Nick Thomas-Symonds

Nick Thomas-Symonds

Labour — Torfaen

Speaking in the House of Commons on 4 September 2025

Debate

House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill

Contribution

As the Leader of the House of Lords has set out in the other place, immediately this Bill is on the statute book a Select Committee will be created to look at those issues of retirement and participation. The hon. Gentleman is talking about politics as they stood in 1999. This Government were elected on a manifesto that delivered 411 MPs in 2024, and this Government are following that manifesto. Across both this House and the other place, there has been broad consensus that the hereditary route to the House of Lords should end. I also make it clear, as Ministers have from this Dispatch Box and Labour peers have in the other place, that this is not a judgment on individuals. It is not a judgment on the work and contribution of individual hereditary peers; it is a judgment on the principle. Let me also say that there is no barrier to any hereditary peers—in the case of the Conservative party, through a party list—being nominated as life peers, should the Leader of the Opposition, for example, wish to do that.

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