Table of contents
Approximate read time: 5 minutes
1. What would the bill do?
Under the provisions of the House of Lords Act 1999, 92 ‘excepted’ hereditary peers can sit in the House of Lords. Initially, the plan was for all hereditary peers to be removed by the legislation. However, a compromise agreement made at the time, known as the ‘Weatherill amendment’, allowed for 92 to remain while long-term reforms were decided.[1] In its 2024 general election manifesto, the Labour Party said that it would remove the right of these excepted hereditary peers to sit and vote in the House of Lords as part of reforms to modernise the House.[2]
The House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill would take forward this commitment by repealing section 2 of the 1999 act and removing the exemption under which hereditary peers currently have membership of the House. It would also abolish the jurisdiction of the House of Lords in hereditary peerage claims. The bill completed its passage through the House of Commons before being given its second reading in the Lords on 11 December 2024.
2. What happened at committee stage on the bill?
The House of Lords considered amendments to the House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill at committee stage, which took place over five days between 3 March and 1 April 2025.[3] No amendments were made to the bill.
In total 146 amendments to the bill were tabled, with 44 withdrawn by the amendment’s sponsor without asking the House to agree to it. A further 89 were not moved by the sponsor. The House was therefore not asked to agree to them but the amendments may have been debated. Finally, 13 amendments were withdrawn by the sponsor before the debate. Themes debated included:
- alternative systems for appointing members to the House
- the hereditary principle in the UK constitution
- continuing membership of the House of Lords for current hereditary peers
- retaining Lords membership for the earl marshal and lord great chamberlain
- proposals for introducing directly elected members of the House of Lords
- preventing life peerages being given when the House of Lords Appointments Commission has recommended against the appointment
- 15-year terms for members
- minimum attendance and participation requirements
- bishops and other faith representatives
- ensuring no political party has a majority of members in the Lords
- life peerages for senior judges
- government ministers in the Lords
- members from chartered professional bodies[4]
Table 1 presents aggregated data showing the 146 amendments tabled, broken down by party and peerage type together with the status of the amendments by category.
Information about the status of individual amendments can be found on the UK Parliament website.[5]
| Amendment status | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Party and peerage type | Not moved | Withdrawn | Withdrawn before debate | Total |
| Total Conservative | 71 | 34 | 8 | 113 |
| Conservative excepted hereditary | 20 | 10 | 4 | 34 |
| Conservative life peer | 51 | 24 | 4 | 79 |
| Total Crossbench | 9 | 3 | 2 | 14 |
| Crossbench excepted hereditary | 8 | 1 | 0 | 9 |
| Crossbench life peer | 1 | 2 | 2 | 5 |
| Total Labour | 1 | 1 | 2 | 4 |
| Labour life peer | 1 | 1 | 2 | 4 |
| Total Liberal Democrat | 5 | 2 | 1 | 8 |
| Liberal Democrat excepted hereditary | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| Liberal Democrat life peer | 4 | 2 | 1 | 7 |
| Total non-affiliated | 0 | 3 | 0 | 3 |
| Non-affiliated excepted hereditary | 0 | 2 | 0 | 2 |
| Non-affiliated life peer | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| Total Plaid Cymru | 3 | 1 | 0 | 4 |
| Plaid Cymru life peer | 3 | 1 | 0 | 4 |
| Total for all parties | 89 | 44 | 13 | 146 |
Cover image © House of Lords 2025 / photography by Roger Harris.
References
- For further information on the Weatherill amendment, see: House of Lords Library, ‘The Weatherill amendment: Elected hereditary peers’, 23 October 2009. Return to text
- House of Lords Library, ‘House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill: Second reading in the House of Lords’, 13 January 2025. Return to text
- UK Parliament, ‘House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill: Committee stage—records’, accessed 24 April 2025. Return to text
- UK Parliament, ‘Hereditary peers bill completes Lords committee stage’, 2 April 2025. Return to text
- UK Parliament, ‘House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill: Committee stage’, accessed 23 April 2025. Return to text