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1h ago

Labour Sets Up Cross-Party Push for Lords Participation Tests and Age-80 Exit Rule

Ministers will ask a select committee to define measurable contributions with a retirement timetable to cut the chamber’s size.

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The House of Lords is the largest legislature in the world after China’s National People’s Congress
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Overview

  • Ministers are considering rules that would require peers who fail to attend or contribute to resign their seats.
  • Activity would be assessed across debates, votes, committee service and other “meaningful contributions” under criteria to be designed by a cross-party committee.
  • A retirement age of 80 is proposed, with peers departing at the end of the Parliament in which they turn 80 as planners look to avoid a cliff-edge.
  • The removal of the remaining hereditary peers is progressing via legislation in its final scrutiny, framed as the first step in a wider reform programme.
  • The overhaul seeks to shrink the roughly 830-member chamber toward about 650 in a House where Conservatives outnumber Labour 285 to 209, after reports of “silent peers” claiming allowances.