William Hague backs ‘abolishing himself’ as a peer and shrinking size of Lords

William Hague has backed “abolishing himself” as a peer and shrinking the Lords by not replacing members who die or leave.

The former Tory leader also warned Sir Keir Starmer against trying to reform Parliament’s Upper Chamber too quickly.

Lord Hague told Times Radio: “It should be a wholly or mainly elected house, I would never hesitate to abolish myself.”

He stressed that during David Cameron’s coalition government there had been a “real effort” to cut the number of peers by about half to 450, with the vast majority of them elected for 15 years at a time and then unable to stand again.

Labour leader Sir Keir has branded the Lords “indefensible” and said he would reform it, though not necessarily in a first Labour term.

Lord Hague said a Labour government, if elected, should “steadily” phase out the number of Lords.

“The danger here for Keir Starmer would be saying, oh, yeah, we’re gonna do this, as soon as we get into power, and he will find he is totally bogged down in it with rebellions and so on,” the former Tory leader added.

“The more sensible thing is, say, for the moment, let’s just bring down the numbers steadily, by not replacing everybody who dies and retires on a cross party basis.”

He argued that while the Lords does good work it is “too expensive and unwieldy”.

He added: “I am on leave of absence from the House of Lords...so I’m contributing in a way to reducing the numbers. But it’s not that there are too many people to do things, the legislative scrutiny is good and often better than in the House of Commons.

“But there’s too many people, it’s too unwieldy and expensive an institution to have public credibility. And so yes, bringing it down quite quickly to be no bigger than the House of Commons, which is 650 would be an improvement, more people could be encouraged to retire from it.

“And so there could be a kind of, you know, two out to one in rule which given the age profile would reduce the numbers fairly quickly.”