The House of Lords is a peculiar place. Most of its members are anonymous but reasonably respected lifetime politicos, there is a crop of remarkably distinguished public figures, and there is also some third-rate riff-raff. How do they all get there? Every honours list provides some clues.
Here are 10 things we can learn about how you get into the Lords from Thursday’s dissolution honours.
1 Outstanding parliamentarians have, as always, a more or less automatic pass to the House of Lords
William Hague, the former Conservative foreign secretary, is the obvious example on Thursday’s but David Blunkett, the Labour former home secretary, and Alistair Darling, the Labour former chancellor, are two more. Like most honours lists, this one contains some duds, but it also includes respected political figures such as David Willetts, Sir George Young, Peter Hain and Tessa Jowell. If there has to be an appointed Lords full of retired MPs, these are the kind of people you would expect to see in it.
2 Being a member of the PM’s inner circle helps a lot
Greg Barker was a middle-ranking energy minister who in normal circumstances would not expect a seat in the Lords, but he was also one of the very first Tory MPs to back Cameron for leader in 2005, and he finally seems to have got his reward. Kate Fall, Cameron’s deputy chief of staff and a key Number 10 confidante, has also been ennobled. And Nick Clegg has used his slice of the dissolution honours to give a peerage to his former chief of staff, Jonny Oates.
3 Women are under-represented at Westminster, but the Lords is being used to make up the numbers
David Cameron has given more than a third of his peerages – 10 out of 25 – to women and almost half of the Lib Dem ones (five out of 11) go to women, too. At least one of these could prove controversial. Michelle Mone, the Scottish businesswoman who has become a peer and entrepreneurship tsar, has already come under fire from business figures in Scotland who think she is unsuitable for the post.
4 Donating helps ...
Selling peerages is illegal, and there is nothing to suggest wrongdoing on behalf of anyone in the new list, but an academic study has shown that giving large sums of money to a political party does have a remarkably positive effect on the chances of said donor having their talents recognised in an honours list. On Thursday, James Lupton, the Conservative party’s co-treasurer and a “businessman and leading philanthropist” according to the Number 10 citation, became a Lord. He has given £2.8m to the party. Anthony Ullmann, a businessman and adviser to Nick Clegg who has given almost £100,000 to the Lib Dems, got a knighthood.
5 But being a Tory press baron doesn’t
At the election, the Conservatives benefited from remarkable positive coverage in papers such as the Daily Telegraph. But if anyone at Telegraph HQ was hoping for some pay-back, they will have to wait a little longer.
6 Being a longstanding Lib Dem MP is a reliable route in
Proportionately, more Lib Dem MPs probably end up in the Lords than Labour or Tory ones, and Thursday’s list contains several Lib Dems who hardly qualify as “distinguished” but who have benefited from the Lib Dem peerage premium.
7 Failure does not necessarily hold you back ...
As health secretary, Andrew Lansley was responsible for the Health Act, probably the most contentious piece of legislation passed in the last parliament. Even supporters felt that Lansley handled it badly and he was demoted. But that has not stopped him ending up in the Lords – perhaps because he used to be Cameron’s boss at the Conservative research department. See point 2 above.
8 But getting caught in a cash-for-access sting does
Jack Straw was entitled to expect elevation to the Lords when he announced he was leaving the Commons before the election, and Sir Malcolm Rifkind, another former foreign secretary, would normally have expected automatic entry, too. They were both caught in a cash-for-access sting before the election. Although they both denied doing anything wrong, they weren’t included in the list.
9 The MPs’ expenses scandal won’t necessarily be held against you anymore
Douglas Hogg was vilified in 2009 after it emerged he had claimed expenses partly on the grounds that he needed money for cleaning his moat. He now becomes a life peer. It will be his second peerage; he already has a hereditary peerage – he is Viscount Hailsham – but that does not allow him to sit in the Lords.
10 And being rejected by the electorate is not necessarily an obstacle, either
The Lib Dem list includes two people going to the Lords after being defeated at the general election – Lorely Burt and Lynne Featherstone – while the Tory list includes Anne McIntosh, who did not even get to fight the election because she was deselected by her local party. All three are women, so point 3 above is coming into play, too.
