Once, I worked on this paper with a colleague who would one day be inheriting a peerage. He was looking forward in the fullness of time to doing his bit in the House of Lords. Alas, Tony Blair nipped that aspiration in the bud when he did away with almost all the hereditary peers. But what struck me was his rationale for them in the parliamentary system; they were, he said, less likely to have their heads turned by power because they had come into parliament after the death of a beloved father and had been educated with their responsibilities in mind. It was a mindset so utterly different from that of every other member of parliament, that it struck me as rather a good thing that the hereditary peers still had influence remaining.
But this week the Commons votes on whether to remove this element of the constitution that has lasted for the best part of a thousand years. At present there are 88 who are eligible to sit in the House of Lords. They sit alongside 692 life peers and 25 bishops. They are, then, a small minority of the Chamber, not likely to unsettle the legislative process, though they can offer an unusual perspective on legislation, that of the landed peerage. They’re unique, except for the bishops, in that they don’t owe their position to political patronage. They are there by dint of birth and beholden to no one.
