Hello and welcome to Coffee House Shots. I'm Megan McElroyd and I'm joined today by James Hill.

Now James, we've been out and about again today because a thousand years of history has just come to an end.

Tell us more. Yeah, that's right. The Labour government came in on a manifesto in 2024 to get rid of the last remaining

hereditary peers from the upper house. This is, in their view, a culmination of the reforms

enacted by Tony Blair in the late 1990s, under which almost all the heretry peers were expelled,

about 90% of them, a small tranche, 92 of them were now to stay on. These would be replaced every time one of them died or retired by someone who would take their state and a by-election. The by-elections were suspended after the 2024 election, and so that meant it's now about sort of 85 or so heritories. But after two years of debating it, they've now passed the law. The day is the last day with

the ending of the session of Parliament, and their arteries are retiring. And now, as we revealed

on coffee house this week, a number, about 15 or so conservatives can probably expect to be

given a kind of life raft by giving a life peerage. But overall, most of them were going. And so

none of them have quite mixed feelings about today,

sadness, resignation, inevitability. They kind of knew this was coming. But that also the question of what happened the next, because everyone knows, really, that in some ways the heritories were the most indefensible element. But that doesn't mean what comes next will have any more legitimacy. And on that, I feel there is an argument I need to put to you. that why should you be able to inherit a position of such privilege?

There are two arguments, one of which is about the rights

of the territories, and that concerns the sense of having a different stake in the nation to someone

who is there elected. The second of all is about the question of the Parliament, what you

wanted to do, if one accepts that you ought to have a democratic house, and of course that's what we've had since the 1911 Parliament Act gave the supremacy of the commons, you therefore have a second chamber, and presumably you're not a unicameralist, you want to have two chambers. How does one have that second house? Now in America, of course, they have a federal model. So you have the Congress represents the people in the House of Representatives

and then the Senate represents the states. We have a different system. We have in theory,

unitary constitution, although of course they've had devolution since the late 1990s. What should

replace it? So everyone could kind of agree that the House of Lords in theory, in the modern

age, it seems indefensible. And yet it has a purpose. It It seeks it a role as a revising chamber. And the hereditary was an element of sort of randomness, if you like, in some ways you could say even the most elected element, we consider the by-elections. But that added a sense of outsizes through different means. So some of them represent the regions, some of them represented different interests like land, the military, etc. But I think a lot of people would argue that it is indefensible. And yet it seemed to have worked in practice. And that is why the issues I've just talked about there, the practicalities of replacing the chamber with something else, the fact that no one can agree on what that ought to look like all have ensured the territories to survive until now. But of course, with the big majority, Labour wanted to kind of finish the job. And I think, Megan, many people would agree with you. The counterpoint, of course, is what comes next. And what will come next is just the wholly appointed chamber and the bishops. And whether that will be any more lasting than a thousand years. I certainly don't think it'll

last the thousand years as hereditary has. But we wait to see what happens. And I suspect there'll very much be more people being appointed and everyone will criticise the system, but then we'll actually want to replace it. We're off to go and put these questions to the hereditary peers themselves. Who are we going to hear from? We're hearing from two peers. First of all, Wall Strathclyde, who probably the last of a herritory peer to serve in a cabinet role.

He was through the House of Lords under David Cameron during the coalition. He took his seat in 1986 and he is very much a sort of steel painted as wood. The hereditary governing class at its most political and charming, as we will see. And then second of all,

we will hear from Charles Courtney, the Earl of Devon. He is someone who took his seat in 2019.

...