Twenty per cent had been in the armed services, 6.2 per cent had been in the Civil or Diplomatic Services and a further 14.2 per cent claimed undifferentiated public service and administration backgrounds. Industrialists accounted for 15.6 per cent and financial services for 11.6 per cent. Only 1.4 per cent claimed to have been workers. This is clearly not representative of jobs people do in the country as a whole, undermining the claim that the hereditary peers are a cross-section of society and thereby, whatever their other privileges, can speak with a popular voice. Apart from the political bias, there are other notable imbalances in the House.
Most peerages can descend only in the male line.
As a result, only 16 out of 750 hereditary peerages are held by women. The House of Lords itself rejected as recently as 1994 a proposal that would have allowed the first born of either gender to inherit. It is also virtually impossible that the hereditary peerage as it is could ever become representative of Britain's ethnic minorities. For all these reasons, the Government will act immediately to end the hereditary right to be a member of Parliament. A Bill to achieve this aim is being introduced.