House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill: motion to disagree with Lords Amendment 3

Thursday, 4 September 2025 · Division No. 278 · Commons

338Ayes

–

74Noes

Passed

239 MPs did not vote

House of Lords Reform Constitution and Democracy

leftGovernment wonPro Lords Reform(Yes)Pro Hereditary Peer Removal(Yes)Pro Hereditary Peerage Preservation(No)Anti Lords Reform(No)

Voting Yes means

Support the government's position of removing hereditary peers cleanly, rejecting a Lords compromise that would have preserved a new honorary peer title without parliamentary membership

Voting No means

Back the Lords amendment creating a new non-membership peer status, arguing it offers a compromise that respects the hereditary peerage tradition while still removing them from the legislature

Parliament voted on 4 September 2025 to reject a Lords amendment to the House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill, with the motion to disagree passing by 338 votes to 74. This was the third of several divisions held the same day on Lords amendments to the Bill, with the Commons also rejecting Amendments 1 and 2 in similar votes (336 to 77, and 331 to 73 respectively). The effect of this vote was to send the Bill back to the House of Lords without accepting its proposed modification, maintaining the government's original position that all hereditary peers should be removed from the Lords without the changes the upper chamber had sought to introduce.

The Bill removes the right of hereditary peers to sit and vote in the House of Lords, ending a practice that has existed since the Lords Act 1999 left 92 hereditary peers in place as a temporary compromise. Lords Amendment 3, which the Commons rejected here, attempted to modify or soften that removal, and by disagreeing with it, the Commons insisted on the complete and unmodified abolition of the remaining hereditary peers' voting rights. The reform affects around 90 individuals who currently hold seats in the Lords by virtue of hereditary title rather than appointment. Its passage would represent the most significant change to the composition of the upper chamber since 1999.

The vote divided almost entirely along party lines. All 245 voting Labour MPs, all 57 Liberal Democrats, all 23 Labour and Co-operative MPs, and smaller groupings from the SNP, Plaid Cymru, and the Greens voted with the government. All 71 voting Conservatives were in the No lobby, joined by 2 Reform UK MPs and 1 independent. There were no notable rebels on either side. The clean split reflects a broader political fault line on Lords reform, with the government using its Commons majority to override repeated Lords attempts to amend the Bill, a process known as parliamentary ping-pong, where the two chambers exchange the legislation until one side concedes.