Lord Strathclyde, a departing Conservative hereditary peer, said Wednesday had been a “sad and miserable day to be thrown out of the House of Lords” and condemned a move he said shifted the dial too far towards political appointees.<\/p>\n
“The hereditaries were only 10% of the House,” he added.<\/p>\n
“They did no harm and provided historical perspective, so this just feels wrong.”<\/p>\n
The government has committed to further reforms to the House of Lords, including the introduction of a participation requirement for members and a retirement age. Select committee reports on the changes are expected later this year.<\/p>\n
The changes on Wednesday complete an overhaul that started a quarter of a century ago, when in 1999, Tony Blair’s government reduced the number of hereditary peers in the Lords from 759 to 92, in a compromise with the Conservatives.<\/p>\n
Retired Tory peer Lord Salisbury, who helped negotiate that compromise, said that although he felt “quite sentimental” about the end of a tradition dating back to the 13th century, he had always believed there needed to be a reformed second chamber that enjoyed the support and respect of the modern public, without threatening the authority of the House of Commons.<\/p>\n
“When I was negotiating with Tony Blair all those years ago, I was clear that if you simply remove the hereditaries, you leave a purely nominated chamber,” he said. <\/p>\n
“What you have is an extraordinary increase in the power of patronage of the prime minister, and that is a very powerful political tool.”<\/p>\n
Lord Salisbury recommended pulling in councillors nominated by councils from across the country to sit in the Lords. <\/p>\n
Having indirectly elected members means these new peers would not threaten the mandate of MPs, he explained, but would also “give local government a voice in Parliament and would be a balancing power against the diktats of Whitehall”. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Lord Strathclyde, a departing Conservative hereditary peer, said Wednesday had been a “sad and miserable day to be…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":557717,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-557716","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/557716","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=557716"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/557716\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/557717"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=557716"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=557716"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=557716"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}