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 classes, who have preferred "Lord" for all but the most formal documents since the earliest times) or baronesses (where female) and are members of the House of Lords for life, but their titles and membership in the House of Lords cannot be inherited by their children. Judicial life peers already sat in the House under the terms of the Appellate Jurisdiction Act 1876. The Life Peerages Act greatly increased the ability of Prime Ministers to change the composition of the House of Lords by permitting the creation of groups of life peers rather than the more difficult to justify hereditary