Britain’s Parliament moved this week toward ending the hereditary aristocrats’ role in the House of Lords, with lawmakers voting to remove remaining hereditary peers from the chamber that scrutinizes legislation approved by the elected House of Commons. Lords members dropped objections to a bill passed by the Commons that would oust dozens of dukes, earls and viscounts who hold seats through inherited titles.
The change is expected to become law once King Charles III grants royal assent, described by the source as a formality, and the hereditary peers are then set to leave at the end of the current session of Parliament this spring. The bill completes what lawmakers described as a process that began more than a quarter century ago as the Labour government shifted step-by-step away from the hereditary principle in the upper chamber.
Government minister Nick Thomas-Symonds argued that the reform marks a break from what he called an “archaic and undemocratic principle.” He said Parliament should “always be a place where talents are recognized and merit counts,” and should not be “a gallery of old boys’ networks” or a chamber where titles handed out centuries ago hold power over “the will of the people,” according to his remarks in the Lords.
Critics have long argued that the House of Lords is both unwieldy and insufficiently democratic, in part because of the hereditary element. The chamber currently has more than 800 members, making it the second-largest legislative chamber in the world after China’s National People’s Congress, and its composition has shifted over time from mostly hereditary noblemen and bishops to a system dominated by government-appointed “life peers.”
The source said that for much of the House of Lords’ roughly 700-year history, membership was largely made up of noblemen who inherited seats, with women largely absent. It added that in the 1950s, life peers—retired politicians, civic leaders and other notables appointed by government—were added, and that hereditary peers now account for about 1 in 10 members.
The reform follows earlier steps by successive Labour governments. In 1999, then-Prime Minister Tony Blair’s Labour administration evicted most of the 750 hereditary peers, allowing 92 to remain temporarily to avoid what the source described as an aristocrats’ rebellion. Another 25 years passed before Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s current Labour government introduced legislation to remove the remaining “hereditaries,” the source said.
Lords members did put up a fight, leading to a compromise under which an undisclosed number of hereditary members would be allowed to stay by being “recycled” into life peers. The bill’s passage, the source said, ends the objections process after Lords members on Tuesday night dropped them for legislation already approved by the House of Commons.
The debate also drew attention to recent controversy involving the chamber’s members. The source cited the case of Peter Mandelson, who resigned from the Lords in February after revelations about his friendship with the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, saying the episode brought renewed scrutiny to the chamber and the problem of lords behaving badly.
As the Lords considered the end of the hereditary system, Nicholas True, the opposition Conservative Party leader in the Lords, told the chamber that “here we are at the end of well over seven centuries of service by hereditary peers in this Parliament.” True said many peers “served their nation faithfully and well,” and he argued it was not “all a stereotypical history of reaction in ermine,” while adding that “many of those people” were flawed.
The Labour government has also renewed its commitment to eventually replace the House of Lords with a different second chamber that it describes as “more representative of the U.K.” The source said that, based on past experience, such changes may take time to deliver.