Exclusive:House of Lords: Labour will ‘fundamentally reform’ the upper chamber, Shadow Cabinet member promises

Labour will “fundamentally reform” the House of Lords, a Shadow Cabinet member has pledged, and make it “more reflective” of democracy and the country.

Ian Murray, the party’s Shadow Scotland Secretary, told NationalWorld that reforms would start on “day one of the next Labour government”, although acknowledged constitutional change does take time. It comes as doubt has been cast over Labour’s plans for the House of Lords.

Constitutional reforms championed by the party’s former prime minister Gordon Brown called for the Lords to be replaced with an elected chamber representative of the UK’s nations and regions, and won the backing of the current Labour leadership. Sir Keir Starmer said he would abolish the Lords, and branded the unelected second chamber “undemocratic”.

This week, the Lords Labour leader, Baroness Smith of Basildon, told the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee that while the 92 hereditary peers were “hard to justify” she had an “open mind” about removing them. 

However, in a wide-ranging interview with NationalWorld, Shadow Cabinet minister Ian Murray confirmed that the party was still looking to bring in a second chamber of the nations and regions. He said: “There will be fundamental reform of the second chamber, there’s no doubt about that.

“We’ll have to change the House of Lords, not just to get our policy platform through, but we’ll also have to fundamentally reform it to make it a second chamber that’s much more reflective of democracy, and also the country as a whole. 

“That process will begin on day one of the next Labour government. Constitutional change does take a long time, but the commitment and the journey is to do that and do it fundamentally.”

The Shadow Scotland Secretary explained that Starmer would have to make additional changes to the House of Lords to get laws passed, as at the moment it’s “stacked against the Labour Party”. The Conservatives currently have a majority in the Lords, after being in power for the last 14 years. Peers do not have to show up to votes, and Rishi Sunak was repeatedly defeated by the Lords on his Safety of Rwanda Bill as Tories did not come in to Parliament to support it.

Despite this, Murray said that Labour would “have to take steps almost immediately to reform it, because a Labour government wouldn’t have a majority”. “So if we want to get our programme through, which would be radical but practical change and reform as well as investment, we’ll need to do that.”

If Labour did push through its reforms, it would bring an end to the system of aristocratic families who have inherited their peerages taking their seat in Parliament’s second chamber. Like all peers, the hereditary lords can claim a daily £342 attendance allowance.

There are more than 800 members of the House of Lords, with 92 seats set aside for hereditary peers since the last time the chamber faced reforms under the Blair government. The number of hereditary peers who can sit in the Lords was limited in 1999, after Blair trimmed more than 600 of their colleagues from the chamber. More than two-thirds of the Lords are men and the average age is 71.

The reforms could be politically beneficial for Labour, as the majority of the hereditary peers, 47, are Conservative, while only four have the Labour whip. The Lords has been criticised in recent years, after Boris Johnson made a 30-year-old junior special adviser a peer.

Ralph Blackburn is NationalWorld’s politics editor based in Westminster, where he gets special access to Parliament, MPs and government briefings. If you liked this article you can follow Ralph on X (Twitter) here and sign up to his free weekly newsletter Politics Uncovered, which brings you the latest analysis and gossip from Westminster every Sunday morning.