Labour defends plan to appoint dozens of peers to House of Lords

Angela Smith, Labour’s leader in the Lords, with Keir Starmer, said the priority would be to ‘get the Labour programme through’. Photograph: Liam McBurney/PA

Labour has defended its plan to appoint dozens of peers to the House of Lords if it wins the next election, despite promising to abolish the upper chamber altogether.

Angela Smith, Labour’s leader in the Lords, said Labour’s priority would be to get legislation through parliament if it won the next election, even if that meant increasing the size of an institution it had promised to scrap.