Boris Johnson will pack the Lords with Brexiteers to tackle the imbalance in the Remain-packed upper chamber. Leave-voting luminaries ‘who have been looked over’ in the past will handed peerages in a bid to start evening up the numbers, Downing Street revealed.
An initial tranche of six Brexit-backing peers will be appointed later this year, with more expected to follow. It is understood that Nigel Farage will not be one of the Eurosceptics who will don ermine.
Un-elected anti-Brexit peers have repeatedly attempted to derail Brexit by defeating government on legislation to get the country out of the EU. The in-built anti-Brexit majority in the Lords has become an increasing source of frustration for ministers. Among the gripes is the disproportionately large number of Liberal Democrats. The party has 12 per cent of seats in the Lords even though it has just two per cent of MPs in the Commons.
The Prime Minister, who was one of the leaders of Vote Leave, is understood to want to reward some of the ‘unsung heroes’ of the campaign. However, his plan to hand out a raft of peerages could undermine efforts to reduce total numbers sitting in the upper chamber.
A cross-party committee of peers has urged Mr Johnson to show restraint in appointments during his time No10.
In a report published last month, the Lord Speaker’s committee on the size of the House found the number of peers has fallen from 823 to 778 in the last two years. Some 26 members left the House during the past 12 months, with only six new members joining.
The peers wrote that they ‘welcomed the continued progress’ but gave a warning about how this could be impacted by the change of prime minister. They urged Mr Johnson to minimise the number of peers he creates.
‘We hope that the new Prime Minister will take the same constructive approach to our work as his predecessor did, recognising the expressed determination of members on all sides of the House to make progress towards a membership capped at 600,’ they wrote.
A number of the Brexit-hating peers who have repeatedly voted to sabotage the country’s exit are sitting on EU pension pots worth hundreds of thousands of pounds thanks to former roles in Brussels.
They include Lord Mandelson who will receive more than £35,000 a year thanks to his old job as trade commissioner. Lord Kinnock, the former Labour leader who was a European Commissioner for nine years rising to be Commission vice president, has a £1.5million pension pot worth £89,400. His wife, Baroness Kinnock, who spent 15 years in the European Parliament, has a pension pot of £358,000.
Lord Mandelson has previously insisted his Brussels pension pot did not influence his views on Brexit. He told peers: ‘I was a Remainer, not because of my pension rights but because I am a patriot - a patriot, not a nationalist.’ Peers last year inflicted 15 defeats on the Government’s flagship Brexit legislation, the EU Withdrawal Bill.
In one debate, Tory peer Lord Ridley branded the Lords a ‘gilded, crimson echo chamber of Remain’.
Tony Blair’s purge of nearly all hereditary peers in 1999 saw membership of the Lords cut from 1,330 to 669 mainly life peers. But successive prime ministers have stuffed the red benches with new appointments, making the chamber the world’s second largest - beaten only by the People’s Republic of China.
A number of new peers are expected to announced in the coming weeks as part of Theresa May’s resignation honours list. In 2016, David Cameron created 13 new Conservative peers in the House of Lords as one of his final acts as prime minister.
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