§ Mr. BercowTo ask the Prime Minister if he will break down the appointments to the House of Lords, by party affiliation, since 1 May 1997; and if he will make a statement. [123626]
§ The Prime MinisterThe information requested is as follows:
Appointments to the House of Lords since 1 May 19971 Party New life peerages2 Hereditaries who became life peers on 2 November 19993 Law Lords Conservative 30 7 — Labour4 98 2 — Lib. Dem. 31 0 — Crossbench 27 1 4 Other 1 — — 1 Appointment is taken to mean the date on which a peerage was publicly announced 2 Includes the right hon. Member for Huntingdon's (Mr. Major) Resignation Honours (10 Conservative, announced on 2 August 1997), but not his Dissolution Honours which were announced before 1 May 1997 3 Four Hereditaries of first creation who accepted life peerages and six Hereditaries who were former Leaders of the House 4 Includes Baroness Lester, now deceased The current position is that there are 233 Conservative peers, compared to 199 Labour peers and 63 Liberal Democrats. The remainder are 164 Crossbenchers, 26 archbishops and bishops and 10 others.
From 1979 to 1997 the last Conservative Government created 365 peers (excluding Law Lords). Despite retaining an almost 4 to 1 advantage over Labour in the House of Lords the number of Conservative peers created was nearly double that of Labour peers. The party breakdown of these was as follows: Conservative 173, Labour 96, Liberal/SDP/Liberal Democrats 27 and Independent/Crossbencher 69.