One of the low spots of attempts to reform the House of Lords was the claim that the Coalition was packing the chamber. It wasn't true, especially given that there had only two lists of new creations since the General Election, and one of those was Labour's Dissolution Honours List.
However, we now have some data. At the end of the 2007-08 Parliamentary session, there were 733 members of the House of Lords, excluding those on leave of absence, disqualified, retired etc. At the end of the 2012-13 session, there were 763. That represents an increase of just over 4%.
Interestingly, there were very few creations by Gordon Brown in the 2008-09 and 2009-10 sessions, just five (four Labour, one Conservative) in total, plus a Law Lord. In fact, there were more (six) crossbench appointments by the House of Lords Appointments Commission in that period.
Since the General Election, there have been 129 appointments, made up as follows;
- 58 in the Dissolution Honours List (29 Labour, 18 Conservative, 9 Liberal Democrat, 1 Democratic Unionist and 1 Crossbencher)
- 57 in the Winter 2010 list (28 Conservative, 15 Liberal Democrat, 10 Labour, 1 Plaid Cymru, 1 Ulster Unionist and 2 Crossbenchers)
- 8 nominated via the House of Lords Appointments Commission (all Crossbenchers)
- 6 appointed separately - three appointed directly to Ministerial office (all Conservatives), the former Head of the Civil Service, the former Governor of the Bank of England and the former Archbishop of Canterbury
And so, with another list apparently due to be published, the number of eligible Peers will increase, obviously. Well, not exactly. Since the beginning of 2012, twenty-nine Peers have died, so a list of roughly that length would merely replace losses.
So, not significantly more Peers, which leads you to wonder why the place is so crowded these days...
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