Abolishing hereditary peers was supposed to be the easy part of House of Lords reform for Labour, which grandly set out plans three years ago to replace the second chamber altogether. But on Monday Conservative peers will make an effort to clog up the legislation as it goes through parliament, suggesting delays to allow abolished hereditaries more time to find a job, allowing some of them to stay, or even converting them to become life peers.
As a detailed scrutiny of the bill gets under way, 116 amendments have been put forward, which are likely to be debated individually. Some propose progressive changes such as cutting numbers of peers, introducing attendance requirements and getting rid of bishops from the house, but many are aimed at watering down the abolition of hereditaries.
The tactics, largely from Conservative peers, are aimed at holding up the government’s legislative programme and annoying the cabinet so much that ministers will appeal to No 10 to strike a deal and end up compromising.
Labour insiders insist there will be no compromise over hereditaries. But the battle over such a minor element of Lords reform shows how far the party now is from its bullish position of 2022.
Keir Starmer at that time memorably described the whole institution of the House of Lords as “indefensible”, as he set out ambitious plans to replace it with an elected second chamber within the first term of a Labour government. Labour strategists were convinced it was best to cram the biggest changes into the first year of a first term.
“We thought it was best to get it over and done with in a big package at that stage,” said one Labour adviser. “But when the scale of what the Tories had left us to deal with hit home, you suddenly have to question what do you have the bandwidth for in government. Do people care enough about Lords reform or do they care about you dealing with the cost of living, housing and all the other problems?”
By June 2024, as the Labour manifesto took shape, a concrete first-term timetable to abolish the Lords had disappeared from the party’s list of priorities. Only one “immediate” promise remained: to do away with the 92 hereditary peers.
Other plans became pledges with no clear schedule. These included the introduction of a mandatory retirement age of 80, as well as new participation requirements, strengthening ways of getting rid of disgraced peers, an overhaul of appointments and making the chamber more balanced between the nations and regions.
Alongside that, there would be a consultation on replacing the Lords with an alternative second chamber that was more representative, seeking the input of the British public on how politics could best serve them. There was no doubt the original ambition had been watered down.
A bill duly appeared in the king’s speech in July. Just five lines that would abolish the hereditaries, hardly a controversial piece of legislation, or so the government thought. But Labour had not bargained for the vehement opposition of many Conservatives who did not want to see an end to the centuries-old space for peers based on primogeniture. Half of those due to be expelled from the Lords sit on the Tory benches. Most of the others are crossbench and just four are Labour.
In a second-reading debate in December, Tory peer after Tory peer lined up to criticise the legislation. Lord Strathclyde, a former Conservative leader of the Lords, called it a “thoroughly nasty little bill” and Lord Forsyth, a former cabinet minister under Margaret Thatcher, described it as a “partisan drive-by assassination dressed up as constitutional reform”.
At a private briefing before Christmas, the complaints kept coming, with one hereditary peer even asking whether he may be entitled to a redundancy package.
Labour insiders have said the hereditaries bill will pass regardless of opposition and filibustering. But they are less firm about the wider changes, including the introduction of an age limit and plans for participation requirements. The Guardian revealed earlier this year that Labour was considering a cross-party deal to cut overall numbers of peers, so avoiding more wars of attrition on constitutional reform.
Another consideration has been the practicality of an age limit of 80. Guardian calculations show 292 out of 714 life peers will be 80 by the end of the current parliament. The change would affect Labour peers vastly more than Conservatives. According to the research, 43% of Labour peers would be lost under a mandatory age limit. In contrast, the bigger Tory grouping of peers would lose about 30% of their numbers.
“There was some special pleading by individual lords,” one Labour backbencher said. “But overall, people just looked at the peers we would lose and started to wonder if this was a good idea. The example always used is lovely Alf Dubs [the 92-year-old campaigner on refugees who was rescued as a child from the Nazis in the kindertransport].”
With Labour already underpowered in the Lords, Starmer took the decision in January to appoint another 30 life peers, including his short-lived chief of staff Sue Gray. Like so many prime ministers before him, the list was a roll call of allies and ex-advisers, including the longtime Tony Blair staffer Anji Hunter, the former TUC head Brendan Barber, and Starmer’s former head of strategy Deborah Mattinson. Margaret Hodge, the respected former Labour MP and tax justice campaigner, who is 80, was also made a peer – a move that makes little sense if an age limit is to be enforced.
Though it was hardly surprising that Labour was seeking to rebalance power in the Lords while in government, the move was a far cry from Starmer’s 2022 pronouncements that he wanted to strip politicians of the power to make appointments and the criticisms of the Tories for appointing “lackeys” to the chamber.
Hannah White, the director of the Institute for Government, said the small scale of the initial legislation on removing hereditary peers may have deflated enthusiasm for the whole package.
“My reading of it is that what’s happened is that people have come up with big plans for Lords reform and then done a small thing and that’s taken the wind out of the sails of the bigger things,” she said. “I think the government probably didn’t think through the reality of how time-consuming the Lords can make it when it comes to constitutional reform if they want to. It’s a classic situation of turkeys and Christmas.”
She added: “I think what Labour should have done is put it to a citizens’ assembly, because the results of that would be more difficult for political opponents to stand against. It would be hard to politically push back against.”
The idea of a citizens’ assembly could still be a way out of the problem for Labour, but as yet it has not launched any formal consultation on an elected second chamber.
Peter Hain, a Labour peer who has always been in favour of reform, said time was of the essence for any possible further changes. “I always took the view that if it wasn’t in the first year then we wouldn’t do it. The last huge Lords reform was the abolition of 600 peers by Tony Blair in 1999. I think if you don’t do it in your first term then are you ever going to do it?”
