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The great Liberal MP David Lloyd George once described the House of Lords as “Mr. Balfour’s Poodle” (Balfour being the Conservative leader at the time) and the members of the Lords as "Five hundred men, accidently chosen from among the ranks of the unemployed". Since then, the Upper House has changed considerably and is now mostly composed of Life Peers, both male and female, who are appointed by the government. Appointments are often made for political expediency rather than on merit which has strengthened calls for an elected second chamber.
Our speaker, Charles Courtenay, 19th Earl of Devon, is one of the 91 hereditary peers who are still entitled to sit and vote in the House, and is a member of the British American Parliamentary Group. He is an English barrister and California attorney who worked at Latham & Watkins for a decade. He lives at Powderham Castle in Devon.
He will speak about the role of hereditaries, how the House of Lords functions and possible reforms, the legislative overlap with California, such as the Online Safety Bill, and the history of Powderham and the Earldom of Devon which features in Gibbon’s Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire.
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