Cameron to make Tory party donor a peer

The Times (£) have reported that next month, David Cameron will make a donor to the Tory party a peer in the house of Lords.

This appointment will be made alongside a dozen of others in August, including political peers but also “working peers” such as   party donors. A senior Conservative source said said that including donors on the list  would “complicate” the way it’s perceived by the public. Downing Street, hoping to avoid controversy over this, have yet to release the full list of who’ll be making it into the Lords.

This comes after Cameron was accused of abusing the honours system because he’s going to give knighthoods to some of the minister who were removed from the Cabinet in his latest reshuffle  – these include former International Development minister, Alan Duncan; Foreign Office minister, Hugh Robertson; and Oliver Heald, previously the solicitor-general. Labour MP Michael Dugher said that by giving these three men knighthoods, Cameron was undermining the system by using “hush-hush honours and gongs as golden goodbyes”. 

These new appointments will push the number of peers in the upper chamber over the 800 mark and it’s estimated that they’ll add at least £3 million to the cost of the Lords.

Meg Russell, an expert on constitutional reform, told the Times that the growing size of the House of Lords “is plainly completely unsustainable, and there is an urgent need to regulate the prime minister’s appointment power.