House of Lords Act 1999: How Most Hereditary Peers Lost Their Seats

The House of Lords Act 1999 ended the automatic right of hereditary peers to sit and vote in the House of Lords. It received royal assent on 11 November 1999. Its first section is a single sentence: no one is to be a member of the House of Lords "by virtue of an hereditary peerage". A compromise in section 2 then allowed 92 hereditary peers to stay on, and that exception lasted until the House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Act 2026 removed it.

The Act is sometimes searched for as the "House of Lords Reform Act 1999", but its official short title is simply the House of Lords Act 1999.

The Lords before 1999

For centuries the House of Lords was largely a hereditary chamber: most members sat because they had inherited a peerage. The twentieth century chipped away at that model in stages:

• Parliament Act 1911. Removed the Lords' veto over money bills and allowed the Commons to overrule the Lords on other bills after two sessions and two years.
• Parliament Act 1949. Cut the Lords' delaying power to one session and one year.
• Life Peerages Act 1958. Created life peerages, so membership was no longer purely hereditary. Since 1965 almost all new peerages have been life peerages.
• Peerage Act 1963. Allowed hereditary peers to disclaim their titles, which meant they could stand for the House of Commons.

A broader reform bill was introduced in December 1968 but dropped in April 1969. The Labour Party's 1997 general election manifesto said that "the House of Lords must be reformed" and promised, as a first step, to end by law the right of hereditary peers to sit and vote.

How the Act was passed

The bill passed the House of Commons by 340 votes to 132 on 16 March 1999. The House of Lords, where hereditary peers were themselves voting on their own removal, approved it by 221 votes to 81 on 26 October 1999. Royal assent followed on 11 November 1999.

The effect on the size of the chamber was dramatic: membership fell from 1,330 in October 1999 to 669 in March 2000.

The exception for 92 peers came from a negotiated compromise. It was added to the bill as the Weatherill amendment, named after Lord Weatherill. Because the 1997 manifesto had described ending the hereditary right as an initial reform, the 92 were meant to stay only until a second stage of reform.

What the Act actually says

The Act is short, with six sections and two schedules. The key provisions are:

• Section 1 excluded hereditary peers from membership of the House of Lords.
• Section 2 allowed people to be excepted from section 1 under the Standing Orders of the House. At any one time 90 people could be excepted, plus the holder of the office of Earl Marshal and the person performing the office of Lord Great Chamberlain, who did not count towards that limit. An excepted peer kept the exception for life, "until an Act of Parliament provides to the contrary". Any question about whether someone was excepted was to be decided by the Clerk of the Parliaments.
• Section 3 removed the disqualifications that had applied to hereditary peers in relation to the House of Commons. Hereditary peers who had lost their seats could now vote in Commons elections and be elected as MPs. This did not apply to the 92 who remained in the Lords.

Who the 92 were

The Standing Orders divided the 90 elected places between the party groups, the crossbenches and a set of office-holders, with two further places for the royal offices named in the Act:

Group	Places	How chosen
Conservative	42	Elected within the group
Crossbench	28	Elected within the group
Liberal Democrat	3	Elected within the group
Labour	2	Elected within the group
Office-holders	15	Elected by the whole House
Earl Marshal and Lord Great Chamberlain	2	Sat by virtue of their offices; outside the limit of 90
Total	92

The first elections were held in October and November 1999. Until November 2002, a vacancy was filled by the next-highest unsuccessful candidate from those elections. After that, vacancies were filled by by-elections using a preferential vote, in which a candidate needed at least half of the available votes to win. Only hereditary peers could stand. A 2016 attempt in the Lords to abolish these by-elections was talked out.

The Act also led to some new life peerages. They went to the three living hereditary peers of first creation who were not royal, and to former Leaders of the House of Lords who were hereditary peers.

The second stage of reform

The 1999 Act was meant to be the first step. The long debate over what should come next produced several proposals but no agreement on the composition of the House:

• Royal Commission, 2000. Set up in 1999 and chaired by Lord Wakeham, it recommended a chamber of about 550 members with 65, 87 or 195 of them elected, and an independent Appointments Commission.
• White paper, 7 November 2001. Proposed removing the remaining 92 hereditary peers, capping membership at 600 and electing 120 members.
• Free votes, 4 February 2003. The Commons backed none of the options put to it. The Lords backed only a fully appointed House.
• Free votes, 7 March 2007. The Commons backed a fully elected House by 337 votes to 224. The Lords rejected that option and backed a fully appointed House by 361 votes to 121.
• House of Lords Reform Bill 2012. Introduced in June 2012 and abandoned on 6 August 2012.

Smaller changes did become law. The House of Lords Reform Act 2014, which received royal assent on 14 May 2014, allowed members to resign and provided for the exclusion of members sentenced to a year or more in prison. The House of Lords (Expulsion and Suspension) Act 2015 gave the House power to expel or suspend members.

How the exception ended in 2026

Section 2(3) of the 1999 Act had kept the 92 in place until "an Act of Parliament provides to the contrary". That Act is the House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Act 2026. It was introduced in the House of Commons on 5 September 2024 and received royal assent on 18 March 2026.

Some of its provisions took effect on royal assent, but the main ones, including the exclusion of the remaining hereditary peers, came into force at the end of the parliamentary session. That session ended when Parliament was prorogued on 29 April 2026, and legislation.gov.uk records section 2 of the 1999 Act as omitted from that date. Hereditary peers who also held a life peerage kept their seats by virtue of the life peerage.

Section 1 of the 1999 Act remains in force. Since 29 April 2026, no one has been a member of the House of Lords because of a hereditary title. For how the Lords fits into the wider system of checks and balances, see our guide to the separation of powers.