David Cameron faces a string of defeats in the House of Lords despite bulking out the Conservative benches, senior Tories conceded last night.
The prime minister is braced for trouble over the EU referendum bill, trade union reforms and Scottish devolution proposals in the next few months. Conservatives fear that if Jeremy Corbyn is elected leader of Labour, there will be a more belligerent opposition in the upper chamber.
Mr Cameron is the first Conservative leader who has a Commons majority but is unable to count on the House of Lords. The abolition of the vast majority of the hereditary seats in 1999 put an end to the in-built advantage the party had historically enjoyed. The addition of 26 new Tory peers — plus 11 from the Labour party and eight Liberal Democrats — reduces the combined Labour and Lib Dem majority from 87 to 80.
A Conservative source admitted: “It’s not going to make a huge difference to the balance of power in the Lords.”
Under what is known as the Salisbury convention, the opposition has traditionally agreed not to veto policies laid out in the government manifesto because the electorate approved them.
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A senior Conservative warned peers from other parties Mr Cameron “absolutely expected” them to adhere to this doctrine. But Lord Wallace of Tankerness, the Lib Dem leader in the Lords, said the upper chamber had a role in improving legislation and would not “roll over and have its tummy tickled”.