Sadiq Khan joins the House of Lords as outgoing UK Prime Minister names 26 new peers | Government Affairs

PM Keir Starmer’s final honors list also includes campaigners, military leaders and government officials.

Sadiq Khan and 25 others can now sit in the House of Lords, where they can scrutinize, revise and vote on United Kingdom legislation as life peers.

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer has named the mayor of London as one of 26 people to be given seats in the House of Lords, one of his last acts as prime minister.

In a press release on Thursday, the UK government announced Khan’s appointment to the House of Lords alongside political, philanthropic, social, military and business leaders.

Sadiq Khan, the former Labor MP for Tooting, is in the middle of his third term as mayor of London, having been first elected in 2016.

Khan’s appointment to the House of Lords is one of Starmer’s final decisions as Andy Burnham is expected to replace him as Labor leader on Friday and UK Prime Minister on Monday, July 20.

Another appointment

Retiring dignitaries promote their political peers, allowing elected officials to spend the rest of their lives in the House of Lords.

Of the 26 candidates, only 16 were nominated by Labour, five by the Liberal Democrats, three by the Conservatives and two by peers, meaning they have no party affiliation.

Among the Labor nominees are Parvais Jabbar and Saul Lehrfreund, human rights activists who co-founded the Death Penalty Project, and Cathy Ashley, a family rights activist and former head of the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust.

Former Chief of the General Staff of the British Army General Sir Patrick Sanders was one of those nominated by the Conservatives.

Economist Tim Leunig, chief economist at the British social innovation foundation Nesta, was nominated by the Liberal Democrats.

One of the two peers appointed was chief justice Sir Brian Leveson, who chaired the 2011 Leveson Inquiry into the conduct of the British media following the phone hacking scandal.

Starmer has not offered to run for Reform UK, which has seven MPs in the House of Commons following the resignation of Nigel Farage earlier this month. Farage, who remained party leader, said: “Once again, nothing can be done on Reform and we get an upper house without representatives.”

Before the recent election, the Conservatives held 246 seats in the House of Lords, compared to Labour’s 216, leaving the opposition with a majority in the upper house.