On 18 March 2026 the House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill became the House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Act 2026. Following one final vote on the evening of the 10th of March 2026 in the House of Lords , and after having offered additional life peer appointments to Conservative peers, the Labour government  has succeeded in finalising both what Tony Blair had started in 1999 with the House of Lords Act 1999, as well as one of its own manifesto pledges (at p. 108) by the end of the first Parliamentary session. With the remaining hereditary peers leaving the House of Lords, the House will be comprised solely of lifetime-appointments when peers and MPs gather for the State Opening of Parliament and the King’s Speech on 13 May.

While this is undoubtedly a significant step in terms of constitutional reform, it simultaneously represents the lowest hanging fruit as far as House of Lords reform is concerned. If history on House of Lords’ reform-attempts has taught us anything, then it is very likely going to be much more challenging to carry out meaningful, effective and successful reform going forward. This post will highlight both where there are apparent needs for change, but also the political realities that seem almost necessarily associated with House of Lords reform. 

The House of Lords reform catalogue for this Labour government

Broadly speaking House of Lords reform ideas can be grouped into two categories: firstly, there are those reform plans that address the general structure and composition of the House of Lords and seek to create a more feasible democratic mandate for Parliament’s second chamber going forward. These are the kind of large-scale reforms that have last been discussed by the general public when Nick Clegg introduced and later withdrew his House of Lords Reform Bill 2012 due to disagreement and a lack of support for the proposal within the Coalition government. The current government also has, as per its manifesto, the ultimate goal of ‘replacing the House of Lords with an alternative second chamber that is more representative of the regions and nations.’ However, as the party also said that it would ‘consult on proposals, seeking the input of the British public on how politics can best serve them,’ and has yet to formally start this process, any consideration of loosely phrased proposals such as Labour’s Brown Commission proposal from 2022 is more speculation than anything else.  

Secondly, therefore, it seems sensible to primarily consider the smaller scale proposals for which there also happens to be broad general agreement both from scholarship as well as from politicians pushing for further House of Lords reform.  These ideas seek to place ‘a limit on the current size of the House of Lords’ and introduce ‘greater quality control on appointments’ as Meg Russell had summarised for the Institute for Government in a 2023 report. They are all also echoed to varying degrees of specificity in the Labour government’s 2024 manifesto.

There is an issue with controlling the size and quality of House of Lords membership on the “way in”. I believe that Russell is right to appeal for a renaissance of mechanisms that have existed in the past but have diminished in use and significance since their original inception and could be prime candidates to be put to greater use once more in seeking to achieve the policy goals of House of Lords reform.

One of those mechanisms was for the Prime Minister to exercise restraint in recommending appointments for peerages, until the size of the House of Lords has come down to more manageable levels. Recognising that the Prime Minister was in a unique position to unilaterally work towards a smaller House of Lords, this was one of the principle appeals by the Lord Speaker’s Committee on the Size of the House in 2017. Theresa May promised to exercise such restraint in creating new peers in a 2018 letter, and, out of the last five Prime Ministers, is the only one who can be said to have actually upheld this promise. Whereas May appointed only 46 peers during her 3 year tenure and in her resignation honours – and by that sent the size of House on a continued downward trajectory from 860 to 811 for the first time in the 21st century – the preceding PMs reversed that trend with Boris Johnson coming in at 75 peers appointed during his 3 year tenure and by way of resignation honours, Liz Truss at 32 peers for a tenure of 50 days, and Rishi Sunak coming in at 38 peers for his tenure of less than two years. Similarly, the non-statutory House of Lords Appointments Commission (HOLAC), was created in 2000, but its relevance has faded in recent years both with regards to its role in selecting appointees for crossbench peerages – where since 2011 only 21 out of 64 appointments had been suggested by HOLAC, as opposed to the original idea that only certain crossbench appointments should still be made by the PM – and, depending on the relevant Prime Minister, as to them accepting the non-binding scrutiny it exercises with regards to party-political appointees.

It would seem quite possible that both of those mechanisms could be used to address the current issues associated with the appointments process. A first step would be for the Prime Minister to recommit to both HOLAC’s originally foreseen role as well as to a self-imposed limit on new appointments. A further step might be to make HOLAC’s advice binding on the Prime Minister  or to limit the power of appointment numerically, along the same lines of what the Lord Speaker’s Committee on the Size of the House had suggested almost a decade ago.

