Tony Benn's son inherits title his father gave up

Tony Benn's eldest son, Stephen, has inherited the title that his father renounced in 1963 and become the 3rd Viscount Stansgate. The new peer will not be eligible to sit in the Lords because of reforms made by the Labour government in 1999.

The succession brings the story of the peerage almost full circle. Benn's father, a Labour minister, was created Viscount Stansgate of Stansgate in the County of Essex in 1942 and sat in the Lords as an hereditary peer. On his father's death, Anthony Wedgwood Benn, later known as Tony Benn, became the second Viscount Stansgate, disqualifying him from staying in the Commons.

He was still eligible to stand in the resulting Bristol South East byelection, which he won, but insisted on his right to abandon the peerage and kept his Commons seat in a byelection on 4 May 1961 prompted by his succession. However, an election court gave the seat to the Tory runner-up, Malcolm St Clair. But eventually the Conservative government accepted the need for a change in the law.

The Peerage Act 1963, allowing renunciation of peerages, became law on 31 July 1963 and just 22 minutes later he became the first peer to renounce his title. However, under the law the title continues to pass through the generations.

Labour has four hereditary peers in the Lords and it would require one of those to die and for the new viscount to then seek to win a byelection, competing against other hereditary peers. Under Labour's House of Lords Act the number of hereditary peers in the chamber is restricted to 92.

Stephen Benn, the new viscount of Stansgate, is director of parliamentary affairs for the Society of Biology. He spent the last two decades in a similar role for the Royal Society of Chemistry. Stephen Benn's younger brother Hilary is the shadow secretary of state for communities and local government. The two other siblings are Melissa, a journalist, and Joshua, a student of information management.