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Richly varied peers’ backgrounds may be, but not many start their day keeping order outside the boys’ toilets at an east London state secondary.

For while members of the Upper Chamber often claim they bring real world experience to their role, Lord Hampton has the receipts.

It is believed the 61-year-old is the only serving teacher in Parliament, working as he does one day a week in the design and technology department of Mossbourne Community Academy, Hackney.

He is – perhaps inevitably – a hereditary. “It’s only really the hereditary system by which a teacher… can get into the House of Lords. Nobody’s going to appoint us.”

Hampton, who joined the Lords after a by-election in 2022, was working as head of department at the time but has had to slowly whittle down his hours to juggle the demands of his new role.

“Balancing teaching and the House is really difficult. I tried to do one day here and be a head of department, which really didn’t work – both are too demanding task masters,” he adds.

Given his background, Hampton tends to get involved in issues regarding young people, education and skills in particular.

“Having said that, I recently got involved in the bus bill and particularly bus safety, as I travel by bus daily,” Hampton tells The House.

There is the occasional weekend work for Hampton, but it’s rare: “I do a long day at school and hopefully get all my preparation and marking done then.”

Before entering the classroom, Hampton spent the majority of his career as a photographer. His pivot into teaching began because freelance photography was becoming “more and more difficult” as he approached 50.

“My wife had said to me for a long time, ‘You really should have taught’.”

So, Hampton logged onto the Department for Education website, got a mentor and found a teacher training scheme. He has now been teaching for 11 years.

While Hampton’s training was not plain-sailing, he believes that his past career aided him.

“I think at the age of 50, you’re a bit [surer] about who you are, and you’ve got a bit more confidence… you’ve got a bit more of a sense of proportion.

“If a lesson doesn’t work out, as they would say, tomorrow’s another day.”

The peer believes the government could tap more into career changers as a solution to teacher supply shortages, adding that the idea of doing one career for life no longer exists.

“You don’t join a bank at 18, leave at 65. You do chunks of 10 years. I think the government’s recruitment and [retention] has to be about that idea that you will get 10 years out of more people,” he tells The House.

Does he ever rue the day he chose teaching? “I can honestly say I haven’t regretted it one day.”

Teaching is often described as one of the most rewarding careers. “But it’s hideous in lots of ways. You have to realise that it’s probably the most results-driven business there is,” Hampton says. 

“If your results this year aren’t good, then you have to justify that. Why? What are you going to do next year?”

The worst moment in his teaching career so far was one of the darkest experiences a teacher could have: “We lost Pharrell. We lost a kid who was stabbed the summer before last.”

Pharrell Garcia was killed by a single stab wound to the heart in Hackney on 23 July 2024. He was just 15. A former friend was later convicted of manslaughter.

“Hearing a kid had been stabbed in Hackney… and then suddenly, shit, it’s Pharrell – someone I taught, and somebody you’d recognise.”

“He was quite a character around the school. He wasn’t always on the side of the law in school, so you knew him well, but he was really chirpy… You’d always get a smile out of him… We’d always have a bit of banter.”

Hampton has since spoken about Pharrell several times, and recently referenced the tragedy alongside the case of Child Q, the 15-year-old Black girl who was strip-searched at her Hackney school after being wrongly suspected of possessing cannabis.

“Our children die; our children are searched by police,” Hampton said of Hackney, echoing the words of Mossbourne Federation chief executive Peter Hughes.

“Things like that are just hideous,” Hampton adds now.

Many politicians are today waking up to another perceived danger: the impact of social media on young people. In advance of the Lord Nash amendment passing last week, the government announced a three-month consultation on whether to ban social media for under-16s.

While Hampton agrees that is a necessary move, he contends that the first step should be a ban on mobile phones in schools – to protect staff as well as pupils.

Without mobile phones, “a beef in the playground doesn’t instantly get winged around the world”.

As a crossbench peer, Hampton has more freedom to speak his mind on the government of the day. What does he think of Labour’s approach so far?

He echoes the viewpoint of many others when he says “I just wish they’d get their messaging better”, lamenting that all the “really good stuff” is getting lost “in the noise of another U-turn”.

Comms is something Hampton’s own employers have struggled with.

A report published last month investigating Mossbourne’s Victoria Park Academy, part of the same multi-academy trust as Mossbourne Community Academy, found that staff had created a “climate of fear” for some pupils.

“Some people do not like academies, do not like the idea of a strict academy,” Hampton says, referring to an ideological battle over the school system that has existed since Michael Gove’s education reforms accelerated the academisation of local authority-maintained schools.

Hampton offers a qualified defence, insisting that “there is a middle ground”.

“As Rebecca Warren, the head, said, our kids do extraordinarily well. They succeed. Kids don’t do that if they’re miserable.”

Sadly for Hampton, his robes only have a limited time remaining. The House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill, which is in the final stages, will remove all remaining hereditary peers from the Lords at the end of the current parliamentary session.

Born John Pakington, the peer is the seventh Baron Hampton, his family having been ennobled in the mid-Victorian era.

Hampton’s family was “kicked upstairs”, as he puts it, in the late 1870s by prime minister Benjamin Disraeli.

The current – and last incumbent – thinks the reforms are “inevitable”.

“My father would have been astonished to think I was in here, because he left in 1999,” Hampton says.

“I mean, I don’t like it, because I’m greatly enjoying myself here,” Hampton says of the plans. He speculates about the extent to which the government will turn “the more useful ones” into life peers.

“So much warfare went on that… we’ve got three months to go, and I have no idea what’s going on.”

Whatever his personal feelings about remaining in the Upper Chamber, Hampton does recognise that the system is outdated.

“I calculated 16 women have been bypassed for me to be here,” he says.

The age of the hereditary peerage system was brought home to Hampton when he took out his family’s old robes.

“I lifted them up and the velvet – I presume – was ripped from top to bottom in a rather biblical fashion, leaving me holding some slightly mothy ermine with a pile of red shreds on the floor.”

Hampton is not allowing the threat of his imminent departure to dampen his spirits.

“I make sure that every day I remind myself what an extraordinary place this is, and the people I sit next to are just…” he trails off. It took him a long while to adjust to being surrounded by “all these fascinating people”, he says.

For Hampton, continuing to work in a school while also in the House of Lords keeps him grounded.

“Thursday mornings, I used to do boys’ toilet duty at eight o’clock. That was, remember, ‘Caesar, thou art, but mortal’.”

Whatever the timelines, Hampton is certain of life after the Lords: “I would return to teaching full-time, probably supply teaching for the four blank days for the remainder of the year and then see how the land lies.”