Electoral Reform Society chief executive Darren Hughes said: “Removing the 92 all-male hereditary peers is an essential step to modernising the second chamber, as there is no place for people being able to influence our laws due to birthright in a modern democracy.

“Ultimately, we must address the unelected and unrestrained way that new members are added to the Lords, as the spectacle of current and former prime ministers stuffing yet more peers into the upper house will do nothing to improve the public’s trust in politics.

“This is why these reforms must be the start of a process that sees the Lords transformed into a smaller, elected chamber, with a set number of members where the people of this country, and not prime ministers, choose who sits in Parliament shaping the laws we all live under.”

Labour remains formally committed to abolishing the Lords and replacing it with an elected chamber, but the party’s general election manifesto promised only to “consult on proposals.”