House of Lords (Direct election) Bill

A bill to

Make provisions for the direct election of members of the House of Lords.

BE IT ENACTED by the King’s Most Excellent Majesty, by and with the advice and consent of the Lords Temporal, and Commons, in this present Parliament assembled, and by the authority of the same, as follows:-

Section 1: Removal of Life Peers from the House

(1) No person shall sit in the House of Lords by virtue of a Life Peerage.

Section 2 : Provisions for election of members of the House

(1) The person accepted as holding the office of Earl Marshal and whomever is performing the office of Lord Great Chamberlain shall lose their Peerage, and their successors in the posts shall not be made Lords Temporal.

(2) As soon as is practical, and no more than 1 year after this act received Royal Assent there shall be elections to stipulate who sits in the House of Lords as an Elected Peer.

(3) Subsequent elections shall be held the first Thursday of May in the sixth calendar year following that in which the polling day for the previous Lords election fell.

(4) An early Lords election is to take place if:

(a)The House of Lords passes a motion in the form “That there shall be an early Lords election”.

(b)If the motion is passed on a division, the number of members who vote in favor of the motion is equal to or greater than two thirds of the number of members who take part in the division.

(5) If such a motion is passed the polling day for the election is to be the day appointed by His Majesty by proclamation on the recommendation of the Prime Minister, and shall be no later than 4 months after the motion is voted upon.

(6) The Electoral commission shall have the responsibility of defining the constituencies from which the Elected Lords are elected and running the election following the criteria defined in schedule 1.

(7) If an Elected Peer dies or disclaims their peerage a by-election shall take place using Instant Runoff Voting in the constituency they were elected.

(8)Ministers will be able to amend schedule 1 with the use of statutory instruments.

Section 3: Creation of Elected Peerages

(1) His Majesty shall have power by letters patent to confer on those elected to serve in the House of Lords a peerage having the incidents specified in subsection (2)

(2) A peerage conferred under this section shall, during the life of the person on whom it is conferred, entitle him

(a) to rank as baron under such style as may be appointed by the letters patent

(b) receive writs of summons to attend the House of lords and sir and therein accordingly

and shall expire on

(c)The day it is disclaimed.

(d)The day of the next Lords Election

(e)Upon the death of the Peer

whichever date comes first.

(3) Nothing in this section shall enable any person to receive a writ of summons to attend the House of Lords, or to sit and vote in that House at any time when they may be disqualified by law.

(4) A person who holds an Elected Peerage may at any time disclaim that peerage by writing to the Lord Chancellor.

Section 4: Repeals

(1)Part 2 of the Titles and Peerages Act 2017 is hereby Repealed.

(2)Section 2 of the House of Lords Act 1999 is hereby repealed.

(3)The Life Peerages Act 1958 is hereby repealed

Section 5: Commencement and short title:

(1)This bill shall be known as the House of Lords (Direct Election) Act 2023

(2)This bill shall come into effect immediately upon receiving Royal Assent.

(a) Except for Section 1 and Section 4 that will come into effect on the day the first Lords Election is held.

(3)This bill shall extend to the entire United Kingdom.

Schedule 1: Provision for boundaries

(1) The United Kingdom shall be split into the following regions for the purpose of House of Lords constituency boundaries.

(a)Scotland (b)Northern Ireland (c)Wales (d)North East (e)North West (f)Yorkshire and the Humber (g)East Midlands (h)West Midlands (i)East of England (j)London (k)South East (l)South West

(2) There shall be 600 Elected Peers in the House.

(3) The seats shall be distributed between regions in the following ways:

(a)Each region shall be allocated 7 seats (b)The remaining 516 seats shall be allocated proportionally to the population of each region using a Sainte Lague method.

(4) The Boundary Commissions for England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland shall be responsible for drawing constituency boundaries and naming constituencies in their respective nations.

(5) Each constituency shall elect between 3 and 5 members, who shall be elected using Single Transferable Vote.

(6) The Boundary Commissions shall whilst drawing constituency boundaries take into account Local Government boundaries and local community links.

(7) Every constituency shall be entirely contained within one of the regions listed in section 1 of this schedule.

(8) The ratio (population of a constituency)/(seats in the constituency) for each constituency shall not vary by more 5% either way of the national ratio, calculated using (national population)/600

(a)This does not apply if it proves to be mathematically impossible to make seats with those characteristics in a certain region.

(9) The boundaries shall be reviewed once every 6 years, starting from when the first set of constituencies is proposed.

(a) The ONS shall provide population figures as up to date as practicable to the commissions for the purposes of these reviews.

This bill was authored by His Grace the Dukel of Kearton KP KD OM KCT CMG CBE MVO PC FRS (u/maroiogog) as a Private Member’s Bill.

Bills I am altering/repealing:

https://www.reddit.com/r/MHOC/comments/5qtckz/b421_titles_and_peerages_bill/

https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/Eliz2/6-7/21

https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1999/34/contents

Mr Deputy Speaker,

This bill is one that I believe is very badly needed. For too long this country has been at the whims of an unelected house, accountable to no-one, that has been free to interfere with the legislative process. I say no more. From now on the people will be entirely in control of who gets to sit in Parliament and who doesn’t. Who gets to scrutinize the work of the commons and the Government. This bill gives more representation to historically underrepresented regions and communities who have, in the past, found it harder to get voices in parliament because of how parliamentary constituencies were assigned to different areas. This bill ensures areas with the most population get the most seats, and gives each region a baseline. What this bill does is very simple. It takes away the ability for new life Peers to be appointed and makes it so all life and hereditary Peers do not have a seat in the house no longer. It then creates a new kind of Peerage that the new elected Lords will have that only lasts for the time they are elected to serve. I thus urge the house to put power back in the hands of the People and back these measures.

This division will end on Friday 5th January at 10pm BST.