Blair's Labour peers spark new cronyism row

Prime Minister Tony Blair risked a fresh cronyism row today after he created 16 new Labour peers to make his party the biggest group in the House of Lords.

Blair announced a total of 27 barons and baronesses, with just six Tories and five Liberal Democrats. The changes mean that Labour is for the first time in history the biggest party in the Lords.

New working peers include a string of former ministers and MPs who stepped aside at the last minute to allow other Downing Street-favoured candidates be parachuted into Parliament.

The Labour peers include former Cabinet enforcer Jack Cunningham, former education secretary Estelle Morris and former chief whip Ann Taylor.

Veteran backbencher Irene Adams and former culture secretary Chris Smith are included.

For the Tories, former education secretary Gillian Shephard, former health secretary Virginia Bottomley and former party chairman Brian Mawhinney have been elevated to the upper house, as has Alastair Goodlad, the outgoing high commissioner to Australia and John Major's former chief whip.

Liberal Democrat peers include Jenny Tonge, the former Richmond Park MP, and Nigel Jones, the MP for Cheltenham who was injured in a horrific sword attack.

Attention will centre on the Labour list as it appears party whips used offers of peerages to persuade older backbenchers to quit just before the election to make way for younger Blairites.

Among the peers is Dennis Turner, who stepped down as MP for Wolverhampton South East, where Pat McFadden, a Downing Street adviser, was installed as candidate.

Former MP for Kirkcaldy Lewis Moonie, whose seat disappeared in Scottish boundary changes, made way for Gordon Brown, who is standing for the new constituency of Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath.

Also ennobled is Alan Howarth, former Stratford-on-Avon Tory MP who defected to Labour in 1995. By tradition, dissolution honours go to retiring MPs.

There are peerages for Clive Soley and Jean Corston, both former chairmen of the Parliamentary Labour Party and loyal to Blair; Derek Foster, a former Labour chief whip; Donald Anderson and Martin O'Neill, former chairmen of Commons committees on foreign affairs and defence, and former sports minister Tony Banks.

George Foulkes is another former Scottish Labour MP displaced by boundary changes to get a peerage.

The two other Tory peerages go to former attorney general Sir Nicholas Lyell and Sir Archie Hamilton, previously chairman of the 1922 Committee of backbench Tory MPs.