THE SNP will look to push the UK Government to go beyond its plans to remove hereditary peers from the House of Lords and instead abolish it altogether, it has been announced.
The second reading of the House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill, which will end the automatic right of hereditary peers to sit in the Lords, is set to take place on Tuesday. The SNP have said they will be tabling a series of sweeping amendments.
Abolishing the 92 seats reserved for hereditary peers was one of Labour’s manifesto commitments, and is expected to be followed by the imposition of a retirement age on members of the Lords. Labour's manifesto also committed to "replacing the House of Lords with an alternative second chamber that is more representative of the regions and nations".
The SNP will put forward a series of amendments to the bill, starting with a reasoned amendment on Tuesday that the party hopes will force a vote.
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It is up to the Speaker whether the amendment is selected and this is usually announced at the start of the debate.
SNP Westminster deputy leader Pete Wishart MP said: “The Labour Party has repeatedly broken its promise to abolish the House of Lords for more than a century – and, frankly, this embarrassingly limited bill is 114 years too little, too late.
“Voters were promised change but instead Sir Keir Starmer has ripped up his election pledges, and continued stuffing the Lords with Labour Party donors and cronies as it suits him.
“The SNP will table a series of amendments to force the Labour Government to go much further – including pressing a vote on abolishing the House of Lords altogether."
Starmer's government has created numerous new peers and handed some of them ministerial roles, including new Investment Minister Poppy Gustafsson last week.
The last Labour government removed most hereditary peers from the Lords in 1999, but allowed 92 to remain in what was initially intended to be a short-term compromise to get the legislation through.
There are around 800 sitting peers in the House of Lords.
About half of those still in the chamber are Conservatives, with the rest mainly independent Crossbenchers and a small number of Labour and Liberal Democrat peers.
While the SNP is pushing for further dismantling of Parliament’s upper house, Conservative critics have called plans to phase out hereditary peers a “vendetta” and “political vandalism”.
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