House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill

Debate between Lord Swire and Lord Newby

Committee stage
Monday 3rd March 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Swire (Con)]

With that in mind, I invite the noble Lord to have a word with those who drafted the Labour manifesto, which says, as a standalone sentence: “Hereditary peers remain indefensible”.

[Lord Newby (LD)]

My Lords, I associate myself with the comments of both the noble Lord, Lord Brennan, and my noble friend Lord Thurso. There is not, and never has been, the sort of link between the hereditary Peers and the monarch that I suspect the noble Earl, Lord Devon, was suggesting. We have one period of worked examples of this, and I am afraid it was a little while ago. In 1649, when Charles I was condemned, he was condemned not just by Members of the House of Commons but by hereditary Members of the House of Lords.

A decade later, there was a House of Lords, but it was not called the House of Lords. It was called the Other Place—capital “O”, capital “P”—because the Parliamentarians, led by Oliver Cromwell, recognised the need for a revising chamber but did not like the concept of heredity. Therefore, Oliver Cromwell appointed a House of Lords. That House of Lords did not last very long, and the hereditary principle came back with Charles II. So it was not the case that a hereditary House of Lords meant that we were done with monarchy for ever. The two were just different things, and different considerations applied.

The lesson of Charles I—which is still relevant—is that, at the end of the day, Kings and Queens in this country rule by the consent of the people. If they go outwith the conventions, they will find themselves in difficulties again. With the current King and Prince of Wales, this seems an impossibly unlikely scenario, but it is still a theoretical possibility.