Sue Gray among 30 new Labour peers

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 nominations to the House of Lords on Friday afternoon, which also included former shadow cabinet minister Thangam Debbonaire and Conservative Liz Truss’s deputy prime minister Dame Therese Coffey.

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 nominated as a Conservative life peer, while former MP Luciana Berger who resigned from Labour in 2019 over the antisemitism 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.

Dame Therese told the PA news agency: “I’m honoured that the leader of my party Kemi Badenoch has put me forward and I look forward to being an active member of the Lords.”

She said she would be thinking through what her key priorities would be in the House of Lords and was looking forward to returning to Parliament.

“It’s a great end to a very extraordinary year for me,” she added.

Mike Katz, the national chairman of the Jewish Labour Movement and Anne Longfield, who served as the Children’s Commissioner for England between 2015 and 2021 will also be made life peers.

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.

Mr McCabe said he was “very pleased” to have been nominated and would use his position in the Lords to continue pursuing interests he championed in the Commons.

“I want to help the Labour Government succeed and I want to continue to look after the interests of people of the area that I served as an MP for many years,” he told the PA news agency.

Mr McCabe, the former Birmingham Selly Oak MP, listed better diagnoses of heart valve disease, access to IVF and his work with Labour Friends of Israel among the issues he would like to pursue.

Ms Gray is not the only member of Sir Keir’s inner circle to be nominated, with Deborah Mattinson, his former director of strategy, also getting a nod.

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”.

They said: “⁠The Tories stuffed the House of Lords, creating a serious imbalance in the chamber. This needs to be corrected to drive through the Government’s plan for change and deliver on our mandate from the British people.

“We are committed to an overdue programme of reform and have already laid legislation to remove the right of hereditary peers to sit and vote in the Lords.”