UK PM Keir Starmer nominates Indian-origin professional for House of Lords peerage

London: A London-based professional who chairs the Labour Party’s diaspora group, Labour Indians, was on Friday nominated by British Prime Minister Keir Starmer as one of his 30 picks for new political peerages in the House of Lords, to be approved by King Charles III.

Krish Raval, awarded an OBE in 2018 by Queen Elizabeth II for Services to Leadership Education and Inter-faith Cohesion, is the Founder-Director of Faith in Leadership – a University of Oxford-based organisation working towards fostering inter-faith relations.

He is now expected to join the Labour benches in the Upper House of the UK Parliament as a life peer, along with Starmer’s former chief of staff Sue Gray and former Labour shadow minister of Sri Lankan heritage Thangam Debbonnaire.

“The King has been graciously pleased to signify his intention of conferring peerages of the United Kingdom for Life,” reads the Downing Street statement announcing the nominations this week.

An independent House of Lords Appointments Commission (HOLAC) vets these nominations before the Prime Minister can formally recommend them to the King. 

This is followed by legal documents, or the writ of summons, issued by Parliament and a Letters Patent issued by the monarch to create a life peerage for the new members to be able to take their seat in the House of Lords and vote.

The Labour Party has nominated 30 peers in what is seen as an attempt to balance the numbers in the Lords, where the Tories have the most number of peers.

Once the new nominations are approved, which include Opposition Conservative Party Leader Kemi Badenoch’s six picks and Liberal Democrats’ two, the governing Labour Party is expected to have 217 peers, Tories 279 and Lib Dems 80. 

Over 180 crossbench peers are also part of the Lords as unaffiliated to any party, which means no party has an outright majority in the Upper Chamber of Parliament.

While Badenoch has nominated former deputy prime minister Therese Coffey among her choices, the Lib Dems have British Pakistani councillor Shaffaq Mohammed on their list. According to reports, former prime minister Rishi Sunak’s nominations for the House of Lords are expected at a later date.