{"id":346108,"date":"2025-08-15T08:51:10","date_gmt":"2025-08-15T08:51:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/346108\/"},"modified":"2025-08-15T08:51:10","modified_gmt":"2025-08-15T08:51:10","slug":"farage-urges-starmer-to-appoint-reform-peers-to-house-of-lords-house-of-lords","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/346108\/","title":{"rendered":"Farage urges Starmer to appoint Reform peers to House of Lords | House of Lords"},"content":{"rendered":"

Nigel Farage has called for the right to nominate Reform UK supporters to the House of Lords<\/a>, claiming this would address a \u201cdemocratic disparity\u201d.<\/p>\n

The demand was dismissed by the defence secretary, John Healey, who said parliament would not benefit from \u201cmore Putin apologists\u201d.<\/p>\n

In a letter to Keir Starmer, the Reform leader said it was unfair that other smaller parties, including the Greens, had peers in the upper chamber but his party did not, despite attracting more votes in the general election last year.<\/p>\n

In what Farage described as a \u201cmodest request\u201d, he said it was time that Reform was represented in the House of Lords. He wrote: \u201cReform UK wishes to appoint life peers to the upper house at the earliest possible opportunity.\u201d<\/p>\n

Political appointments to the Lords are made at the discretion of the prime minister, who is under no constitutional obligation to elevate opposition figures to the Lords. But under political convention, No 10 invites opposition leaders to nominate candidates for peerages.<\/p>\n

Downing Street has yet to respond to Farage\u2019s demand, but speaking on LBC, Healey said Farage wanted to fill the Lords with \u201chis cronies\u201d. He also pointed out that Farage had previously called for the abolition of the Lords.<\/p>\n

Healey said: \u201cI\u2019m not sure that parliament\u2019s going to benefit from more Putin apologists like Nigel Farage<\/a>, to be honest.\u201d<\/p>\n

Asked whether that accusation was \u201ca bit strong\u201d, Healey replied: \u201cLook at what he\u2019s said about Russia, look at what he\u2019s said about Putin in the past.\u201d<\/p>\n

Farage\u2019s letter, first reported in the Times<\/a>, said: \u201cMy party received over 4.1m votes at the general election in July 2024. We have since won a large number of seats in local government, led in the national opinion polls for many months and won the only byelection of this parliament.\u201d<\/p>\n

Farage\u2019s demand has renewed calls to replace the House of Lords with an elected second chamber \u2013 something Starmer promised when he was elected Labour leader in 2020<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Farage wrote: \u201cWhile Reform UK believes in a reformed House of Lords, the time has come to address the democratic disparity that exists in the upper house.\u201d<\/p>\n

His letter added: \u201cThe Greens, DUP, Plaid Cymru, and UUP have 13 peers between them but Reform UK has none. Furthermore, the Liberal Democrats now have 76 peers but received 600,000 fewer votes than Reform UK in July last year.<\/p>\n

\u201cNone of this holds water any longer, given the seismic shifts that have taken place in British politics.\u201d<\/p>\n

Natalie Bennett, a former Green party leader who was made a life peer in 2019, tweeted<\/a>: \u201cSir Keir could respond by going for a fully elected upper house, as @TheGreenParty long calling for.\u201d<\/p>\n

Labour\u2019s manifesto promised \u201cimmediate reforms\u201d of the Lords in advance of a longer-term ambition to replace the Lords with an alternative second chamber. So far, the government has only legislated to abolish hereditary peers.<\/p>\n

Starmer has backed away from a Labour commission led by Gordon Brown<\/a> to replace the Lords with an elected assembly of the nations and regions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Nigel Farage has called for the right to nominate Reform UK supporters to the House of Lords, claiming…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":346109,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[748,393,4884,12,1144,712,16,15,1764],"class_list":{"0":"post-346108","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-england","10":"tag-great-britain","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-northern-ireland","13":"tag-scotland","14":"tag-uk","15":"tag-united-kingdom","16":"tag-wales"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115031931902321452","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/346108","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=346108"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/346108\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/346109"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=346108"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=346108"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=346108"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}