A cabinet minister has dismissed Nigel Farage’s call for the prime minister to allow him to nominate peers to the House of Lords, saying Parliament will not benefit from more “Putin apologists”.
Defence secretary John Healey said the Reform UK leader wanted to fill the upper chamber with “his cronies”, and accused his party of being “conspicuously absent” from debate on the Ukraine war.
In a letter to Sir Keir Starmer, Mr Farage had said that a “democratic disparity” in the Lords needed to be addressed. Reform has four MPs and controls 10 councils in England.
When asked about the party leader’s demands, Mr Healey said: “The same Nigel Farage who called for the abolition of the Lords… now wants to fill it with his cronies.
“I’m not sure that Parliament’s going to benefit from more Putin apologists like Nigel Farage, to be honest.”
Asked whether that accusation was “a bit strong”, Mr Healey told LBC: “Look at what he’s said about Russia, look at what he’s said about Putin in the past.
“At this point, when maximum pressure needs to be put on Putin to support Ukraine in negotiations, when the maximum condemnation of Putin is required from someone who is sitting down with Trump in Alaska but turning up the attacks on Ukraine, it needs all voices.
“And I have to say, the voice of Reform is conspicuously absent in any of our discussions and any of our defence debates about Ukraine and about Russia.”
The minister urged Mr Farage, the MP for Clacton, to start “weighing in alongside us and the other parties in the House of Commons” in condemning the Russian president.
Reform’s deputy leader Richard Tice accused the Defence Secretary of “an absurd smear”.
“Is Mr Healey suffering from a touch of August sunstroke?” he said.
During the general election campaign last year, Mr Farage was criticised by leaders from across the political spectrum for suggesting the West provoked the Ukraine war.
He also said he disliked the Russian president but “admired” him as a political operator because “he managed to take control of running Russia”, in a BBC interview.
Mr Farage has repeatedly denied that he supports Mr Putin and said he is clear that the Russian leader is to blame for the war.
The Reform leader has previously called for Lords reform, writing in an article for the Telegraph in February that “a smaller chamber is needed”.
In his letter to the Prime Minister, first reported by the Times, Mr Farage said: “Reform UK wishes to appoint life peers to the upper house at the earliest possible opportunity.”
In what he described as a “modest request”, he said it was time that Reform was represented in the unelected second chamber.
“My party received over 4.1 million votes at the general election in July 2024. We have since won a large number of seats in local government, led in the national opinion polls for many months and won the only by-election of this parliament,” he said.
Political appointments to the Lords are made at the discretion of the Prime Minister, who is under no constitutional obligation to elevate opposition figures but will sometimes ask other leaders to nominate individuals.
In December, Sir Keir appointed 30 new Labour peers, including his former chief of staff Sue Gray – which Mr Farage said at the time showed the ruling party’s “lofty ambition” to abolish the Lords had “fallen by the wayside”.
The Conservatives appointed six new peers, while the Liberal Democrats appointed two.
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