Keir Starmer appoints 25 Labour peers to strengthen support in House of Lords | House of Lords

Keir Starmer has appointed 25 Labor members, including some former senior government and party aides, in a bid to strengthen his hand in the House of Lords.

Former No 10 communications director Matthew Doyle and Rachel Reeves’ former chief of staff Katie Martin will be among those appointed to the upper house in a move first reported by the Guardian.

Carol Linforth, Labour’s former general secretary for operations, and Richard Walker, Iceland’s executive chairman and Labor donor who quit backing the Conservatives ahead of the 2024 election, will also take precedent.

Others on Labour’s list include Whitehall veteran Michael Barber, who ran Tony Blair’s distribution unit and is now advising Starmer, and Len Duvall, the leader of the London assembly.

The move brings the number of peers appointed by Starmer to 62. This includes the 30 peers announced last December and a tranche of seven peers created to take on ministerial roles.

The decision is expected to draw criticism from electoral reform campaigners, who argue that the appointment process is undemocratic and is being used by prime ministers to reward their allies.

In its manifesto, Labor committed to modernizing the Lords by reforming the appointment process, introducing a compulsory retirement age of 80, and ultimately replacing the Lords with “an alternative second chamber more representative of the regions and nations”.

Party figures argue that the Lords must be rebalanced in its favor so the government can continue to implement its legislative agenda.

A Labor source said: “The Conservatives have packed the House of Lords and created a serious imbalance, allowing them to defeat our plans to make working families better off. This needs to be fixed so we can deliver on the mandate we received from the British people.”

“We will continue to advance our program of reform, which includes removing the right of our hereditary peers to sit and vote in the Lords.”

The Lords have been accused of blocking progress in many areas in recent months, including government legislation strengthening tenants’ rights, workers’ rights and abolishing hereditary peers.

The Conservatives have appointed three new colleagues: former Conservative MP and head of Margaret Thatcher’s policy unit John Redwood, gender equality campaigner and Olympic swimming silver medalist Sharron Davies and historian Simon Heffer.

The Liberal Democrats appointed five people, including hereditary peers Dominic Hubbard and John Russell, who face removal from the upper house as their seats are abolished.

The others are Sarah Teather, who served as children’s minister between 2010 and 2012, Rhiannon Leaman, who has been Ed Davey’s private secretary since 2019, and the party’s chief executive, Mike Dixon.

Davey, leader of the Liberal Democrats, said his party’s appointments would help “deliver the change our country urgently needs, including reforming the House of Lords”.

Reform UK did not appoint any peers, although it wrote to Starmer in August requesting this.

As of Wednesday, the Conservatives have 282 colleagues, while Labor has 209 and the Liberal Democrats have 75. There are 177 crossover candidates and 40 non-aligned colleagues.

David Cameron created 245 colleagues during his time in office, 120 of them in the first 18 months. By the Lord’s library. Tony Blair created 374, more than any other prime minister, with 101 in his first 18 months.

Boris Johnson created 87 precedents despite promising to shrink the Lords. Theresa May created 43, Rishi Sunak created 51 and Liz Truss, who was in power for just 49 days, created 29.

The law to remove 91 hereditary peers from the upper house is being passed by parliament. The bill is in the final stages of parliamentary scrutiny, known as ping-pong, where it is being debated back and forth between the House of Commons and the House of Lords.

If it becomes law, 44 hereditary Tory members will be removed from the red benches, but the opposition party will still remain in a majority over Labour.

Labour’s House of Lords leader Angela Smith will begin the next phase of a series of changes to the upper house at the beginning of 2026.