Lord Speaker comments on appointment of new members of the Lords
21 May 2018 (updated on 21 May 2018)
The Queen has appointed 13 new members of the House of Lords.
Commenting on the announcement Lord Fowler, the Lord Speaker, said:
“When the Prime Minister wrote to me in February, she made it clear that the new peerages announced today are a long-planned list arising from the dissolution of Parliament before the June 2017 general election. In that letter, she also committed herself to restraint when making new appointments to the House of Lords. The relatively modest size of today’s list when compared with those under several previous Prime Ministers has demonstrated a welcome commitment to that pledge.
I established a committee under the chairmanship of Lord Burns to reduce the size of the House which reported last October. Their report was supported by the House of Lords itself. Today’s appointments in no way undermine those recommendations: indeed, the number of new peers announced today is about a third of the 35 peers who have left the House since the 2017 election. The size of the House is falling, and our aim is to continue that progress.”
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