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:
Prime minister hundred years, though Edward Heath in 1974 did delay his resignation while he explored whether he could form a government with Liberal party support. During the period between the time it is clear that the incumbent government has been defeated at a general election, and the actual swearing-in of the new prime minister by the monarch, governor-general, or president, that person is referred to as the "prime minister-elect" or "prime minister-designate". Neither term is strictly correct from a constitutional point of view, but they have wide acceptance. In a situation in which a ruling party elects or appoints a new