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Sir Keir Starmer will next week set out legislation to axe hereditary peers from the House of Lords, removing 47 Conservative peers and ending one of the biggest anachronisms in British democracy.
The bill will feature in a wide-ranging first legislative package of the new Labour government, to be set out by King Charles next week at the state opening of parliament, according to party officials.
About 30 bills are jostling to make the final cut for the King’s Speech, with Starmer keen to prioritise issues such as planning reform while he has early political momentum from last week’s historic general election win.
However, while the prime minister wants swiftly to remove the 92 remaining blue-blooded hereditary peers in the 774-member unelected House of Lords, he is not expected to legislate immediately to force peers to retire at 80.
Labour officials said that a manifesto promise to force peers to retire at the end of the parliament during which they turn 80 would be introduced at a later stage, but would be subject to a consultation first.
They insisted the delay had nothing to do with Starmer being asked about the retirement plan ahead of his meeting in Washington this week with 81-year-old US President Joe Biden.
“In terms of the age in the House of Lords, the simple fact is that our House of Lords is massive — it’s the second-biggest political chamber in the world,” the prime minister told reporters en route to Washington. “That is the primary driver of retirement at 80.”
Starmer’s first priority for Lords reform is to abolish hereditary peers, who are aristocrats who owe their right to legislate in the UK parliament by dint of their birth, with some tracing their lineage back to the Norman conquest.
Under a compromise Lords reform deal agreed by Tony Blair in 1999, about 92 hereditary peers were allowed to retain their seats on a “temporary basis”.
The bill to scrap hereditary peers forms the first part of an effort to slim down the chamber, while simultaneously cutting the number of Conservative legislators in the upper house: more than half the 92 hereditary peers sit as Tories.
To sugar the pill — and to try to smooth the passage of the bill through the Lords — the ousted legislators would be allowed to retain access to the Palace of Westminster, including its bars and restaurants, the Financial Times previously reported.
At present, there are a total of 274 Conservative peers and 168 Labour peers — most of them life peers appointed by party leaders. Removing hereditary peers would help Starmer address a political imbalance in the upper house, although he is also appointing more peers to sit on the Labour benches.
A longer-term Labour ambition to scrap the unelected upper house altogether has been put on the back burner and is not expected to feature in this parliament, which could run until 2029.
The King’s Speech on Wednesday next week will feature a big package of legislation expected to include measures empowering the Office for Budget Responsibility to independently publish forecasts of any big fiscal event involving big tax and spending changes, a move intended to reinforce the party’s commitment to fiscal discipline.
It will also include “Labour’s plan to make work pay”, Labour officials said. Overseen by deputy prime minister Angela Rayner — but delivered by the business department — the employment reforms include a crackdown on zero-hours contracts and “fire and rehire” practices, new collective bargaining for the social care sector, and extending equal pay protections to ethnic minority and disabled workers.
Labour will need legislation to set up the centrepiece of its green energy plans — GB Energy, a new state-owned energy investor that will be based in Scotland and will take stakes in renewables and nuclear projects.
The party is also expected to legislate to put the entire water industry in “special measures” that would see executives face bonus restrictions and potential criminal sanctions if they fail to clean up rivers and beaches.
Labour is also expected to push through some “off the shelf” legislation that Sunak promised but failed to enact before parliament was dissolved.
These include a tobacco and vapes bill, which will ban anyone born after 2009 from buying cigarettes and introduce new curbs on the sale of vapes.
Other “leftover” Tory bills include a renters bill, which will ban “no-fault” evictions, and the football governance bill, which will create a new regulator for the sport in England.
