Lords to sue over being kicked out of House

LONDON -- The 3rd Baron Mereworth says he was robbed.

He's not alone. Dozens of British nobles who were kicked out of the House of Lords by Prime Minister Tony Blair's government say they have been unfairly stripped of their property -- and plan legal action for compensation.

They have hired a lawyer to take their case to the European Court of Human Rights, where they will seek $1.6-million each for the loss of their parliamentary seats.

They say the case is about human rights, although others have been less charitable. The left-leaning Guardian newspaper said the peers exemplify a spreading "compensation culture."

"We just felt the government had no right to take our seats away when they'd been given to our ancestors in perpetuity," said the disgruntled Lord Mereworth, who sparked the legal action with a letter to his fellow peers. Two hundred expressed an interest, and more than 70 have signed up on the case.

Parliament's 700-year-old upper chamber, which reviews legislation passed by the elected House of Commons, has long been seen by many as an ermine-draped anachronism, the rest home of an elderly hereditary elite.

Its defenders say the peers, in for life, are more independent than elected lawmakers and are more free to judge legislation on its merits. They cannot kill a law, only delay it, and during conservative Margaret Thatcher's 11-year premiership, the House of Lords was often the only impediment to some of her reforms.

But Blair's Labor Party government, elected in 1997, had promised to reform the Lords, and two years later Parliament voted to unseat most of the 750 hereditary dukes, marquesses, earls, viscounts and barons. Ninety-two were allowed to stay while the final shape of the chamber was decided, alongside several hundred appointed members, known as life peers; senior appeal judges known as Law Lords; and 26 Church of England bishops.

Only 81 peers, most of them hereditary, voted against the ouster.

"They should have put up more of a battle," said Mereworth, a 73-year-old poet who inherited his title last year when his father died at 100, never having spoken in debates during 70 years in the House of Lords.

"Nobody in this country has any guts anymore," he said.

The peers say their seats were their property, granted to their ancestors by the crown and irrevocable except in extreme cases such as treason. And while life peers will probably receive a pension if they are unseated, the hereditary peers got nothing.

"It's a matter of principle: Property cannot just be taken," said Peter McCallion, the London-based American lawyer representing the peers. "It's as if the government came and took your house and didn't pay you."

On Tuesday, Parliament will begin debating seven proposals for the chamber, from fully appointed to fully elected.

It won't be easy. Lord Irvine, head of Britain's judiciary, last week said it is "one of the most difficult issues that have faced politics for well over 100 years."

The ousted peers are divided.

Lord Alexander of Tunis favors compensation but opposes reinstating hereditary peers. "There's no harm in the government bringing in legislation to stop people, by accident of birth, being legislators," he said. "It's insupportable to have landed gentry running the country."

Only about 300 hereditary peers were active in Parliament, sitting on committees and speaking in debates. For many others, the House of Lords provided a congenial gathering place and social club.

But Mereworth -- whose father was known as "the Silent Lord" during 70 years of unobtrusive attendance -- says the chamber, with its scarlet robes, medieval titles and ritual pageantry, plays an important role in British democracy.

"It's all a bit of theater, but theater is life," said Mereworth, whose grandfather -- the 1st Lord Mereworth -- was an Irish senator given the title early last century to add to his Irish one, Baron Oranmore and Brown. "We aren't all lawyers and accountants."

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