Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer will be asked to supply more due diligence about the peers they are proposing for the House of Lords, the appointments commission chief has said.
Ruth Deech, the head of the House of Lords Appointment Commission (Holac), said party leaders provide only “sketchy” information about the potential lords and ladies they put forward to her watchdog for vetting.
The crossbencher, a lawyer and academic, said new forms for potential peers would be published this week, requesting more information from the party leaders about the people they are nominating.
The move follows public concern that a quick succession of prime ministers have filled the House of Lords with a string of donors, junior aides with little career history, and former MPs who have lost their seats.
There was an outcry in December 2020 when Boris Johnson overruled the objections of Holac to secure the appointment of Peter Cruddas, a Conservative donor, as a peer.
In a hearing of parliament’s public administration committee, Deech also endorsed the idea of prime ministers submitting a list to the watchdog and allowing the independent commission to choose political peers from names submitted by the parties.
She said it was a “good idea” in principle for the vetting watchdog to carry out the final stage of selecting peers independently. However, she also expressed scepticism that prime ministers would in practice give up the power to appoint new peers, which they can do with no restrictions on whom they choose.
After taking the job in October, Deech has been clear she would like to see stronger vetting of candidates to enter the House of Lords. Currently, the commission can assess and advise on a potential peer only on the grounds of propriety, not suitability.
In October, she told the same committee that there was “disquiet” about “people who apparently do not have the requisite qualities but appear to have been nominated because they have made very large donations or they are friends of people in power”.
In her latest appearance on Tuesday, Deech described the current structure of Holac as “rather flimsy”, as it has no assurances on how many nominations for crossbench peers it can make and was recently told it would be getting an extra member.
Asked about reform to the system, she said: “We would like to get more information from the political leaders about the people they are putting forward as potential peers. We do our vetting and we do a lot of research, but it seems to me it would be for the benefit of all, both for the parties and the House of Lords if we got much more information when they put forward a name.
“What we get at the moment is rather sketchy. We would like to know why they have chosen a person rather than many others who might be similar, whether the nominee is aware of and has lived up to the Nolan principles, whether there’s anything in their past that might be embarrassing if it comes out and most importantly if they are aware of the demands of being a peer: that they will turn up, not just take the title and go away but be prepared to sit through the long hours we sit through, to make a contribution to speak, to handle amendments, to debate and so on.
“Given the resources of the political parties you would have thought that was straightforward. We have updated the forms we call on them to submit. Those forms will become public later this week.”
She said Holac had “written to the leaders to explain we would like them to do a bit more, shall I call it, due diligence before they put forward names. We do this simply because we want to be sure that the public can see quality is going forward in the House of Lords and we are not just opening the door for anyone nominated by any party to come forwards.”
The crossbench peer said that at some stage there ought to be a “fairly full description of what they have done” in order to merit a seat in the House of Lords.
Deech said crossbench nominees have to put in CVs, letters of reference and past papers so that their exceptional qualities are clear.
However, she added it was not for the House of Lords to judge on “political suitability” or “opine on” why they appeal to one party or another.
Paul Bew, a former chair of Holac, said he had tried to go in a similar direction when he was in charge of the body as Deech when he was in charge but that she was “moving very strongly” to implement requests for extra information about nominees.
