House of Lords Reform

Simon Opher Excerpts

Tuesday 20th October 2026 Westminster Hall

[Dr Simon Opher (Stroud) (Lab) [R]]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered House of Lords reform.

It is a pleasure to bring this debate to Parliament as chair of the all-party parliamentary group on House of Lords reform. A few weeks ago, I showed a group of United States doctors around Parliament, which involved sitting in the Public Gallery of the House of Lords, looking at the King Charles throne, the Woolsack and a scattering of some quite elderly peers. One doctor said, “How do these guys get in here?”. When I answered that they were appointed by their mates, they all laughed—surely I was joking. Sadly, I was not joking.

Reform of the House of Lords has been on the cards for centuries. The House was actually abolished in 1649, but was reinstated a few years later, and it has been the subject of intense debate ever since. The idea of unelected peers having inherited access to Parliament alongside crony appointees controlling the laws that Parliament produces is clearly ridiculous. It is no wonder that the crisis of confidence in our political system is at an all-time high.

This Government have actually taken quite big strides—probably more than others—on the long overdue removal of hereditary peers. I also welcome proposals to impose a retirement age and a minimum participation requirement, but we cannot afford to push this constitutional necessity further down the road. I will take this opportunity to set out the case for reform of the House of Lords and how we can go about implementing it.

The function of our second Chamber is to scrutinise and amend legislation passed by the elected Commons. There are many exceptional Lords who do a really good job at that, but their contribution is undermined by their complete lack of legitimacy. It is simply not right that our Parliament has more unelected lawmakers than lawmakers with a mandate from the people. During the Makerfield by-election, the Prime Minister called it “scandalous” and expressed support for an early change to the Lords.

One of the things that has most surprised me is learning that the House of Lords remains a self-governing institution. In the last session, we saw a handful of unelected peers, many of whom were rejected by the voters at the last election, abuse that fact to stall the progression of legislation passed by the elected Commons.

The other place is also deeply unrepresentative of our country. Over 55% of peers live in London and the south-east. I know that our Prime Minister is very concerned with that, and that he has called for a senate of nations and regions to replace the Lords, so that every corner of our country is properly represented in both of our Chambers.

The public also want change. Only 16% support the current status quo; 70% have little or no confidence in the institution, and a majority want an entirely elected upper Chamber. The voters gave a very clear mandate for a Labour manifesto that included a commitment to replacing the House of Lords with an alternative second Chamber, more representative of the regions and nations.

What could a second Chamber look like? That is a complex issue; we should convene a commission of citizens and experts to decide on its role and make-up. It should still absolutely be possible to retain the expertise that we have there, and that is exactly what our manifesto has committed us to.

[Mike Wood (Kingswinford and South Staffordshire) (Con)]

The hon. Gentleman has made a good start on setting out his case. However, does he not see the irony in calling for an appointed committee of the public and experts to look at how democratic the House of Lords is?

[Dr Opher]

I would say that we need experts to look at how our democracy works and to devise a better way of doing it.

[Ben Lake (Ceredigion Preseli) (PC)]

I congratulate the hon. Member on securing this debate. Does he agree that such a consultative process might well come about from a Bill that my noble Friend, Baroness Smith of Llanfaes, has introduced to the second Chamber? It should indeed be for the experts to provide some ideas, and for us and members of the public to consult on the best way forward for the second Chamber.

[Dr Opher]

I have been working with Baroness Smith on her Bill. We need to get the great minds of this country to devise a good political system, one that reflects our country and gives us our best government.

I suggest that we need a commission to look into the matter. That commission could take many experts. How it is actually constituted remains something we can debate. The Government have announced a commission on electoral reform; maybe that could be extended to examine the composition of the second Chamber, because that would be a holistic approach to the system. I see some hon. Members shaking their heads.

I will briefly touch on an issue that many hon. Members care about: the lack of transparency in the other place. According to research by Transparency International UK, 128 peers hold paid political advisory roles that risk breaching parliamentary rules. We must strengthen the House of Lords code of conduct to put beyond doubt that legislators who serve in the House of Lords should not be lobbyists. Since 2013, almost a quarter of all nominations from political parties have been political donors—that is the ultimate cronyism.

