House of Lords with allies before axing hereditary peers
Sir Keir Starmer has been accused of 'stuffing' the House of Lords with his allies at the same time as attempting to abolish hereditary peers. The Prime Minister has appointed the most life peers to his party's benches in his first 200 days than any other leader in the last 30 years, apart from David Cameron. Sir Keir has created 37 Labour life peers in that time, compared to 35 by Sir Tony Blair, 10 by Boris Johnson and 13 by Baroness May. The Prime Minister made more party peerages in his first 200 days than Baroness May, Mr Johnson and Rishi Sunak in their first 200 days combined. It comes ahead of the Hereditary Peers Bill, which will abolish all the remaining hereditary peers from the Upper Chamber, returning to the House of Lords for scrutiny on Monday. The legislation will see 45 Tories booted out of the House of Lords, along with 33 crossbenchers and just four Labour peers. Meanwhile, Sir Keir has appointed several ex-union officials and long-standing allies from his time at Camden council to the Upper Chamber, as well as ex-MPs. Critics have claimed that ridding the Upper Chamber of so many Conservatives while adding several Labour peers shows Sir Keir's move is 'nothing to do with reform'. Lord Strathclyde, a Conservative hereditary peer and former Lords leader, said: 'It is a simple partisan act to remove his opponents while stuffing the place with his friends. That's what it's all about.' He added: 'It is the same old Labour nonsense on class war. 'Get the old hereditary peers out whom we don't like and replace them with our chums that we do.'' Lord Mancroft, fellow Conservative hereditary peer, said: 'It's staggering. It's not a route to democracy. It's constitutional abuse. 'We've spent hundreds of years slowly and carefully and painfully constructing our constitution, and these politicians just want to break it.' A Labour source called criticisms over Sir Keir's appointments 'desperate stuff from those yet to reconcile themselves with the fact that Labour is completing the job we started 25 years ago of removing hereditary peers from the Lords'. They added that even without the hereditary peers on their benches, the Tories would remain the largest party in the Upper Chamber. Among those who have been put into the House of Lords by Sir Keir since taking office, including Brendan Barber, Mary Bousted and Kay Carberry, former trade union bosses. Mike Katz, a former Camden councillor from the Prime Minister's time in politics in the borough, has also been appointed. They join Sue Gray, Sir Keir's former chief of staff, and Thangam Debbonaire, ex-shadow minister, in the House of Lords. Ms Debbonaire, the former shadow culture secretary, lost her seat in Bristol West to the Green Party in 2024. Individuals are nominated to the House of Lords for their contribution to society and public and political service. All appointments are vetted by the House of Lords Appointments Commission. Over 100 amendments have been tabled to the five-clause Hereditary Peers Bill, which is scheduled for four days of debate in the House of Lords but is expected to take longer than expected. Critics of the Bill have been accused of delaying tactics to try and scupper Labour's plans to immediately rid the House of Lords of all its hereditary peers, but the Tories have denied the claims.
Telegraph
18-02-2025
- Politics
- Telegraph
Inside the war over hereditary peers about to tear apart the House of Lords
Sir Tony Blair's message to the hereditary peers in the House of Lords was meant to be 'thank you and goodbye'. But it didn't quite go to plan. His Labour government was forced into a compromise after months of backroom plotting, and 92 peers, around 10 per cent of their number, were allowed to keep their seats. Fast forward 25 years and Sir Keir Starmer is hoping to succeed where his predecessor failed, by ejecting all those remaining from the upper chamber with a new Lords reform Bill. But he faces a guerrilla war from the remaining hereditary peers and their allies who have claimed the legislation is tantamount to a 'purge' that would give the Prime Minister unprecedented powers. Lord Strathclyde, one of the remaining hereditary peers and a key player in the talks between the Tories and Labour in the late 1990s, will not go down without a fight. 'There's no need to go to war on it, but I think we will,' the former minister under Margaret Thatcher declared in the House of Lords tearoom. Lord Strathclyde and his band of brothers have pointed out that Labour, and Angela Rayner in particular, has been keen to champion its workers' rights bill. But as Lord Mancroft, a fellow Conservative hereditary peer, says: 'Under her Bill nobody in any workplace in Britain would be allowed to be treated the way that Labour is treating us.' And so the fightback has begun. Series of amendments A total of 91 amendments and counting have been tabled to the Hereditary Peers Bill that will be debated by the Lords next month, despite the text being just five pages long. The amendments cover everything from introducing participation requirements for peers to an enforced retirement age. One amendment, laid by the Earl of Devon, a hereditary crossbencher, demands a consultation on whether the name 'House of Lords' will be appropriate after reform. Hereditary peers claim that they know their time is up, and they simply argue against their instant removal, with a lack of clarity about broader reform of the House. Critics say the flood of amendments is simply an