Life Peer
He stood down in 1992, and was made a life peer that same year, as Baron Weatherill, of North East Croydon in the London Borough of Croydon. As is customary for former speakers, the government put before the House of Commons an address to the Queen, asking that Weatherill be appointed a peer as a mark of "royal favour". Given a rare opportunity to discuss constitutional arrangements relating to the monarch and the Upper House, left-wing members of Parliament forced a debate on the petition.
It was reported in several newspapers that Weatherill would be granted an earldom, The Earl of Wetheral. This did not come to fruition.
He sat in the House of Lords as a crossbencher.
In 1993, he was elected alternate Convenor of the Crossbench Peers, and was a convenor from 1995 until 1999. In the House of Lords he made a major contribution to the House of Lords Act 1999 by stitching together the compromise that allowed a limited number of hereditary peers to remain as members.
In 2006, he became Patron of the Better Off Out campaign, calling for Britain to leave the European Union.
Read more about this topic: Bernard Weatherill
Famous quotes containing the words life and/or peer:
“The richest princes and the poorest beggars are to have one great and just judge at the last day who will not distinguish between them according to their ranks when in life but according to the neglected opportunities afforded to each. How much greater then, as the opportunities were greater, must be the condemnation of the one than of the other?”
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