Reform MP says the House of Lords does not need to be abolished and should remain unelected
'What we do not want is another elected chamber'
Reform MP Andrew Rosindell has said that the House of Lords does not need to be abolished and should remain unelected.
Speaking in a Westminster Hall debate on House of Lords reform earlier this week, Rosindell spoke against democratising the Lords, which he said “there is no requirement to abolish”.
The Reform MP said: “What we do not want is another elected chamber to rival the House of Commons.”
He said the Lords should instead remain unelected and “be a house of experts or elders”, adding that “continuity is the foundation of the success of this nation”.
Rosindell argued that having two elected chambers would create “rivalry” between the two sets of politicians and would weaken “the primacy of the elected House of Commons”.
As Labour MP Simon Opher pointed out, Rosindell’s comments contradict Reform’s manifesto commitment to modernise the Lords.
Opher said: “I thought that, in Reform’s manifesto, it was going to abolish the House of Lords and replace it with a much smaller, more democratic second Chamber.”
Rosindell responded to Opher’s intervention by saying that he didn’t stand as an MP on that manifesto, adding: “I joined Reform UK after that manifesto”.
The Reform MP also complained multiple times during the debate about the fact that Reform does not have any peers.
Rosindell claimed that based on the votes that Reform won at the last election “there certainly need to be a number of Reform UK Members of the House of Lords”.
Reform UK elected five MPs at the 2024 general election, and under First-Past-the-Post the number of votes they won doesn’t determine how many MPs they elect or automatically translate into representation in the House of Lords.
The Reform politician said: “It cannot be right that a political party that came third at the last general election has zero representation in the House of Lords. There are 80 Lib Dem peers, yet their party received 600,000 fewer votes than Reform UK.”
In comments directed at Lib Dem MP Mike Martin, Rosindell complained again about Reform’s lack of representation in the Lords.
He said: “Well, where was the invitation for the leader of Reform UK to nominate a number of Reform UK Members of the House of Lords?
“The hon. Member must surely accept that that is very wrong when we consider that Reform UK was the third largest party in terms of votes at the last election.”
Olivia Barber is a reporter at Left Foot Forward
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