Section 42: Tax status of members of the House of Lords: transitional provision
273.Section 42 provides for a period of three months during which members of the House of Lords may give notice in writing to the Clerk of the Parliaments that they are not willing to be subject to the deeming provision in section 41, and if they do so their membership of the House of Lords will end at that point. Section 41(8)(b) provides that the deeming provision will only apply to peers who are members of the House of Lords at the end of this transitional period (and so will not apply to any peers who have left under this section before the end of that period). Peers who remain will then be deemed ROD from the beginning of the tax year (6th April 2010).
274.Subsections (3) to (9) provide that a peer who leaves the House under the transitional provision:
will be enfranchised to vote in general elections,
will be ineligible to stand for election to the House of Commons for three years,
will not, if they were a hereditary peer, be replaced by another hereditary peer (reducing by one the number of hereditary peers remaining in the House under the House of Lords Act 1999),
may subsequently receive or succeed to a new peerage and once again be entitled to receive a writ of summons to attend the House (if the new peerage is a hereditary peerage, this will apply only if the person is elected to a seat in the House under the House of Lords Act 1999),
may once again be entitled to receive writs of summons if they become the Earl Marshal or Lord Great Chamberlain.
275.A peer is not entitled to receive a writ of summons if they are a Member of the European Parliament, but they do receive writs of summons once they step down from the European Parliament. Therefore, a peer who is an MEP would not be deemed ROD under section 41, but once entitled to receive writs again they would be deemed ROD. Section 42(10) allows such MEPs to avoid being deemed ROD in these circumstances by making the transitional provision available to such MEPs in the same way as to those peers currently entitled to receive writs of summons.
