Ninth Duke of Wellington elected to House of Lords

The Duke of Wellington, a hereditary peer whose father was stripped of the right to sit in the House of Lords 16 years ago, has been elected to the upper house under an arcane procedure invoked after the retirement of another peer.

Charles Wellesley, the ninth holder of the title, won a byelection that took place following the retirement of Lord Luke, a Conservative, in June.

Under the House of Lords Act 1999, Lords were permitted to elect 90 hereditary peers to remain sitting in the reformed second chamber, with 666 peers being stripped of their 800-year-old right to sit at Westminster.

When a hereditary peer dies or takes voluntary retirement a byelection is held. Peers who have a hereditary title are eligible to stand in a byelection and only sitting hereditary peers in the same party grouping as the departing peer can vote.

A total of 48 other hereditary Conservative peers voted in the election under the alternative vote system and, after four transfers of votes, the Duke ended up with 21 votes, beating the Marquess of Abergavenny and the Earl of Harrowby, who picked up six votes each.

Before the vote, the 70-year-old peer said: “I have aspired to serve in the Lords since I first became interested in politics. I stood for the House of Commons in 1974 and was elected to the European parliament in 1979 for two terms.

“Since then I have been chairman of a life insurance company, a luxury goods company and a fund management company. I have been a commissioner of English Heritage and am currently chairman of the Council of King’s College, London.”

The title of Duke of Wellington was created in 1814 for Arthur Wellesley, who served as prime minister twice and led the victory over Napoleon Bonaparte’s forces at the battle of Waterloo in 1815. Charles Wellesley’s father, Arthur Valerian Wellesley, was a member of the House of Lords from 1972 until 1999, losing his seat in the reforms introduced by the House of Lords Act.

In a report published in 2013, the Commons Political Reform Committee said that hereditary peers should not be replaced once they die or retire, warning that there would be a “reputational risk” for the House of Lords. The committee said that the fact that the coalition failed to pass plans to elect up to 80% of peers should not stop small scale reforms.

David Cameron came in for criticism in August when he appointed 45 new peers to the second chamber – including some former MPs caught up in the expenses scandal. The new arrivals took the upper house to 826 members, making it the second most populous legislative chamber in the world, surpassed only by the National People’s Congress in China.