RISHI Sunak has given “one last slap in the face to the people of Scotland”, the SNP have said, after he gave both Michael Gove and Alister Jack life peerages.
Gove – who served in the Tory Cabinet in various roles for most of their 14 years in power from 2010 to 2024 – and Jack – the Scottish secretary from 2019 to 2024 – both got seats in the House of Lords in Sunak’s resignation honours, .
The former prime minister’s full honours list was published on Friday afternoon, and also saw peerages for former transport secretary Mark Harper, former Tory whip Simon Hart, former Tory party chief executive Stephen Massey, former attorney general Victoria Prentis, and the former head of No 10’s policy unit Eleanor Shawcross.
The SNP’s depute leader at Westminster, Pete Wishart, said that honours for Jack and Gove were “one last slap in the face to the people of Scotland from Rishi Sunak”.
“While Alister Jack and Michael Gove settle into their cushy ‘jobs’ for life safe, unaccountable to voters, people across Scotland are still suffering the effects of fourteen years of Tory rule,” he went on.
Green co-leader Lorna Slater also took aim at the reported appointments, saying: “Michael Gove and Alister Jack both supported and implemented policies that did a huge amount of damage, from a Brexit that has cost jobs and hiked up prices to the hostile environment policies that punished refugees and a series of cuts that fell on people with the least.”
However, both Slater and Wishart said the peerages were only a smaller problem compared to the wider issue of the House of Lords as a whole.
The Labour Government had pledged to abolish the unelected upper chamber before coming to power, but are now only bringing in minor reforms, such as removing the 92 hereditary peers which Tony Blair’s Labour administration left in place.
Wishart said: “Sir Keir Starmer promised to scrap the Lords, but since winning power he has wasted no time signing up to the worst of Westminster ways, handing out a peerage to his former chief of staff Sue Gray and ushering in a host of Labour MPs who lost their seats at the election back into parliament via the unelected Lords.
“We are absolutely clear the House of Lords should be scrapped and that Scotland deserves better than Westminster ‘democracy’ that's rigged with cronyism and elitism – it's no wonder so many Scots are asking how and when we can leave it.
"While Labour Party and Tory MPs answer to an undemocratic, broken Westminster system, SNP MPs answer to the people of Scotland."
Slater said that the Lords’ “very existence is an affront to democracy”.
“It has no legitimacy whatsoever and is already stuffed full of donors, cronies and former politicians,” she went on.
“The problem is much bigger than any individual. It is the system that has allowed unelected peers to have so much influence for so long. It is ridiculous for us to be ruled by people that we have no way to remove.
“One of the many advantages of independence would be the chance to finally abolish the undemocratic House of Lords."
