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Major appoints 11 working peers

Stephen Goodwin
Saturday 18 November 1995 00:02 GMT
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STEPHEN GOODWIN

The numbers on the red leather benches of the House of Lords were swelled by another 11 yesterday when Downing Street announced a new batch of working peers - five Tories, four Labour and two Liberal Democrats.

John Major's appointment of just five Tories caused some surprise at Westminster and speculation that a nominee might have been vetoed by the Political Honours Scrutiny Committee.

It had been expected by Labour and Liberal Democrat business managers that six Conservatives would be ennobled, boosting the party's natural domination of the Upper House.

Working peers are intended to bring new vitality and their appointment, for whatever party, is an exercise of patronage by the Prime Minister.

The names have to be vetted by the all-party scrutiny committee which has to be satisfied there is no suggestion the honour has been bought or the nominee has a murky past. Names have been rejected, although this is rare.

The Prime Minister's office insisted yesterday that it was always intended the list would contain five Tories.

The list brings a long-predicted peerage for Sir Basil Feldman, 69-year- old chairman of the National Union of the Conservative Party - the voluntary wing of the party - and a loyal Tory office holder for decades.

He is joined by Sir Philip Harris, 53, chairman of Carpetright and a valuable Tory fund-raiser as deputy chairman of the party treasurers, and Sir Peter Bowness, 52, leader of the Conservatives on Croydon council. Less obviously political appointments to the Tory side are Lady Judith Wilcox, chairman of the National Consumer Council and the Citizen's Charter Complaints Task Force, and Canon Peter Pilkington, 62, chairman of the Broadcasting Complaints Commission.

Labour's new peers are Sir Gordon Borrie QC, 64, the former director general of fair trading; Helene Hayman, 46, former MP for Welwyn and Hatfield and now chairman of the Whittington Hospital NHS Trust; Professor John Sewel, 49, Vice Principal of Aberdeen University; and Professor Robert Winston, 55, a pioneer of infertility treatment.

Sir Gordon, deputy chairman of Newspaper Publishing which produces the Independent, chaired the Labour-sponsored Commission on Social Justice.

The Liberal Democrats are William Wallace, 54, reader in international relations at the London School of Economics and a long-serving party strategist and speech writer, and Tom McNally, 52, a special adviser to Paddy Ashdown.

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