Seats in Lords for parties’ major donors

The working peers, nominated by the party leaders and cleared by independent House of Lords Appointments Commission, included JCB boss Sir Anthony Bamford, whose family and firm have given £2.5m to the Conservatives in recent years, Scottish businessman Sir William Haughey, who has given £1.3m to Labour and Domino’s Pizza entrepreneur Rumi Verjee, who has given more than £800,000 to the Liberal Democrats.

Also ennobled were several former MPs, members of the European Parliament and devolved assemblies and party officials, as well as justice campaigner Doreen Lawrence, who becomes a baroness on the Labour benches, journalist Daniel Finkelstein, made a Tory lord, and nightclub developer James Palumbo who is elevated to the peerage for the Liberal Democrats.

The list includes 14 Conservatives, 10 Liberal Democrats and five Labour nominees, as well as the first Green to become a peer – London Assembly member and former deputy mayor Jenny Jones, who was selected for nomination by a ballot of party members.

The appointments restore the Conservatives’ position as the largest party in the House of Lords by a single seat, with 222 peers to Labour’s 221 and the Liberal Democrats’ 99.

The total number of members of the Upper House – which has already been criticised for being overcrowded – swells to 785, compared to 650 MPs and 766 MEPs in the European Parliament.

Peers are not paid salaries, but they are entitled to £300 tax-free allowances for each day they attend a parliamentary sitting. On the basis of 137 sitting days last year, the 30 new peers would have cost about £1.2m, plus travel and other expenses.

This may pose awkward questions for David Cameron after he repeatedly insisted that the cost of politics should not be allowed to rise. Coalition plans to cut the number of MPs from 650 to 600 have already been dropped, and the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority has proposed significant pay rises.