The Lords became a halfway house
On October 26th, 1999, The UK’s House of Lords voted to reform itself by abolishing the right to vote of most of its hereditary peers. It did not completely abolish the hereditary principle, because out of about 750 hereditary peers, 92 were allowed to continue to sit and vote in the upper chamber. They were elected by their party colleagues in the Lords, with their numbers allocated according to the party strength at the time. When one of the 92 dies or retires, their place is filled by having their colleagues chose a successor from the non-voting hereditary peers.
The life peers, appointed by the Prime Minister, but with quotas agreed in practice for other parties, and proportional to their party’s strength in the Commons, continue to sit. There are thought to be too many of them to constitute a viable assembly since, when added to the hereditary peers, there are over 800 of them.
The 1999 Act was a patchwork quilt compromise put together by Tony Blair and Viscount Cranborne, then Leader of the House. It was a deal they thought would get through Parliament successfully, and they were correct. But it left the upper chamber as a weird mix, a halfway house towards reform, and it was expected that a more thoroughgoing reform would be carried later to simplify it. Now, 20 years later, that reform has not materialized.
One problem is that the Commons, the popular chamber, is reluctant to see an upper house with an elected mandate that could challenge its authority. The Lords functions mostly as a revising chamber, and the Commons are jealous of their superior authority and status. Critics also point out that an elected upper chamber would return members according to party allegiances, and the Lords would lose its members currently appointed in recognition of their specialist talents. Furthermore, if the upper house were elected at the same time as the Commons, it would tend to feature similar party allegiances and be a virtual rubber stamp.
Political leaders in the Commons are said to be reluctant to give up the patronage they currently enjoy by being able to offer life peerages as a reward for loyalty or financial support. Members of Parliament might be less ready to quit the Commons without the prospect of a continuing political career on the red benches of the upper house.
Some analysts have proposed a mixture of appointed peers and elected ones, but critics of the idea point out that a Prime Minister could appoint life peers to outnumber the elected ones and thus diminish their influence.
The UK has been left with a strangely-composed upper house that is difficult to justify in theory, but which has worked reasonably well in practice for the past two decades. Obviously, it will be reformed at some stage in the future, but the complexities are such that no government has yet had the appetite to take on that task.