How are Lords appointed and why has it become such a controversial topic in 2023?

Members of the House of Lords are known as peers. New peers are chosen each year by the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister will usually allow the opposition to nominate a small number of new peers also.

You can see from the chart above that appointing new peers to the House of Lords is a practice that has been done by Prime Ministers of all parties. Once a Prime Minister has nominated individuals for a peerage they are then vetted by the House of Lords Appointment Commission (HOLAC). HOLAC can ask the Prime Minister to think again about some of the nominations, but it cannot veto them. In 2021, HOLAC asked Boris Johnson to think again about the appointment of the Conservative Party donor, Peter Cruddas to the Lords. Johnson decided to ignore HOLAC and appointed Cruddas to the Lords anyway.

What has been controversial recently has been the selection of new peers in the Prime Minister’s resignation honours. The resignation honours allow a Prime Minister to nominate new peers once they have left office. In 2023, HOLAC rejected 8 of Boris Johnson’s nominations in his resignation honours. These included sitting MPs such as Alok Sharma and Nadine Dorries. HOLAC rejected their nominations on the grounds that they would need to resign as MPs immediately rather then wait until the next election before taking up their seats in the Lords.

Johnson did see 7 of his nominees accepted by HOLAC. These include the 29 year Parliamentary Secretary, Charlotte Owen and 31 year old Ross Kempsell, both of whom now have jobs for life in the Lords.

In creating 7 new peers, Johnson was in fact appointing fewer than his predecessor had done. Perhaps the controversy was more around who Johnson was appointing, friends, colleagues and allies then the number he was appointing.