Sunak lags behind predecessors over peerages for women

Rishi Sunak has the worst record on appointing women from his party to the Lords of any prime minister since John Major, with female Tory peers making up only 17% of those recommended by him, a report has found.

- Rowena Mason

The analysis, from the campaign group Unlock Democracy, found that just four women were appointed out of 23 new Conservative peers created during Sunak's time in office.

Sunak has been responsible for putting forward lists of peerages suggested by his predecessors Liz Truss and Boris Johnson when they resigned. However, he has also made a number of ad hoc appointments of peers of his own and only two out of 13 or 15% are women.

Sunak's female appointment rates to the House of Lords can be compared with 37.5% of Tory peers appointed under Truss, 20.9% under Johnson, 46.2% under Theresa May, and 30% under David Cameron.

Under Labour, 18% of party peer appointments under Gordon Brown were women but he also had a Labour list of resignation peerages of which half were women, while about 24% of Labour peer appointments under Tony Blair were women.

Of the 796 members of the House of Lords 233 are women - or 29%making it even less gender balanced than the House of Commons, where 226 out of 650 MPs are women (35%).