Life Peerages Act 1958
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| Long title | An Act to make provision for the creation of life peerages carrying the right to sit and vote in the House of Lords. |
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| Citation | 6 & 7 Eliz. 2 c. 21 |
| Dates | |
| Royal assent | 30 April 1958 |
| Text of statute as originally enacted | |
| Revised text of statute as amended | |
The Life Peerages Act 1958 established the modern standards for the creation of life peers by the monarch of the United Kingdom.
This Act was made during the Conservative governments of 1957–1964, when Harold Macmillan was Prime Minister. Elizabeth II had ascended to the throne just over five years before the Act. The Conservatives tried to introduce life peerages to modernise the House of Lords, give it more legitimacy, and respond to a decline in its numbers and attendance. The Labour Party opposed the Life Peerages Bill on Second Reading: Hugh Gaitskell made an impassioned speech against the proposals, arguing for a far more fundamental reform such as total dismantling of the Lords or a wholly elected house.
Prior to the Life Peerages Act 1958, membership in the House of Lords was strictly male and overwhelmingly based on possession of an hereditary title. There existed a few exceptions to the hereditary principle, such as for the Lords Spiritual. The Act made it possible for life peers of both sexes to be members of the Lords. Life peers are either barons (a title deprecated for British nobles which has been replaced with Lord for all but the most formal documents since the early medieval period) or baronesses (where female) and are members of the House of Lords for life, but their titles and membership in "the Lords" are not inherited by their children. Judicial life peers already sat in the House under the terms of the Appellate Jurisdiction Act 1876. The Life Peerages Act vastly increased the ability of the Prime Minister to change the composition of the House of Lords by permitting the creation of groups of life peers rather than the more difficult to justify hereditary peerages. This gradually began to diminish the numerical dominance of hereditary peers.
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