By Al Jazeera Staff

This article was published on 16 Jul 202616 Jul 2026.

The House of Lords is the upper chamber of the UK Parliament, composed of appointed members who review and amend legislation.

Sadiq Khan and 25 other individuals have been granted life peerages, allowing them to take seats in the House of Lords and participate in reviewing, amending, and voting on UK legislation.

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer has named the mayor of London as one of 26 people to be given seats in the House of Lords, in one of his final acts as prime minister.

In a release published on Thursday, the UK government announced Khan’s appointment to the House of Lords alongside senior figures from politics, philanthropy, social action, the military and business.

Sadiq Khan, a former Labour MP for Tooting, is halfway through his third term as London mayor, having first been elected in 2016.

Khan’s appointment to the House of Lords is among the final decisions taken by Starmer before Andy Burnham is expected to succeed him as Labour leader on Friday and as UK prime minister on Monday, July 20.

Other nominations

It is customary for outgoing prime ministers to nominate individuals for political peerages, granting them lifetime seats in the House of Lords.

Of the 26 nominees, just 16 were nominated by Labour, five by the Liberal Democrats, three by the Conservatives and two are crossbench peers, meaning they have no party affiliation.

Among Labour’s nominees are Parvais Jabbar and Saul Lehrfreund, human rights campaigners who cofounded the Death Penalty Project, and Cathy Ashley, a families’ rights campaigner and former head of the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust.

Former Chief of the General Staff of the British Army General Sir Patrick Sanders was among those nominated by the Conservatives.

Economist Tim Leunig, chief economist at the British social innovation foundation Nesta, was nominated by the Liberal Democrats.

One of the two crossbench peers nominated was former senior judge Sir Brian Leveson, who led the 2011 Leveson Inquiry into the conduct of the British press following the phone-hacking scandal.

Starmer did not award any nominations to right-wing Reform UK, which now has seven MPs in the House of Commons following Nigel Farage’s resignation earlier this month. Farage, who remains the party’s leader, said: “Once again, there is nothing for Reform and we get an even more unrepresentative upper house.”

Before the latest appointments, the Conservatives held 246 seats in the House of Lords, compared with Labour’s 216, leaving the opposition with a numerical advantage in the upper chamber.

The appointment of Sadiq Khan to the House of Lords is among the last decisions of Keir Starmer's premiership, following a tradition of outgoing prime ministers nominating peers. The new peers include figures from diverse fields, reflecting the breadth of contributions recognized. Khan's continued role as London mayor while serving as a life peer is notable but not unprecedented.