Further possible areas of reform that were also suggested during the debates surrounding the House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill included the introduction of a mandatory retirement age or of stricter attendance requirements for peers. Some proposed amendments sought to automate the exiting procedures for non-participating peers or for those peers that are no longer capable of serving, in a much stricter way than section 2(1) House of Lords Reform Act 2014 currently does – right now, a peerage can only be lost due to non-attendance, if the peer fails to show up even once in a session of Parliament – while other amendments were designed to end membership in the House of Lords after a certain age or time of membership had been reached. Apart from the removal of Hereditary peers, this was also the only other reform on which the Labour Party had made a specific pledge:

At the end of the Parliament in which a member reaches 80 years of age, they will be required to retire from the House of Lords. (Labour Manifesto 2024, p. 108)

Why none of those smaller reforms have been addressed in the House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Act

Seeing as many of the aforementioned smaller reforms were suggested during the debates on the House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) bill – as Russell had summed up in April 2025 – and are found in the Labour manifesto one cannot be blamed for asking why none of these proposed amendments made it into the 2026 Act.

The past has shown that the House of Lords is notoriously difficult to reform, but, as Meg Russell pointed out in 2025, the debates surrounding the House had indicated a positive momentum towards reform from within the House of Lords. On the other hand though, as was noted by Baroness Hayter in June 2025, the Conservative peers had also employed tactics of delaying and thwarting the enactment of the proposed removal of hereditary peers. Lord True suggested as much in April 2025. Indeed, a compromise with Conservative peers was ultimately needed to bring the bill across the finish line. In other words, any possible positive momentum from some peers notwithstanding, even just bringing across the removal of the remaining hereditary peers required a significant expenditure of political capital.

What had also become clear throughout the course of 2025, was that the government did not assign as much priority to House of Lords reform as might have been required to actually make a more significant step towards more meaningful reform in what has now become the 2026 Act. As Lord Newby noted in the debate in the House of Lords debate in July 2025, there seems to have also been a recognition that it might be wiser to include the perspectives of peers in developing the government’s reform proposals, as him and many other peers observed broad consensus on the reasonable next steps forward. This seems to have been the primary motivation behind Lord Speaker Smith proposing to deal with the reform of retirement age and participation through setting up a dedicated select committee. The Retirement and Participation Committee was subsequently appointed on 18 December 2025 and is required to report its findings by 31 July 2026.

Still, it should be acknowledged that the government, while not being willing to move forward on wider small-scale reform, agreed to include Lords amendments as to retirement by power of attorney via an amendment to the House of Lords Reform Act 2014  in the final bill. This has closed a gap in the way that peers are now able to retire “in dignity” even if they themselves are not capable of giving notice of their retirement anymore. Both the Leader and the Shadow Leader of the House of Lords held up this consensus “mini-reform” as an example of how the House of Lords could achieve meaningful and reasonable changes from out of its midst in the final debate on the bill on 10 March 2026. Whether such a minor amendment can actually serve as a constructive foundation for further reform remains to be seen.

What is the way forward?

With the Retirement and Participation Committee due to report at the beginning of the new session of Parliament, it seems likely that at least some retirement and participation rules are going to be the next step of House of Lords reform. Seeing as merely removing the last remaining Hereditaries was a feat that took almost 18 months from the introduction of the bill to the House of Commons to having received royal assent in March 2026, observers should manage their expectations with respect to the likelihood of successful and meaningful reforms being introduced and passed in a timely fashion. Before the Committee had even been established, peers, including some from the Labour Party, had already started to row back the expectations of mandatory retirement at 80, arguing that this might mean too few opportunities for those that are only appointed as life peers as septuagenarians.

What offers even less confidence for reform on the “way in” specifically is the staggering speed at which the new PM has created new peers. While understandable from the perspective of a PM being stymied in his legislative progress by a second chamber where the Opposition is in the majority, the current 96 appointments have already produced an appointment spike similar to 2010/11’s 117 appointments under then newly-elected PM David Cameron. This highlights a further area of concern that has so far received less attention under this renewed push for House of Lords reform: In any case a limitation of size needs to carry with it a formula to maintain a party-political balance in the second chamber. Such a formula alongside sensible numerical appointment-limitations is required to limit the membership in the long run – this seems to also be a reasonable proposal in the eyes of the British public.  

Ultimately though, the House of Lords suffers most from being an institution which plays a vital constitutional role but which, to the British public, has next to no legitimate claim to fulfil that very same purpose. This, however, can only truly be remedied by larger scale reform.

Simon Karsunke is a research assistant, lecturer, and doctoral candidate at the Chair of Common Law at the University of Passau, teaching and researching UK Public Law