Sir Edward Leigh

Sir Edward Leigh

Conservative — Gainsborough

Speaking in the House of Commons on 4 September 2025

Debate

House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill

Contribution

I will make a bit of progress. I know the Minister will say that the monarchy is popular—which it is—and that it does not have political power, but it has infinitely more influence than any hereditary peer. I do not think we should accept that the hereditary principle is entirely wrong. Even if we accept that and say it is quite wrong that somebody should be called an hereditary peer, which I suspect is a lot of the problem, why do we not just make all the existing hereditary peers—who, as we have heard, are not stately home owners; they are dedicated public servants, with scores of them having worked in Parliament for years—life peers? Given that they are dedicated public servants, if we hate the fact that they are called hereditary peers, why not have an evolutionary form and call them life peers? But we are not doing that. Lords amendment 1, tabled by my party in the other place, is entirely sensible. Rather than kicking people out in a flash, the hereditary peers—which we could now call life peers, if it is the name that makes people unhappy—could simply fade away. There is a lot of merit in old people gradually fading away rather than dying.

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