LONDON (TIP) : A London-based professional who chairs the Labor Party’s diaspora group, Labor Indians, was on Friday, December 20 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 organization working towards fostering inter-faith relations.
He is now expected to join the Labor 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 Labor 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 Labor Party has nominated 30 peers in what is seen as an attempt to balance the numbers in the Lords, where the Tories have the greatest 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 Labor 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 with 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 councilor Shaffaq Mohammed on their list. According to reports, former prime minister Rishi Sunak’s nominations for the House of Lords are expected later.