attempt to delay the legislation and force the Government to give ground, a British equivalent to filibustering. Many amendments are unlikely to get through, but some about wider reform do have broad support. It was an amendment to the 1999 bill, by crossbench peer Lord Weatherill, that led to the remaining 92 hereditary peers keeping their seats. If any amendment were to pass, the Bill would return to the Commons only for MPs to likely overturn any changes and send it back to the Lords once more, triggering parliamentary 'ping pong'. It has also been suggested that a series of recent 'unnecessarily' long interventions on other Government bills has come about as an attempt to delay the Lords reform legislation, further frustrating Sir Keir's efforts. Last week peers sat until one o'clock in the morning debating amendments to the GB Energy Bill. The hereditary peers are, however, not without worthy opponents. Lady Hayter, a Labour life peer and former shadow deputy leader of the Lords, accused opponents of 'playing silly games' with the legislation. In her view, they are 'obviously going to try and spin out the committee and the report stage' to play for time. 'They are trying to make us feel, 'Oh, God, this isn't worth the candle'. Well, that's not going to happen. There is no reason, no legitimate reason, for these people to be there.' She believes that Tory peers are 'really messing up the way the House of Lords works' with their various interventions and cited an instance when the Opposition voted to adjourn House of Lords proceedings, breaking a long-held protocol that she said she had not seen in 15 years. It is normally the government whip who moves the adjournment, in prior agreement with the other whips. An unexpected adjournment disrupts the timetable for business in the House and throws plans to get through other key legislation out of kilter. The number of hereditary peers who sided with the Opposition 'far outnumbered' those who backed the Government, meaning that, according to Lady Hayter, their might was used to defeat the Government. Tory sources in the Lords described the claims of filibustering as 'nonsense', insisting that peers had merely been fulfilling their roles as scrutineers. Hereditary peers, of which 45 are Tories compared with just four on the Labour benches and four Liberal Democrats, feel aggrieved that even those who regularly participate in the legislature will be ejected because they are there as a result of heredity. Among peers facing the axe are those who have helped to secure changes to legislation to crack down on water companies, such as Lord Cromwell and Lord Roborough, and Viscount Camrose, who worked on outlawing deepfake pornography. Meanwhile, life peers who do not contribute will be used to force their hereditary colleagues out. Lord Mancroft said: 'There are about 120 peers who don't turn up at all, really. So what they're going to do is they're going to use the votes of the 120 who don't turn up to boot out the 80-odd who do turn up.' 'Classroom rivalry between two eternal children' There is some unease too among crossbenchers, over 30 of whom face the axe, including Lord Kinnoull, their most senior member. A crossbench source said: 'There's always a classroom rivalry between those two eternal children, the Labour Party, with the Conservative Party. 'But there are other hereditaries who are not part of that, who are blowback injured by all of this.' They added: 'I don't think there's anyone who feels that absolutely every hereditary should be just booted out.' To many, it feels personal. Lord Strathclyde spoke of how they would see colleagues passing through the voting lobbies to get rid of them. 'I've lost count of the number of Labour backbenchers who have whispered to me that they don't support this either,' he claimed. Lord Mancroft added: 'We all know each other very well. We sit in the bar together. We discuss our private lives together. We talk about the weather, whatever else. 'They're our colleagues, they're people we share offices with, and suddenly they're going to be asked to turn on us and boot us out.' Constitutional concerns Beyond the personal, there are constitutional concerns about Sir Keir's reforms. If the hereditary seats – which under the 1999 law are put to a by-election among those eligible should a seat holder retire or die – are scrapped, that cuts down the routes by which people can reach the House of Lords. Other than the bishops and crossbench appointments made twice a year, the prime minister would be the only person able to regularly choose whom to appoint to the Lords. Lord Mancroft said: 'We'll have a second chamber which will be wholly appointed by the prime minister, who already has a majority in the first chamber. And that makes for a completely unbalanced constitution. 'The two most powerful chief executives in the world, the American president and the French president, don't have those powers, but we're giving it to Keir Starmer.' Lord Strathclyde accepts it is time for the system of hereditary peerages to come to an end, but is hoping to reach a compromise where the current Lords can be made life peers and stay until they retire. But he said he felt Baroness Smith of Basildon, the Labour Lords leader, was 'a brick wall' when it came to cross-party discussions. The simmering discontent from all sides of the House of Lords will likely erupt in just a few weeks when the legislation is finally discussed. But the hereditary peers are refusing to become turkeys who vote for Christmas without a fight.
