Keir Starmer has said he wants Peter Mandelson out of the House of Lords, after the peer was found to have deeper links with the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein, including emails which suggested Epstein had sent thousands of pounds to Lord Mandelson’s husband.
Others appeared to show confidential market-sensitive information from inside No 10 was shared with Epstein while Mandelson was business secretary.
But removing Mandelson’s peerage is exceptionally complex – and there are many different routes it could take.
Does Starmer have the power to remove Mandelson from the Lords?
No. He has said he “believes that Peter Mandelson should not be a member of the House of Lords or use the title”. But he has said the Lords should implement changes to make it easier to expel peers.
In the meantime, it is the hope of No 10 that Mandelson resigns of his own accord. Mandelson is on a leave of absence from the Lords and has resigned from the Labour party.
What happens if Mandelson resigns from the Lords?
Under the 2014 House of Lords Reform Act, Mandelson could resign from the Lords and relinquish his peerage. But this would not strip him of the title – he would still be free to call himself Lord Peter Mandelson of Foy and Hartlepool.
There is another way he could go quietly without resigning. His current leave of absence from the Lords lasts until the end of the parliamentary session in May. He is no longer US ambassador, the reason for his absence, so he needs to come back and retake the oath in the Lords in the next session.
If he does not do so by the end of that next session, his membership automatically lapses. But again, he would keep the title.
What if Mandelson does not resign?
It may be possible for Mandelson to be expelled if he is found to have broken the Lords code of conduct – under the 2014 Act – but it is not simple.
A complaint must be made and reviewed and there is a question mark over whether the current code of conduct can be retrospectively applied, as the code has been significantly strengthened in recent years.
Can the Lords change the rules to make it easier?
This is clearly what the government is hoping will happen if Mandelson does not resign. Asked if Starmer wanted Mandelson out of the Lords “by hook or by crook”, the prime minister’s spokesperson emphatically said yes.
The Labour manifesto says the government intends to strengthen the powers to remove disgraced members. This is not part of the current programme of work in the Lords – and no preparatory work seems to have been done on how to achieve this.
Even if Mandelson leaves the Lords, can he still use the title?
It is the crown that grants a peerage and, according to the bible of Lords procedure, Gadd’s Peerage Law, it is then “very difficult to deprive the holder of it”.
A peerage can only be removed by an act of parliament. This has taken place before – the Titles Deprivation Act 1917 – which removed the peerages of a group of lords who had aided Britain’s enemies during the war. We are far from those circumstances. No 10 believes it would be exceptionally constitutionally difficult to go down that route, even with a large Commons majority.
Many former peers who have left still use the title lord, even hereditary peers who were removed in the late 1990s. Under the current system it seems near impossible that even the most egregious acts can lead to a peer losing their titles.
