The House of Lords Act 1999 received royal assent on 11 November and came into effect on the same day. This landmark but partial constitutional reform radically altered the composition of the UK’s second chamber, removing the right of all but 92 hereditary peers to sit and vote.

When the act came into force in November 1999, a total of 667 hereditary peers ceased to be members of the House of Lords.

The legislation marked “stage one” of the Lords reform agenda promised by Tony Blair’s Labour government, elected in 1997. The act was not intended to provide for a permanent settlement, but subsequent reform attempts under New Labour were abandoned in the face of opposition and a lack of consensus.

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Labour committed in its 1997 general election manifesto to ending “the right of hereditary peers to sit and vote in the House of Lords will be ended by statute”. It vowed to do so by way of “an initial, self-contained reform, not dependent on further reform in the future”.

The party added: “This will be the first stage in a process of reform to make the House of Lords more democratic and representative.”

The 1998 Queen’s speech promised a bill “to remove the right of hereditary peers to sit and vote in the House of Lords” as “the first stage in a process of reform to make the House of Lords more democratic and representative.”

The 1998 legislative programme also announced the establishment of a royal commission “to review further changes and speedily to bring forward proposals for reform.”

The government’s strategy, therefore, was to split House of Lords reform into stages: ministers would assume responsibility for the first – least controversial – step, while invoking the royal commission when pressed on the more intractable questions raised by “stage two”.

The royal commission performed its traditional role as a political device – allowing Blair to both defer and outsource contentious, politically sensitive decision-making.

William Hague, the Conservative leader, characterised the government’s plans for removing the hereditary peers as “constitutional vandalism”.

He added: “All sensible people want to wait for the royal commission. They are not prepared to embark on reform of the House of Lords until they see where the government are going with it. They do not want stage one without stage two.”

Hague accused the prime minister of seeking “to create a house of cronies beholden to him alone.”

Norman Fowler, Conservative MP and future lord speaker, argued the government intended to “introduce an assembly of appointees and placemen: a giant, ermine-clad quango.”

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The passage of the legislation through parliament was marked by intense political machination. Although the government possessed an effectively all-powerful majority in the House of Commons, the bill was expected to elicit immense resistance in the Lords.

The government, fearing a protracted constitutional battle that could culminate in the use of the Parliament Acts, entered into talks with Conservative representatives in the Lords.

The negotiations between the government and Viscount Cranborne, the Conservative leader in the Lords, resulted in a cross-party compromise to retain 92 hereditary peers.

Cranborne’s grandfather, James Gascoyne-Cecil (the 4th Marquess of Salisbury), had played a leading role in Conservative attempts to thwart the 1911 Parliament Act – which established the primacy of the commons.

The Cranborne bloodline’s about-face was not, however, initially supported by the shadow cabinet.

Cranborne, a cabinet ally of John Major, responded by going behind Hague’s back, and entered into direct discussions with No 10.

The Conservative leader, upon learning of these clandestine meetings, attempted to expose it and embarrass Blair in a session of prime minister’s questions. On 2 December 1998, Hague asked whether Blair would be “happy to see nearly 100 hereditary peers continue to sit in the House of Lords” – the central measure in the proposed cross-party pact.

Hague clarified that he was “not prepared to acquiesce in that change, because we are not prepared to join forces with him on major constitutional change that is based on no comprehensive plan or principle.”

Blair turned the fire back on Hague. “In fact”, he said, the negotiations proved that “even when hereditary Conservative peers are prepared to agree to change, the right honourable gentleman is not.”

The prime minister added: “That is the absurd position to which he has reduced himself.”

Hague then addressed Conservative peers to set out his position; they responded by backing Cranborne’s compromise by 80 votes to 20. “For Tory peers, brought up on loyalty to the party, it was the nearest thing to a mutiny that any had experienced”, the Independent reported.

One Conservative MP conceded: “Blair has played it brilliantly, he’s captured our cavalry.”

Hague subsequently fired Cranborne for his ermine-clad subterfuge. Cranborne later told reporters he had been “sacked for running in like an ill-trained spaniel” to try and secure a deal with Blair.

Lord Fraser of Carmyllie, Conservative deputy leader in the Lords, then resigned over Cranborne’s sacking. He said: “I’m certainly just bewildered by what happened and I just don’t understand the basis on which Robert Cranborne was sacked.”

Lord Bowness, Lord Pilkington and the Earl of Home also resigned as Tory frontbench spokespeople. Hereditary peer Baroness Strange and life peer Baroness Flather both gave up the party whip.

Hague was ultimately forced to appoint Lord Strathclyde, an ally of Cranborne’s, as his successor.

In this context, the government secured the co-operation of Lord Weatherill – a former Conservative MP, crossbench peer and speaker of the House of Commons from 1983 to 1992.

The government white paper, Modernising Parliament: Reforming the House of Lords, was published in December 1998 in this context. It argued the removal of the hereditary peers was a necessary initial step to eliminate a “3 to 1 built-in majority over the Labour Party”.

It added: “Taken as a whole, the hereditary peerage is not representative of the country politically, socially, economically or above all by gender or ethnic origin. While the hereditary peers retain their dominant position, the House as a whole can never hope to be representative.”

Critically, the white paper said the government was minded to accept an amendment that would “allow a small number of hereditary peers to sit temporarily” in what it referred to as a “transitional House”.

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On 26 October 1999, the House of Lords Act secured its third reading in the upper chamber by 221 votes to 81. The legislation, hardly 600 words in length, declared that “No one shall be a member of the House of Lords by virtue of a hereditary peerage”.

The ‘Weatherill amendment’ – the name taken for the cross-party compromise – excepted 92 peers.

