House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill: Motion to disagree with Lords Amendment 2

What happened: The House of Commons voted on 4 September 2025 to reject Amendment 2 made by the House of Lords to the House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill. The motion to disagree with the Lords' amendment passed by 331 votes to 73, meaning the Commons sent the bill back to the Lords without accepting the change the upper chamber had sought to introduce.

Why it matters: The House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill aims to remove the remaining hereditary peers from the House of Lords entirely, completing a reform begun in 1999 when most hereditary peers lost their automatic right to sit and vote. Amendment 2 represented an attempt by the Lords to preserve some element of the hereditary arrangement. By rejecting it, the Commons reaffirmed the government's position that the Bill should achieve complete abolition of hereditary seats with no concessions. This affects the roughly 92 hereditary peers who have continued to sit in the Lords since 1999 under a temporary arrangement that has lasted over two decades.

The politics: The vote divided almost entirely along party lines. Labour and Labour and Co-operative MPs voted unanimously in favour of rejecting the amendment, totalling 272 votes, joined by all 56 Liberal Democrats present and one Green MP. All 72 Conservative MPs who voted opposed the motion, and both Reform UK members present joined them on the No side. There were no notable cross-party rebels. This division on Amendment 2 closely mirrored two other votes held the same day: the Commons also rejected Lords Amendment 1 by 336 to 77, and Lords Amendment 3 by 338 to 74, suggesting the Lords made three separate attempts to modify the Bill and the Commons resisted all of them with near-identical margins.