Sir Keir Starmer has said he has not “offered anybody a peerage” as he suggested a story about Labour’s plans to create new peers if he wins power had “come out of nowhere”.
Labour has committed to abolishing the House of Lords if Sir Keir leads the party to victory at the next general election, which is likely to be held in 2024.
Despite the pledge, a spokesman for Sir Keir last week suggested new peers could be appointed in the event of a Labour election win in order to provide more political balance in the upper house, giving the incoming administration a better chance of pushing its policy changes through.
Yet Sir Keir, speaking at the New Statesman’s Politics Live Conference in central London on Tuesday, denied holding talks about swelling the second chamber.
I haven’t had a conversation with anyone about creating hundreds of peers— Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer
The Opposition leader, asked whether former New Labour heavyweights such as Ed Balls or David Miliband could be given seats on the red benches, said: “The first thing I have to do is shatter this myth, I’m afraid.
“I haven’t had a conversation with anyone about creating hundreds of peers. This story has come out of nowhere.”
He said there was an “imbalance” in the Lords and that any future government would want to “get its business through” but he did not comment on how the current makeup might be changed.
Under the present numbers, Labour would need 90 more peers to surpass the Conservatives’ 263 members to become the largest party in the upper house.
The former director of public prosecutions also said that, while he was seeking the advice of former Labour prime ministers Sir Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, that did not mean he was necessarily going to make them peers.
“It is perfectly true that there is now an imbalance in the House of Lords. We have many less members in there than the Government does and any incoming government wants to get its business through,” Sir Keir continued.
“People can see that imbalance but I haven’t personally discussed this with anyone, nor have I offered anybody a peerage or named anybody who might get a peerage.
“I think it was an interview I did where I was asked, do you take advice from Tony Blair and Gordon Brown? And I said, ‘Yes I do, I take advice from people who know what they are doing and win elections’.
“And that now has been translated into somehow I’m going to put them into the House of Lords.
“I’m sorry to disappoint (but) there is absolutely nothing in the story at all. I haven’t had these conversations.”
In December, Sir Keir unveiled plans led by Mr Brown to replace the Lords with a democratic assembly of nations and regions.
Thangam Debbonaire, the shadow Commons leader, suggested in an interview this week that a future Labour government could choose to put “repairing the country” ahead of the party’s pledge to get rid of the Lords.
“To be honest I would prefer we got on with the concrete business of trying to repair the country first – but Keir is committed to constitutional reform, it’s very much his thing, he’s backed what Gordon has said, and that is what we will do,” she told the i newspaper.
“But whether that comes in the first year, the second year, I don’t know at the moment.”
The Bristol West MP indicated that Labour could undertake more limited reforms of the second chamber before scrapping all unelected peers.
There are currently 779 members in what is one of the world’s biggest upper chambers, even before former prime minister Boris Johnson’s resignation honours choices take up their positions.
Lord Speaker Lord McFall has argued his chamber is too large and should be reduced but is pushing for reform rather than replacement.
Meanwhile, Sir Keir said he has warned his shadow cabinet against complacency in the face of healthy opinion poll leads, with some suggesting Labour has opened up as much as a 20-point gap over Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s Tories.
Speaking at County Hall, he said that, while the party had changed under his leadership since the 2019 Tory landslide election result, there was more to do to ready his outfit for Downing Street.
He said: “We’ve got more to do, I accept that. We’ve got to go up another level, and that is why I put the polls on one side.
“For Labour to get from where it landed in 2019 to a victory in 2024 requires us to be exceptional.
“This is what I say to the shadow cabinet all the time: You cannot coast, you can’t stay level, you’ve got to be exceptional and step up again.”
