Lords leap to defend old school ties

The festive spirit was wearing thin in the great houses of England last night as Labour seized on the sixth day of Christmas to publish a "Tory Lords-a-leaping" report on the privileged backgrounds of hereditary peers.

Far from being in touch with the "common man", as Viscount Cranborne, Leader of the House of Lords, claimed recently, most of the 402 Conservatives who inherited their titles have spent their lives at public school and the universities of Oxford and Cambridge, according to the shadow Home Secretary, Jack Straw.

Of these 402 peers, 228 went to Eton and a further 66 to Harrow, Winchester, Stowe, Marlborough, Westminster or Rugby. More than 40 per cent went to Oxford or Cambridge, according to Labour's survey, and only three are women.

Even more embarrassingly, one lord upon whose vote the Government relies owes his title to a pounds 20,000 donation to Conservative Central Office. Lord Vestey's great grandfather bought his peerage with the money in 1922.

Mr Shaw attacked recent remarks in defence of hereditary peers by Lord Cranborne as "ridiculous". He said that without the help of Tory backwoodsmen the Government would have been unable to force through deeply unpopular policies such as the poll tax and the sale of Ministry of Defence homes. "This is not just political satire," he said. "It has a serious political purpose for the Tories. It is simply unacceptable for modern British democracy to be conducted in this way."

Lord Cranborne, the son of the sixth Marquess of Salisbury, was appointed leader of the Lords in 1994.

In a lecture earlier this month he defended the existence of amateurs in the House, saying that the Commons was increasingly dominated by professional politicians. "Increasingly the amateur politicians who make up the hereditary peerage are coming to represent the common man in Parliament," he said.

There was no reason why hereditary peers should be out of touch, he said last night, adding: "You will find that a lot of people who went to Eton have pretty run-of-the-mill jobs."

He was not against reform of the House of Lords nor even the abolition of hereditary peerages, he said, but Labour's plans were unworkable. "They will create the biggest quango in the land."

He wanted to see a select committee set up to discuss any changes. "Quangos have their place," he said. "but I think they ought to be controlled by Parliament rather than being part of it."