Two former North East MPS have been nominated to join the House of Lords.
Downing Street announced a raft of new nominations to the House of Lords on Friday afternoon, which included former Sunderland MP Julie Elliott and former Sedgefield MP Phil Wilson. Overall, 38 new appointments were announced, with six from the Tories and two from the Liberal Democrats, as well as the 30 from Labour.
Other nominations included Sir Keir Starmer’s former chief of staff Sue Gray, who came to prominence in 2022 with the report into Downing Street parties. She quit as Sir Keir’s chief of staff in October after a series of internal rows.
Toby Young, the founder and director of the Free Speech Union, is among those who has been nominated as a Conservative life peer, while former MP Luciana Berger who resigned from Labour in 2019 over the antisemitism scandal before rejoining in 2023 will sit on the Labour Lords benches.
The six nominations from Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch, include the former deputy Prime Minister Dame Therese Coffey as well as former housing minister Rachel Maclean, Oxford professor Nigel Biggar, former deputy mayor of London Roger Evans and Joanne Cash, a barrister and co-founder of Parent Gym.
There are also two nominations from the leader of the Liberal Democrats Sir Ed Davey, including Mark Pack who has been president of the party since 2020.
Labour has pledged to reform the House of Lords and has already moved to get rid of hereditary peers. The announcement will boost Sir Keir’s numbers in the upper chamber, which sat at 187 Labour peers compared to 273 from the Conservatives.
A Labour source said that the Conservatives had created an “imbalance” in the Lords that needed to be “corrected”.
They said: “The Tories stuffed the House of Lords, creating a serious imbalance in the chamber. This needs to be corrected to drive through the Government’s plan for change and deliver on our mandate from the British people.
“We are committed to an overdue programme of reform and have already laid legislation to remove the right of hereditary peers to sit and vote in the Lords.”
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