Royals keep seats in Lords

THREE leading royals - the Duke of Edinburgh, the Prince of Wales, and the Duke of York - are to keep their hereditary rights to sit in the House of Lords, as part of a government compromise to get Lords reform through the Upper Chamber, writes Colin Brown.

Ministers are preparing a compromise package for leading hereditary peers to be given life peerages to continue to sit in the House of Lords after the rights of hereditary peers have been swept aside in the reforms.

The aim is to persuade the Lords, with its inbuilt Tory majority dominated by hereditary peers, to accept the Government's reforms in the next session of Parliament.

The three members of the Royal Family will be granted rights to continue to sit in the Lords because they have been created hereditary peers in their own lifetime.