New peers could be restricted to sitting in the House of Lords for 15 years rather than being given life peerages, and appointed only on a “two out, one in” basis under plans to slash their number in the upper house.

A report by the Lord Speaker’s committee is due to be published this month on reducing membership of the house, which has more than 800 peers who have no official retirement age and can serve until they die. Among its recommendations, the committee is likely to recommend two peers must retire or die in order for another to be appointed.

The report is not expected to recommend a retirement age, but will rather seek to reduce the number of peers in the Lords by limiting the new appointees and setting term limits, as well as asking parties to find ways to cut their own numbers.

It is also said to avoid recommending major reform to the appointment process by parties and will recommend changes are made without legislation by the House of Commons, which critics said could leave them open to legal challenge.

Some members of the House of Lords have held their seats for more than 60 years, and rules introduced in 2014 that allowed peers to retire and keep their title have prompted only 70 to do so, far fewer than was hoped.



Almost 300 peers have been created since 2010, and seven more in the last couple of weeks, including the former Met police commissioner Bernard Hogan-Howe and two new Conservative ministers, the former BBC chair Rona Fairhead and academy funder Theodore Agnew.

The cross-party committee that will recommend the changes, first reported by the Times, is chaired by the cross-bench peer Terence Burns, and has two Labour peers, two Conservatives and one Liberal Democrat.

It is understood both Labour and the Lib Dems are willing to back changes in principle that would reduce the size of the House of Lords. Under the committee’s self-imposed rule, the change would require a majority vote from peers to change the so-called standing orders that govern the rules of the upper chamber, but would not need primary legislation.

The Lib Dem peer Paul Tyler, the party’s constitutional affairs spokesman, said the committee was set to “dance around the issue” of the appointment process, which most members of the House of Lords believed was outdated and undemocratic.

“You have a parliamentary house where members are selected or deselected by party whim,” he said. “We wouldn’t tolerate that in any other organisation, it is uniquely and absurdly in the House of Lords.”

Lord Tyler said the committee would face an uphill battle to get its proposals accepted without proper legislation examined by both houses of parliament. “When this comes before the house the question is rightly going to be asked: by what right should we decide our own membership rules without legislation?” he said.

“Those who will find themselves disadvantaged by the proposals will object on that basis and they would have every right to do so. There might even be the potential for legal challenge.”

Tyler said the “two out, one in” proposal would make only slow progress in reducing the size of the House of Lords, but he did not think a mandatory retirement age was the right answer. “Should Shirley Williams have to retire when Andrew Lloyd Webber remains doing not very much but far younger?” he said.

Most peers believe reform is necessary to ensure there is still public confidence in the upper house. The Electoral Reform Society (ERS) found last month that more than 100 peers had claimed almost £1.3m between them despite not having spoken in the House of Lords for at least nine months.



Peers can claim up to £300 a day for appearing in the chamber, but do not have to speak or vote in order to do so.

Lloyd Webber quit as a Conservative peer on Monday, saying his busy schedule was incompatible with the demands of the Lords.

The committee’s report is understood to be due to be published on 31 October.

Labour and Lib Dem peers have been able to inflict defeat on the government dozens of times over the last parliament, because the Conservatives do not have a majority in the Lords. There are 252 Conservative peers, compared with a combined total of 299 Labour and Lib Dems.

This means the changes could technically win a majority in the upper chamber without government support, though it is unlikely in practice.

Darren Hughes, the chief executive of the ERS, said the time limit alone would not be enough and the process of appointing peers needed greater scrutiny.

“Britain’s bloated second chamber is crying out for change, so these proposals are a start,” he said. “However, these reforms avoid dealing with the real problem in the Lords – a total lack of democracy and transparency in how it is composed.

“These hyper-cautious proposals are sticking plaster politics, and would do nothing to stop prime ministers packing the chamber with party donors and political friends. The light-touch reforms only apply to new peerages, meaning any substantial reduction in size could take decades.”