CAMPAIGNERS have renewed calls to scrap the House of Lords, saying Boris Johnson’s resignation honours list reveals the “extent of grubby horse-trading” for peerages.
The seven nominations last week by the former Prime Minister adds to the 821 members of the upper house – already the second largest legislature in the world after China’s National People’s Congress.
Political allies made life peers by Johnson include former special adviser Charlotte Tranter, who becomes the youngest member of the House of Lords aged just 29.
She has made the jump from being a parliamentary intern to a Baroness in the space of just six years, according to reports.
Another new peer at the age of just 31 is Johnson’s spokesperson Ross Kempsell, along with Shaun Bailey, who unsuccessfully ran for London mayor in 2021 and was pictured breaking lockdown rules in 2020 at a party at Conservative headquarters in London.
A number of senior officials who were implicated in the partygate scandal were included in Johnson’s resignation honours list.
However the exclusion of former culture secretary Nadine Dorries and former minister Nigel Adams triggered a war of words with Rishi Sunak.
Hours later after the list was released Johnson dramatically announced his Commons exit, as the Privileges Committee prepared to report that he lied to Parliament over partygate, with Dorries and Adams also said they were standing down as MPs.
The Prime Minister suggested his former boss wanted him to ignore the recommendations of the House of Lords Appointments Commission.
But Johnson said he was talking “rubbish”, with his camp accusing Sunak of having “secretly blocked” the peerages of Dorries and other allies.
Willie Sullivan, senior director of Scotland and campaigns at the Electoral Reform Society, said: "The last week has torn back the curtain on how appointments to the House of Lords are handed out and revealed the extent of grubby horse-trading that goes on.
"Each new peer gets a job-for-life and so potentially decades of influence over the legislation of this country.
"It is clear this is not a fit way for a modern democracy to decide who sits in its parliament.
"It is time to scrap the current unelected Lords and replace it with a smaller elected chamber where the people of this country, not former prime ministers, decide who shapes the laws we all live under."
The SNP also renewed calls for the upper house to be abolished following Johnson’s appointments, saying independence would “rid Scotland of undemocratic institutions like the House of Lords for good.”
The issue of Johnson’s honours list was today raised at PMQs with Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer asking Sunak why the Conservative Party “spent this last week arguing over which of them gets a peerage”.
He replied: “In line with a long-established convention of previous prime ministers having the ability to submit honours, I followed the process to the letter, in convention of long-standing process.
“It is, by the way, a long-standing convention that prime ministers on both sides to this House have followed in the same way that I did.”
But Starmer went on: “The truth is for all his tough talk after the event, the Prime Minister did sign off the honours list. That means that those who threw a Downing Street party the night before the late Queen sat alone at her husband’s funeral will now receive awards from the King.
“If he is so tough, why didn’t he block it?”
The Prime Minister replied: “As I said, I and the Government followed due process and convention. Prime ministers of both parties have always upheld the convention of non-interference on political honours.
“My predecessors may not have agreed with Labour’s choices of Tom Watson or Shami Chakrabarti, but the same precedent stood then as it does now. And I’d expect a knight like him to understand that.”
Starmer also asked Sunak what he would do with the honours list of Liz Truss, with the Prime Minister sidestepping the question.
