Member

Why does this matter? Well, nobody sits in the House of Lords now by simple right of birth. Before 1999, a hereditary peerage generally carried with it the right to sit and vote in the House of Lords, but the House of Lords Act 1999 removed the right of most hereditary peers to membership of the House of Lords. As we on the Conservative Benches know, Labour has a problematic relationship with history, and it seems to have forgotten that the reason 90 hereditary peers were left was as a firm marker for further reform—the idea being that there would be no more piecemeal reform of the House of Lords, but that instead a Government would need to bring forward a comprehensive plan for change.