A standing order adopted before royal assent specified the mechanism for filling the 92 seats:

• two were held ex officio by the Earl Marshal and the Lord Great Chamberlain for ceremonial duties;
• 15 were elected by the whole House;
• and 75 were elected by the hereditary peers of their respective party or crossbench group.

Elections were held in October and November 1999. Peers ranked the candidates in order of preference for the number of places available. The candidates with the highest number of votes were declared elected, and the ranked preferences were only examined in the event of a tie.

Initially, vacancies among the 90 hereditary peers were filled by elevating the nearest runner-up from the 1999 ballots. This system operated until the 2002-03 session. Since then, vacancies have been filled through a by-election held among either the whole House or the relevant party or group, depending on the seat being replaced.

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On 11 November, the leader of the House of Lords, Baroness Jay, addressed her fellow peers moments before the House of Lords Act received royal assent.

She said: “This is the last time the House of Lords will sit in its present form… A reform that has been discussed for more than 100 years will finally take effect. In the last year of the 20th century, this can only be right.

“The step-by-step approach towards this achievement was the proper one.”

Jay issued a final defence of the government’s reforms, while praising those who did not seek or did not secure election as one of the 90 “excepted hereditary peers”. (The Lords leader referred to “elected Weatherill Peers”.)

She added: “In speaking so optimistically about the future, I must repeat that the government do not denigrate the past. We understand and appreciate the contribution of individual hereditary peers to the chamber and to the country over many centuries.

“We are simply saying that what may have been appropriate 800, or even 200, years ago is not appropriate now”.

She reiterated to her closing remarks during the House of Lords Bill’s third reading stage: “Thank you and goodbye.”

Lord Strathclyde said the unreformed House had “inflicted no evil in its history and much good has been done by it”.

He saluted “those of all parties who are being excluded from our ranks today.”

Strathclyde added: “This is not a time for recrimination but a time for resolution that we who stay will be worthy in every way of those who go, that we shall not rest in the battle to achieve genuine and lasting reform and we shall practise the virtues of modesty, courtesy and a willingness to listen as much as we talk.

“Then, those of us who return next Wednesday may begin to be half-worthy of the great and ancient House that is being dismembered today.”

Lord Weatherill said he was “pleased that the amendment which bears my name has been agreed by both Houses of Parliament by such substantive majorities.”

He concluded: “I suspect that this is not the last post, but reveille. I suspect that the hereditary peerage will continue to serve our country well in the future as they have in the past.”

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Despite the initial intention to follow the act with comprehensive “stage two” reforms, the second step never materialised.

Conservative MP John Bercow’s intervention during the House of Lords Bill’s second reading debate proved to be far-sighted. He asked Margaret Beckett, the leader of the commons, whether she expected “reform to be completed within her remaining political lifetime”.

Beckett responded: “Yes, I can definitely give that assurance.”

Tony Benn, the veteran Labour MP and former hereditary peer, also expressed his concern that the “transitional deal that will preserve hereditary peers will become the permanent solution.”

In 2000, the royal commission, chaired by Conservative peer Lord Wakeham, published its report, A House for the Future.

The commission put forward a number of options for the future composition of the House, ranging from fully appointed to fully elected, with a series of compromises in between.

The government responded by setting up a joint committee composed of MPs and peers to consider the report.

On 7 November 2001, the government produced a further white paper, The House of Lords – Completing the Reform, which vowed to equip the “British people with a Parliament and a constitution fit for the 21st century.”

On 11 December 2002, the joint committee published its first report, which set out “an inclusive range of seven options for the composition of a reformed House of Lords”. They were: 

• Fully appointed
• Fully elected
• 80 per cent appointed/20 per cent elected
• 80 per cent elected/20 per cent appointed
• 60 per cent appointed/40 per cent elected
• 60 per cent elected/40 per cent appointed
• 50 per cent appointed/50 per cent elected

Indicative free votes held in February 2003 saw MPs reject every option presented, including Tony Blair’s preferred model of a fully appointed chamber.

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In an interview with the Financial Times in November 2021, the 7th Marquess of Salisbury (Cranborne) recalled that his primary strategy during the 1999 negotiations was to “make their flesh creep.”

He said: “I threatened them with the Somme and Passchendaele. I didn’t mean it – it would have been a constitutional outrage! But I said it.”

Salisbury also recounted that when the government offered 15 hereditary peers, he responded ambitiously: “How about 100?”

He stated that the rationale for the eventual arrangement – based on 75 being roughly 10% of the existing hereditary peerage plus 15 with experience running committees – was “frightful bulls***”.

Speaking to the Guardian in March 2025, Salisbury admitted that if the government had “held their nerve” he would have “crumbled”.

He added: “I thought the 92 hereditary peers might last only a few more months, not 26 years.”

The Labour peer Bruce Grocott, who served as a Downing Street adviser in 1999, confirmed that the government took Salisbury’s threats seriously and felt they “couldn’t take the risk” of total legislative deadlock.

He argued that the House of Lords Act, including the provision to retain the 92 hereditary peers, was effectively “passed under duress.”

Since 2016, Grocott has repeatedly introduced a private member’s bill to abolish the hereditary peer by-election system. Under this proposed scheme, when a hereditary peer leaves the House, they would not be replaced, and the hereditary element would eventually disappear through natural attrition.

Addressing the House in December 2021, Grocott highlighted the absence of female hereditary peers as a key reason to end hereditary peer by-elections. He noted that, since 1999, the number of women among hereditary peers steadily declined – from five to none – with all by-election winners being men.

He referred to a by-election on 16 June 2021, following the retirement of the Countess of Mar, the last remaining woman hereditary Peer. 

He said: “Need I say that in the by-election to replace Lady Mar, all 10 candidates were men? Steadily, over 22 years, this ridiculous system has not just remained ridiculous, it has actually become more ridiculous.”