Peers Out to Help Out? The Future of the Lords

Image - Flavio Vallone

At the end of the first session of the 2024–29 Parliament, in the midst of the King’s Speech and Keir Starmer’s government polling trailing over 10 points behind Reform UK, there was a significant event that was rarely covered or picked up upon by the media: the last 92 hereditary peers were removed from the House of Lords.

Whilst some got life peerages, as well as confirmation that the Lord Chamberlain and the Earl Marshal would remain, many would be leaving the House of Lords after centuries of their family being in the chamber. It provokes a wider question: is the House of Lords really relevant in a modern Britain? And what do the parties want to do about it?

A history of the Lords

The House of Lords is the oldest chamber in the Houses of Parliament, predating the Commons. Medieval kings relied on nobles and clergymen to guide them in decision-making. This was called the Great Council, or the Witans.

By the thirteenth century, they had been joined by lay members from each shire in the country and in the fourteenth century the house were separated into two chambers based on status, with the wealthy and clergy making up the higher chamber, the Lords, whilst the lay members occupied the lower chamber, the Commons. This separation was the foundation of the Westminster system and Bicameralism which is now adopted by not only the UK but other countries across the world, such as Canada and Australia.

So, the House of Lords is historically important, but does that mean it’s useful in Britain today?

Party positions

Well, that depends. The parties vary quite widely on this issue, and it is not as simple as left and right, as with other issues. It is common for parties on the same political side of the spectrum to disagree on the future of the Lords.

This is most apparent with the Conservatives, under Kemi Badenoch, who support the Lords in its current state and opposed the removal of the hereditary peers, until they were given assurance by Labour that some Conservative hereditary peers would be given life peerages. Conservative leader in the Lords, The Lord True said it was a ‘hard pill to swallow.’ He also argued that members who contribute to the chamber should not be removed, including if they are hereditary peerages, and instead absentee peers should be removed.

This contrasts with Reform UK, a party to the right of the Conservatives, who are against the House of Lords and wish to see it abolished and for a new chamber to be established.  They want to ‘Replace the crony-filled House of Lords with a much smaller, more democratic second chamber.’

Labour, the ruling party also wishes for monumental change in the Chamber. In their 2024 manifesto, they wished to see the upper chamber abolished. The key difference is that they wished to see reforms in the short term, as delivered with the expulsion of hereditary peers, with eventual abolition either in the later stages of the 2024-2029 parliament or next parliament.

They do not say much about what new chamber they want but say that it should represent the ‘regions and nations of the United Kingdom’ more successfully than the Lords.

The Liberal Democrats, who are renowned for their emphasis on electoral reform, are rather cautious about reform to the Lords. This is seen in their 2024 manifesto, as they did not call for its overall abolition but instead for the Lords to have a ‘proper democratic mandate’  It seems they are content with reforming the Lords instead of abolition.

The Green Party believes in a fully elected second chamber and would abolish the House of Lords. However, they do take up their seats in the Lords, with the argument that they can use this platform to influence decision-making.

Overall, it seems that the parties are divided on this issue, and there is no simple way of reforming the House of Lords.

The whole idea of Lords reform is complex because there is no singular correct answer. Every government has its own ideas for what they want the Lords to become, and parties positions can change over time.

This was evident during the coalition, when David Cameron tried to reform the House of Lords. He wanted 80 percent of the chamber to be elected for 15-year terms, with 20 percent remaining appointed. MPs on July 20th 2012 agreed overwhelmingly to this measure, only for 91 Conservative MPs to rebel against it, threatening to slow its progress in the Commons, meaning that the bill was stopped and effectively failed. Cameron’s stance here is clearly in opposition with Badenoch’s - one of his successors - stance

This highlights the problem: nobody can agree on what to do with the Lords. Even the Lords themselves have varying opinions, from Plaid Cymru peers calling for the abolition of the chamber, to crossbench hereditary peers happily accepting life peerages to remain in the Chamber.

The appointments problem

We can’t allow the House of Lords to be a graveyard for ex-politicians and party donors. It has to be a chamber that works for the people of Britain and is more representative. It has to be meritocratic: people who have done good in society and genuinely have expertise in their field. Not party donors or celebrity businessmen like Lord Sugar, who has not voted in the chamber since 2017.

The Prime Minister should not have the power to appoint peerages. The fact that Tony Blair handed out over 374 life peerages during his tenure is shocking. The abuse of the Prime Ministers power over appointments can be seen in the ‘Cash-for-Honours’ scandal in 2006–2007, when multiple men nominated by Tony Blair were rejected by the House of Lords Appointments Commission. It was later revealed they had loaned large amounts of money to Labour and this scandal continued into future Tory governments.

This careless spree of appointing peers continued under the coalition and second Cameron governments, with David Cameron appointing 245 life peers during his just six years in office. Many of the appointments in his 2015 Honours List were accused of being examples of cronyism, while the list also included controversial figures such as former Science Minister David Willetts, who had previously written a memo to Margaret Thatcher suggesting that Scotland had its "snout in the trough" when it came to public spending.

Why, in any democracy, can the Prime Minister be allowed to appoint whoever they wish? Many Prime Ministers over time have put allies in the upper chamber, sometimes to give them Cabinet positions. Many will recall in November 2023, when David Cameron was appointed Foreign Secretary and elevated to the Lords for life. He had not been an MP since 2016 and faced no democratic election yet was now a Great Officer of State and a Privy Councilor.

Even David Cameron himself acknowledged how this undermined the power of the House of Commons to ask questions to Secretaries of State, with Andrew Mitchell answering questions on behalf of Cameron in the Commons, who arguably should have been Foreign Secretary in the first place. He later got the short-lived and rather ridiculous role of Deputy Foreign Secretary.

This happened again under the Starmer Ministry when longtime friend of Starmer Richard Hermer was given a life peerage so he could serve in the Cabinet as Attorney General. This position previously required parliamentary experience meaning that Starmer broke tradition to appoint him. His appointment generated attention for that fact and his connection to Starmer. He also donated £5000 pounds to Starmer during his 2020 labour leadership campaign.

Despite all of these varying views, one thing to me is certain: in a time when trust in politics is at an all-time low, it is simply exasperating to watch Prime Ministers appointing political friends and allies to the chamber for life, when each member receives heavily subsidized meals and £175 at the lower rate or £371 higher rate allowance a day, which is all tax free. There is no need to contribute to the activity of the house to claim the lower allowance. For the party donors, ex-politicians wanting a gold-plated care home and celebrities, like Baroness Brady from the Apprentice accepting peerages, they are simply thinking of their own self-interest rather than the national interest.

Only the ‘people’s peers’, selected for their achievements in fields outside politics or the aristocracy, have a genuine vocation and a moral position to stand on. But these peers make up a small minority of the chamber, which is riddled with political appointees, donors and absentee businesspeople.

Conclusion

Overall, whilst the Lords has inevitably changed over the centuries, the past 30 years have, by far, seen the most significant period of change the chamber has experienced. That is not a bad thing; it is positive that the future of the Lords is now firmly being scrutinised. However, if successive governments continue to appoint political allies to the chamber, and prime ministers continue to embark on peerage sprees, we risk still debating what to do with the Lords in another 20 years. For example, as outlined above, the appointment of Richard Hermer to enable him to serve as Attorney General or David Cameron as Foreign Secretary are two examples of the problem. It demonstrates the difficulty of allowing a politically motivated prime minister to have a role in determining who gets to scrutinise government policy for potentially far longer than the prime minister who appointed them not only remains in office as prime minister, but in politics altogether.

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