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More peers added to bloated Lords as campaigners demand reform
The Palace of Westminster, which contains the House of Commons and the House of Lords, in central London

MORE peers have been added to the bloated Lords in a dissolution list, raising demands from campaigners to reform the unelected chamber.

Outgoing prime minister Rishi Sunak handed peerages to former Tory leader Theresa May, Sir Graham Brady and his chief of staff in the list.

Among Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer’s nominations for peerages were Blair-era foreign secretary Dame Margaret Beckett, and veteran Labour MPs Harriet Harman and Dame Margaret Hodge.

Sir Keir previously said the party plans to impose a retirement age of 80 for peers and phase out hereditary peers.

He had initially vowed to abolish the House of Lords.

Electoral Reform Society (ERS) chief executive Darren Hughes said: “This latest batch of new peerages just highlights the collapse of restraint we are seeing around creating new members of the Lords.

“The House of Lords is already ridiculously bloated, with around 800 members making it the second largest legislative chamber in the world after China’s National People’s Congress.

“The last three prime ministers alone have created more than 120 new peers between them.”

Mr Hughes said that it was “clear we need to end this unrestrained system of stuffing endless unelected peers into the Lords and replace it with a smaller, elected chamber with a fixed number of members.”

“The people of this country — not prime ministers —  should be the ones to decide who sits in the upper house of Parliament shaping our laws,” he said.

The ERS has also warned that Thursday’s general election was the most disproportional on record in terms of votes cast matching seats in Parliament.

Labour won 64 per cent of seats with just under 34 per cent of the votes, it said, calling for a move to a proportional voting system for better representation.

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