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The Scottish National Party will attempt to force a vote demanding the Labour Government abolishes the House of Lords, as legislation to scrap hereditary peers gets its first debate in the Commons on Tuesday.
The Government is pushing ahead with plans to scrap the 92 remaining hereditary peers, the aristocrats who are still guaranteed to make up over a tenth of Lords in the second chamber. They remained as a compromise following former Labour PM Tony Blair’s partial efforts to reform the Lords in his first term.
While Labour under Keir Starmer has committed to further reform of the unelected chamber, the SNP wants to go further and scrap the 800-odd member Lords entirely.
Some reformers are worried that legislation to overhaul the Lords could stop at simply scrapping the hereditary peers, as was the case with Tony Blair’s Stage 2 Lords reform plans, which never happened.
The Prime Minister’s spokesman rejected the SNP’s bid on Monday, saying the Government had its own plans for reform.
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“The King’s Speech outlines the immediate legislative agenda, including motions on hereditary peers and other public priorities set out in the manifesto and first-step submissions. The Government remains committed to Lords reform and will introduce relevant measures in due course, but the King’s Speech defines the current legislative programme,” the PM’s spokesman told reporters.
“The manifesto clearly outlines the rationale for removing outdated hereditary peers, and the Government is progressing with that…The case is clear, and it’s progressing as a priority within the King’s Speech,” he added.
The SNP’s deputy leader in Westminster Pete Wishart MP said the hereditary peers bill in its current form is “114 years too little, too late”.
Wishart’s party will table a series of amendments pressing the Labour Government to go much further – and “finally fulfil the manifesto pledge they have been making and breaking since 1910 to abolish the Lords,” starting with a so-called reasoned amendment in Tuesday’s debate.
Prior to the UK general election, the Labour Party promised to abolish the Lords but instead the legislation, as it stands, will only remove 92 hereditary peers, who make up just 11% of the 804 sitting peers.
Further legislation to introduce a promised retirement age for peers has not yet been introduced. Labour grandees Margaret Beckett (81) and Margaret Hodge (80) were handed peerages by the PM in July.
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It comes as new research, published by the SNP today, suggests the cost of the House of Lords has ballooned to more than £212 million last year (2023/24) – an increase of £40m on 2022/23.
The analysis, commissioned by the SNP and conducted by the House of Commons Library, found that in the last year alone peers claimed around £24.2million in allowances and expenses. Members of the Lords who are not paid a salary may claim a flat rate attendance allowance of up to £361 per day, tax-free.
The SNP has long called for the House of Lords to be abolished and has refused to nominate SNP peers on principle.
Other parties of all stripes have faced repeated claims of cronyism and cash-for-peerage scandals, after giving party donors and friends seats for life in the second chamber.
It is possible that ousted No 10 chief of staff Sue Gray could be given a peerage.
SNP Westminster Deputy Leader Pete Wishart MP said: “The Labour Party has repeatedly broken its promise to abolish the House of Lords for more than a century – and, frankly, this embarrassingly limited bill is 114 years too little, too late.
“Voters were promised change but instead Sir Keir Starmer has ripped up his election pledges, and continued stuffing the Lords with Labour Party donors and cronies as it suits him.”
He claimed the “stench of sleaze from this Labour Government is growing” amid rows over freebies and gifts given to prominent Labour figures including the PM himself.
Wishart added: “The undemocratic House of Lords is an archaic and bloated institution of the kind you’d find in a banana republic. It’s second-only in size to the Congress of China and costs taxpayers more than £200 million a year. If it was any other country, the Government would think it utterly corrupt.”
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