And for many years now, even the remaining minority of hereditary peers in the chamber are elected to that job, albeit not by the general public. My guess is that all those who are actually useful will get "grandfathered in" by this legislation making them life peers so that they can keep doing the exact same job. Many life peers (who are all entitled to be there) rarely attend, so it would be kinda silly if Lord Snootington, the fifteenth Earl of Whatever is kicked out for being a hereditary peer despite also being the linchpin of an important committee and one of the top 100 attendees in the Lords, while they keep Bill Smith, a business tycoon who got his peerage for giving a politician a sack of cash and hasn't been in London, never mind the House of Lords, since 2014...
The hereditary peers were elected and that's what is being discarded? So before at least the voters got some choice and that's going away? Amazing...
> My guess is that all those who are actually useful will get "grandfathered in" by this legislation making them life peers
The government made a political deal with the hereditary peers-drop their fight against this bill, and in exchange the government will grant a subset of them life peerages
But that political deal is just an informal extralegal “understanding”, it isn’t actually in the text of the bill-having the bill text grant someone a life peerage would upset the status of peerages as a royal prerogative, and they don’t want to do that