The House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill is being debated again this week in the House of Lords. This bill, as the name suggests, seeks to remove the last 92 hereditary Lords from the second chamber, something we have long campaigned for at the ERS.
Nobody should inherit the right to vote on our laws or speak in our parliament.
Whilst most of the hereditary peers were removed in the 1999 reforms (Tony Blair’s first government removed over 660 hereditary peers), a deal was struck to retain 92 positions. This was always intended to be a temporary measure and yet, twenty-six years after those initial reforms, the hereditary peers remain.
Slow walk to the exit
Last Monday was the first committee stage in the Lords (this is the stage of the bill process where peers can suggest and make the case for amendments to the legislation). This week sees two more committee stages where peers will debate the amendments tabled.
The UK is highly unusual in sticking with a feudal combination of nobility and church for its second chamber, and only the UK and Lesotho mix appointed and hereditary seats without any elected element. Despite this, it seems that some peers would rather we retain our archaic second chamber and appear to be holding up its progress.
‘Procedural shenanigans’
No less than 116 amendments were tabled to the bill by the start of proceedings last Monday and just before the first stage of the discussions, a large number of these amendments were ‘de-grouped’ meaning they could not be discussed together, drawing out the debate. These tactics were described by the Leader of the House as ‘procedural shenanigans’.
After extensive discussion, the debate had only reached amendment 10 of 116 by the end of the session last Monday. Already a further date has been added to the timetable for this stage of the proceedings.
Committee stage continues this week….
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Back the bill - Hereditary Peers should be in the history books