Lords reform shelved

Friday, 19 March 2004 12:00 AM

The government has shelved plans to scrap hereditary peerages in the House of Lords.

The remaining 92 hereditary peers will stay in the second chamber for the rest of the current Parliament, the Lord Chancellor, Lord Falconer, has said.

There was "no point committing further legislative time to this issue at this stage," he said.

Last week's vote in the second chamber to refer the Constitutional Reform Bill to a select committee demonstrated peers were obstinately opposed to the reform of the Lord Chancellor's post and the establishment of a supreme court, Lord Falconer added.

But Labour has not given up on the plan, as the abolition of hereditary peerages will be a manifesto commitment at the next general election.

Cabinet ministers took the provisional decision at Downing Street earlier on Wednesday.

The final decision will be left to a Cabinet sub-committee next week.

Last night, solicitor general, Harriet Harman, said the government would eventually win out.

"We have decided that you cannot have, in a modern democracy's legislature, people who are there by virtue of that fact that their great-great grandfather had land which were helpful to the monarch.

"We are sticking with the idea that we are going to reform the House of Lords, we are going to get rid of hereditary peers."

Shadow attorney general, Dominic Grieve, said he was " pleased" with the backdown as the reform proposals were "completely half baked."

"It is a shambles and a disgrace," he said.

"The reason why the bill was defeated was not because of the Conservatives, but because it absolutely failed to command any support right across the House of Lords from the cross-benchers and, indeed, a number of Liberal Democrat and Labour peers."

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