hereditary peer

English

Noun

hereditary peer (plural hereditary peers)

  1. (UK politics) A peer whose title is hereditary; before the House of Lords Act 1999, automatically entitled to a seat in the House of Lords.
    Coordinate term: life peer
    • 2024 July 20, Harriet Sherwood, “The last of the hereditary peers in the House of Lords”, in The Guardian‎[1], →ISSN:
      Some of the hereditary peers can trace their family’s presence in the Lords back to medieval times. All are men, thanks to titles that can be passed only to male heirs, all are white and most are over the age of 70. Legislation to remove them will be the most significant change to the House of Lords since 667 hereditary peers were excluded in 1999 under Tony Blair’s government.

Further reading

This article is issued from Wiktionary. The text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 unless otherwise noted. Additional terms may apply for the media files.