The new Yorkshire peers set to take their seats in the House of Lords alongside Sue Gray
Sue Gray, the partygate investigator who went on to become Sir Keir Starmer’s chief of staff, has been named among 30 new Labour peers.
Downing Street announced a raft of new appointments to the House of Lords, which also included Liz Truss’s deputy prime minister Dame Therese Coffey and former shadow cabinet minister Thangam Debbonaire.
Overall, 38 new appointments were announced, with six from the Tories and two from the Liberal Democrats, as well as the 30 from Labour.
Ms Gray came to prominence in 2022 with the report into Downing Street parties, and then became Sir Keir’s chief of staff in opposition before following him into Number 10.
She quit the role in October after a series of internal rows.
Toby Young, the founder and director of the Free Speech Union, is among those who has been made a Conservative life peer, while former MP Luciana Berger who resigned from Labour in 2019 over the anti-Semitism scandal before rejoining in 2023 will sit on the Labour Lords benches.
The six nominations from Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch include Dame Therese as well as former housing minister Rachel Maclean, Oxford professor Nigel Biggar, former deputy mayor of London Roger Evans, and Joanne Cash, a barrister and co-founder of Parent Gym.
Mike Katz, the national chairman of the Jewish Labour Movement, is also made a life peer.
Among the other Labour names on the list put forward by Sir Keir are former MPs Ms Debbonaire, Julie Elliott, Lyn Brown, Steve McCabe and Kevin Brennan, as well as former Welsh first minister Carwyn Jones.
Ms Debbonaire had served as Labour’s shadow culture secretary but lost her seat at the General Election to the Green Party.
There are also two nominations from the leader of the Liberal Democrats Sir Ed Davey, including Mark Pack who has been president of the party since 2020.
Labour has pledged to reform the House of Lords and has already moved to get rid of hereditary peers.
The announcement will boost Sir Keir’s numbers in the upper chamber, which sat at 187 Labour peers compared to 273 from the Conservatives.
A Labour source said that the Conservatives had created an “imbalance” in the Lords that needed to be “corrected”.
Other new peers included:
- Anne Longfield CBE – campaigner for children and formerly served as the children’s commissioner for England. Founder and executive chairwoman of the Centre for Young Lives.
- Wendy Nichols – Unison Yorkshire and Humberside regional convenor and branch secretary and Labour councillor.
- And Councillor Shaffaq Mohammed MBE – former Sheffield city councillor and chairman of the Liberal Democrat Carers Commission.