Hereditary peer ‘back door’ compromise risks undermining manifesto promise

It seems the legislative game of hide and seek around the bill to remove the hereditary peers from the Lords is over and it is now entering its endgame. We highlighted recently that things had gone mysteriously quiet since the House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill was last seen in September. However, the Telegraph and BBC are now reporting the bill is due back in Parliament this week – but the price of it finally passing could be that unelected peers force ministers to water it down. The outlets are reporting that to break the impasse over the bill the government is preparing to offer the Conservative party more peerages so it can “bring back” a number of exiting hereditary peers.

If so, this poses a threat to the integrity of the government’s manifesto pledge to: “remove the right of hereditary peers to sit and vote in the House of Lords”. Labour was very clear before the election, saying it was “indefensible” to still have 92 hereditary peers in the Lords, all of whom are men and all of whom have a job for life shaping and influencing our laws simply because of who their parents were. Britain is only one of two countries, along with the African nation of Lesotho, that still have hereditary legislators.

Compromise threatens to make a mockery of a clear manifesto pledge

Yet, this reported compromise could see hereditaries handed life peerages, i.e. ones that end when the holder dies or retires, so they can stay in the chamber and continue to influence our laws. We have already seen a trickle of hereditaries start to return to the Lords by this back door, as in the last honours list one crossbench and two Lib Dem hereditary peers were given life peerages. The fact that hereditary peers are already finding a way to remain in the Lords via this ruse chips away at the government’s manifesto pledge. If a significant number are now allowed to remain in the Lords due to a grubby deal it will make a mockery of it.

To those who sit on the burgundy benches of the Lords, it may seem like a brilliant wheeze to pull a constitutional switcheroo to allow hereditaries to remain via life peerages, but to the public it will look farcical. When all is said and done, the people who the government said it would remove from the Lords will still be there, and the principle of hereditary legislating could be left operating de facto for decades to come.

If this happens, it will be no accident and comes after a concerted effort in the upper chamber to thwart a government manifesto pledge. Last year, Lord Nicholas True, the leader of the Tories in the Lords, explicitly told the government that if it went ahead with the removal of the hereditary peers, and didn’t let a ‘goodly number’ of them stay, peers would take “very aggressive procedural action” against its legislative agenda. We’ve since witnessed this on the House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill, which has made glacial legislative progress since it was introduced in 2024. There were 46 pages of amendments proposed to the bill at its report stage alone – all for a simple two-page bill.

This whole episode displays the power that unelected peers hold in our Parliament. They are able to eat up parliamentary time, which is extremely precious, as its availability literally determines what legislation a government can pass during its term. The delaying actions in the Lords now mean the government is facing a legislative logjam as it heads towards the end of this parliamentary session, leaving ministers scrambling to get their bills over the line.

Government has already created more new peers than the 92 hereditaries it plans to remove

Any deal to keep hereditary peers in the Lords will also compound the issue of its ever-growing size. The Lords currently has over 840 members making it the second largest legislative chamber in the world after China’s National People’s Assembly, and that number doesn’t seem to be going down any time soon. This government is already in the absurd position of having created more peers, 96, than the 92 hereditary peers it said it would remove.

Fundamentally, though, this is about who has right to shape our laws. We would argue that those people should be chosen by the voters who live under those laws, no matter which part of Parliament we are talking about. Meanwhile, the principle of having people legislating in Parliament due to an accident of birth is as “indefensible” today as when the government rightly pledged to remove the hereditary peers before the election. Ministers need to stand firm and make sure they deliver on that clear promise to British public.