A NOISY protest calling for the House of Lords to be abolished led to a pause in proceedings in Westminster’s second chamber and highlighted calls for the UK Government to move faster on Lords reform.
Activists from Assemble – a campaign group advocating for the House of Lords to be replaced with a chamber selected via a jury-like system – shouted and threw leaflets over peers on Thursday.
Labour’s 2024 manifesto had said it was “committed to replacing the House of Lords with an alternative second chamber that is more representative of the regions and nations” but said it would work to quickly remove the hereditary peers which would “be an improvement”.
Assemble organiser Molly May Shelton, who is based in Glasgow, told The National: “House of Lords reform is a waste of time. The place breeds corruption and cronyism. We need more democracy, not less!
“I’d rather swap the whole thing out for a House of the People, where ordinary people can be selected like a jury. It would be much fairer and get better results.”
The calls for a radical overhaul came as a bill which would remove the hereditary peers from the second chamber looks likely to become law.
The House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill has made its way through the House of Commons once and has almost completed a pass through the House of Lords.
Speaking during a debate in November about the bill, SNP MP for Arbroath and Broughty Ferry Stephen Gethins said: “The minister will be aware that it has been more than 100 years since Keir Hardie committed to abolishing the House of Lords so, to be clear, will we have to wait another 100 years for the Labour Party to get around to it?”
Cabinet Office minister without portfolio Ellie Reeves responded, saying: “The Hon Member will know well that there were a number of other commitments in our manifesto, and we are considering the best way to implement them.”
Lord Grocott, a Labour backbench peer and former Labour MP, has been advocating to stop the by-elections for hereditary peers in the House of Lords which top up their numbers when individuals leave.
Grocott has been vocally supporting the bill in debates in the Lords, and told The National that his “absolute focus is to get the bill through.”
He added: “It will go through, but it’s very slow moving at the moment.”
Grocott said he thought that it was “possible” other major reforms similar in scale to the removal of the hereditary peers are possible within the term of the current government.
“There are quite a lot of suggestions going around, ranging from the bishops being excluded, or maybe other faith [leaders] included, or [perhaps] people who don’t attend more than a certain percentage of the sittings should be removed,” he said.
University of Edinburgh professor of political science Ailsa Henderson’s research interests include comparing the attitudes of people in the nations of the UK to different constitutional issues including Lords reform.
Henderson co-authored a recent report on “Public attitudes towards the constitutional future of the UK: Analysis from the 2023 State of the Union Survey” for the Independent Commission on the Constitutional Future of Wales.
“Scots care more about the EU and Scotland’s constitutional status than Lords reform, but of the possible UK-wide reforms, it is more popular than proportional representation,” she told The National.
She did caveat, however, that the data in the paper was from more than one year ago.
Henderson also made a wider point about public perception polling, saying “beware any polling [covering Great Britain] that has tiny numbers from Scotland.
“Small samples mean a higher margin of error, but it’s also difficult then to understand variations across different groups in Scotland.”
Many constitutional reform groups say the removal of hereditary peers is not enough.
Unlock Democracy director Tom Brake said: “The bill simply re-arranges the deckchairs on the Titanic – albeit reducing their number by 89 [there are 89 hereditary peers in the House of Lords].
“The Government must act on its pledge and, following a genuine consultative process, bring forward measures that radically reform the House of Lords to ensure all the nations and regions’ voices are heard.”
The Electoral Reform Society’s senior director of campaigns and Scotland, Willie Sullivan, said: “To have people shaping our laws in the House of Lords due to birthright in 2025 is an absurdity.
“The removal of the remaining hereditary peers is long overdue, however it must be the start of a wider process of reforming the bloated, unelected Lords, which at more than 800 members is the second largest legislative chamber in the world after China’s National People’s Congress.”
A UK Government spokesperson said: “We value the good work of many hereditary peers but there should not be places in Parliament reserved for those who were born into certain families.
“As promised in the manifesto, the removal of the hereditary peers will be the first step in wider reform to the second chamber.”
