Sir Keir Starmer is said to be drawing up plans to appoint dozens of Labour peers to the House of Lords to stop his agenda for government being frustrated by the upper chamber.
The Labour leader has vowed to scrap the current make-up of the Lords and replace it with an elected chamber of “nations and regions”.
But Mr Starmer will have to appoint a raft of peers if he wins power to stop a Labour government getting bogged down in rows on legislation, according to party sources.
Labour is likely to try to appoint working-age peers keen to take an active role in legislation and help “level the playing field”, The Times reported.
“There would be lots of opportunities for a Conservative opposition with a bigger, younger group of peers to make life difficult for us in the Lords while respecting convention,” one source told the newspaper.
A shadow cabinet member, not named, added: “We will need to appoint dozens of them, at least. The current cohort aren’t getting any younger, and there’s so few of them doing the actual work that they are increasingly knackered.”
Labour frontbencher Jim McMahon appeared to confirm the plans on Wednesday as he defended the party’s right to appoint peers if it wins the general election.
Mr McMahon told Sky News that the “ambition” to replace the Lords remained – but added: “Of course we need to make sure we have an allocation on the Lords, any government would have to do that. On day one [of a Labour government], you are going to have a functioning House of Lords.”
Insisting that “not everyone in the House of Lords is mired in scandal”. he added: “You cannot compare Boris’s Johnson’s disgraced resignation honours lists with the legitimate business of passing legislation in the House of Commons and the House of Lords.”
There are growing concerns about the size of the upper chamber, with its 779-member ranks set to be swelled by Boris Johnson’s controversial resignation honours list. There are 174 Labour figures in the Lords, compared to 263 Tory peers.
Tony Blair named 36 new Labour peers when he won power in 1997, while David Cameron put 47 Tories in the Lords after winning the 2010 election. Conservative numbers have ballooned since then.
Angela Smith, Labour leader of Lords, denied that it was “contradictory” to appoint yet more peers while promising to scrap the unelected chamber – arguing that it was necessary to “rebalance” the numbers.
Baroness Smith told Times Radio: “There’s 90 more Conservatives than Labour. The priority for Keir will be ensuring he gets the Labour programme through.”
The Labour leader of the Lords said the current number of peers was “ridiculous” and said the party wanted bring in reform to reduce the overall number in the revising chamber so it is smaller than the House of Commons.
But on the potential peerages ahead, Baroness Smith said: “He’s looking for people who are interested in doing a job of work, or from a particular area of expertise. When we see appointments from Keir, that is the kind of criteria he will be using.”
Sir Keir said in December that a Labour government would aim to abolish the “indefensible” House of Lords “as quickly as possible”.
The proposal for an elected assembly of nations and regions was part of Labour’s blueprint for a “New Britain”, outlined in the report of its commission on the UK’s future headed by ex-premier Gordon Brown.
