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Keir Starmer has appointed 25 Labour peers including a number of former senior government and party aides in a bid to strengthen his hand in the House of Lords<\/a>.<\/p>\n Matthew Doyle, a former No 10 director of communications, and Katie Martin, a former chief of staff to Rachel Reeves, will be among those appointed to the upper house in a move first reported by the Guardian<\/a>.<\/p>\n Carol Linforth, a former Labour party chief of staff for operations, and Richard Walker, the executive chair of Iceland and a Labour donor<\/a> who switched from supporting the Conservatives before the 2024 election, will also receive peerages.<\/p>\n Others on Labour\u2019s list include Michael Barber, a Whitehall veteran who led Tony Blair\u2019s delivery unit and now advises Starmer, and Len Duvall, the chair of the London assembly.<\/p>\n The move brings the number of peers appointed by Starmer to 62. This includes a tranche of 30 peers announced last December<\/a> and seven who have been created so that they can take up ministerial roles.<\/p>\n The decision is likely to draw criticism from electoral reform campaigners who argue that the appointment process is undemocratic and used by prime ministers to reward their allies.<\/p>\n Labour committed in its manifesto to modernising the Lords by reforming the appointments process, introducing a mandatory retirement age of 80 and ultimately replacing the Lords with \u201can alternative second chamber that is more representative of the regions and nations\u201d.<\/p>\n Party figures argue that the composition of the Lords needs to be rebalanced in its favour so that the government can push ahead with implementing its legislative agenda.<\/p>\n A Labour source said: \u201c?The Tories stuffed the House of Lords, creating a serious imbalance that has allowed them to frustrate our plans to make working families better off. This needs to be corrected to deliver on our mandate from the British people.<\/p>\n \u201cWe will continue to progress our programme of reform, which includes removing the right of hereditary peers to sit and vote in the Lords.\u201d<\/p>\n The Lords has been accused of blocking progress in a number of areas in recent months, including government legislation to strengthen renters\u2019 rights, workers\u2019 rights and abolish hereditary peers.<\/p>\n The Conservatives appointed three new peers \u2013 the former Conservative MP and head of Margaret Thatcher\u2019s policy unit John Redwood, the gender-critical campaigner and Olympic swimming silver medalist Sharron Davies, and the historian Simon Heffer.<\/p>\n The Liberal Democrats appointed five, including the hereditary peers Dominic Hubbard and John Russell, who had faced removal from the upper chamber as their seats were being abolished.<\/p>\n Reform UK did not appoint any peers, despite writing to Starmer requesting to do so in August.<\/p>\n As of Wednesday the Conservatives have 282 peers, compared with Labour\u2019s 209 and the Liberal Democrats\u2019 75. There are 177 cross-benchers and 40 non-affiliated peers.<\/p>\n David Cameron created 245 peers during his time in office, 120 of them in his first 18 months, according to the Lords library<\/a>. Tony Blair created 374, more than any other prime minister, with 101 in his first 18 months.<\/p>\n