What does the pledge mean? 

Labour’s manifesto pledges to “introduce a new participation requirement” for members of the House of Lords.

There are various ways that “participation” in House of Lords business could be measured, such as:

• attendance (the number of sitting days a member attends)
• votes (the number of votes a member participates in)
• spoken contributions (how often a member speaks in the House of Lords)
• committee activity (the contribution a member makes to the work of Lords select committees).

Currently, members are required to attend the House at least once in a parliamentary session (provided the session is six months or longer).

Labour hasn’t confirmed how it plans to define “participation”, or what it would consider an acceptable rate of participation.

The party’s manifesto does not indicate when this change will take place, so we assume this pledge will be met if a participation requirement is in place by the end of the current parliament.

What progress has been made?

On 23 July 2024, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government Lord Khan of Burnley told the House of Lords that the government was “looking at how we can deliver the manifesto commitment to introduce this participation requirement, building on existing rules that require Members to attend once every parliamentary Session”.

We’ve asked the government whether any timeframe has been established for this change to be introduced, or if any further progress has been made, and will update this page if we receive a response.

On 25 August 2025, Labour leader in the Lords Baroness Smith of Basildon wrote in the Telegraph that once the House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill “concludes”, she will ask a “formal select committee to consider and report on potential mechanisms to implement the stage-two changes [introducing a minimum level of participation and a retirement age to the House of Lords] and review the impact that this would have on the size of the House”.