KEIR Starmer is reportedly planning to flood the House of Lords with new Labour peers to "level the playing field" if his party win the next election.
This comes after the Labour leader pledged to abolish the Lords eventually and replace it with an elected chamber. He also criticised Boris Johnson’s resignation honours list.
But party insiders have told The Times that given the Conservatives dominate the upper chamber in terms of numbers, Labour would have to appoint peers to even the odds.
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There are now 779 members of the upper chamber. The Conservatives currently have 263 peers, almost 100 more than Labour’s 174 – which is even less than even the 183 unaligned crossbench peers.
Several sources told The Times that Labour was already giving thought to who might become a full-time peer – focusing on those of working age, given many of the party’s peers are elderly and struggle to attend late-night sittings.
One shadow cabinet minister said: “We will need to appoint dozens of them, at least. The current cohort aren’t getting any younger, and there’s so few of them doing the actual work that they are increasingly knackered.”
A source close to the leadership said: “We will need to level the playing field to get any of our legislation through. And abolishing the Lords is hardly mission critical to the first three years of a Labour government.”
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