Life Peerages Act 1958 figures, for example the former Secretary of State for India and earlier for Air, Viscount Stansgate. The last Prime Minister and the last non-royal to be created an Earl was paradoxically one of the 1958 Act's proponents, Harold Macmillan, on Margaret Thatcher's advice, in the 1980s. Since her time, only members of the Royal Family have been granted new hereditary peerages. In 1999, during the debate which secured the removal of the constitutional functions of most hereditary peers, the Minister for Constitutional Affairs, Geoff Hoon stated: After this agreed with a question from fellow Labour MP, Mark Fisher which stated:
Life Peerages Act 1958 peerages. This gradually diminished the numerical dominance of hereditary peers. The Act allowed for the creation of female peers entitled to sit in the House of Lords. The first such women peers took their seats on 21 October 1958. A life peer is created by the sovereign by Letters Patent under the Great Seal on the advice of the Prime Minister. Before the Act was enacted, former Prime Ministers were usually created Viscounts or Earls (which are hereditary peerages) in recognition of their public service in high office, as were the Viceroys of India and exceptional military or front bench