I know many hon. Members wish to speak, so in conclusion I ask the Minister to meet with the APPG on House of Lords reform to discuss how the Government intend to fulfil their manifesto commitment to consult the public on an alternative second Chamber. Will the Minister consider expanding the remit of the commission on electoral reform to cover the role and composition of the other place? It is time—to quote someone who I do not normally agree with— to “take back control.”

[Several hon. Members rose—]

--- Later in debate ---

[Andrew Rosindell]

The hon. Member will know that the way it works in the House of Lords is that it is based on party appointments. The Prime Minister will make nominations; so will the Leader of the Opposition; so will the leader of the Liberal Democrats; so will the leader of the Greens. They will nominate a sprinkling of new peers every so often, usually once a year. Well, where was the invitation for the leader of Reform UK to nominate a number of Reform UK Members of the House of Lords? The hon. Member must surely accept that that is very wrong when we consider that Reform UK was the third largest party in terms of votes at the last election.

[Dr Opher]

Will the hon. Member give way?

[Andrew Rosindell]

I will in a moment. I go back to my original argument: we are getting this wrong. We will regret the day that we become just one of two elected Chambers. We will regret that day. It will create a rivalry between two sets of elected politicians, who will both claim to be truly representative of the people who have put them there, instead of having the primacy of the elected House of Commons—ultimately, we are elected by the people of this country and we can make the final decision through the Parliament Acts. At the end of the day, we do not actually have to be obedient to the House of Lords.

What I do know is that, within the House of Lords, there is an opportunity to have people with enormous knowledge and expertise, whether they are former Cabinet Ministers, former ambassadors or high commissioners, heads of industry, heads of trade unions or representatives of the different faith groups. It is good to have people like that. It is right that we still have the established Church of England represented through the bishops; although, these days, they are rather more to the left than I would like, they still represent the established Church of this country.

[Dr Opher]

I thought that, in Reform’s manifesto, it was going to abolish the House of Lords and replace it with a much smaller, more democratic second Chamber.

[Andrew Rosindell]

Well, I did not stand on that manifesto. I joined Reform UK after that manifesto. I can tell the hon. Member now that that is not our policy today. We are not going to abolish the House of Lords. We are not going to engage in constitutional vandalism.

Throughout the ages, we have evolved our constitutional and parliamentary democracy in a way that has given us strength and continuity, and has allowed us to change not in some radical direction, whereby minorities and people with vested interests can finish up controlling the institutions of this country, but in a way that is evolution rather than revolution. There is no requirement to abolish the House of Lords. There should not be an elected second Chamber.

New Zealand got rid of its second Chamber, so it has only one elected Chamber. I would prefer that, frankly, to a second load of politicians in the House of Lords who wish that they were MPs, but could not get there, so they were put in place by their friends in party headquarters. We do not want that. If we eventually do abolish the upper House, frankly it would be better just to have one Chamber than to have a second elected Chamber, because there would be rivalry between the two.

Look at it like this: if we choose carefully, change the system and make it more meritocratic in terms of experience, knowledge and the kind of people who we really want in the House of Lords, we will be buying in expertise at low cost. Otherwise, we will be paying consultants and experts that work for companies to do an effective job of scrutinising legislation. What is the point of that when we can give someone a peerage? That could be someone with vast knowledge, perhaps someone who has been an ambassador to another country, headed up an important institution or contributed to the establishment of an amazing charity, and who has vast knowledge from that. It could be someone like Sebastian Coe, the Olympic gold medallist who went on to run the London Olympics in 2012. Those people have value, but they will not stand for election, so we would lose all of them—[Interruption.] Well, they would not stand for election to the Lords.

As I say, we would lose good people. The great and the good would go and we would finish up, as I said earlier, with people who want to be politicians but would have to settle for being second-best. That is not good enough. We should do what we have always done in this country and allow our constitution and our parliamentary democracy to change—yes, change by all means—in a gentle and evolutionary way, so that we do not get rid of a tried and tested system that has lasted for generations and, with all its faults, done this country rather well over the centuries.