Keir Starmer could add almost 20 new Labour peers to the House of Lords when he quits No10 later this month, despite criticising past Prime Ministers for handing out peerages when the leave power.

Sir Keir is reported to be planning to put forward 19 party names for a resignation honours list, meaning he will have added 135 peers to the upper chamber in less than two years. 

It will raise the possibility that controversial aides like Morgan McSweeney could be handed a place at the heart of Westminster lawmaking.

The list will also prove controversial because of the number of seats handed to other parties, with the Lib Dems getting more than the Tories and Reform getting none.

In 2023, Sir Keir criticised Rishi Sunak for allowing Boris Johnson to have a resignation honours list after the Partygate scandal and said he would not do the same.

'Tony Blair didn't have a resignation list. It's very hard to justify,' he told the BBC.

'There are other avenues for that and I think it's easier to be clean about this and simply say, no, I wouldn't do it.'

But after Sir Keir announced he was quitting last month, No10 refused to discuss whether there would be a resignation honours list. 

Asked why Keir Starmer - who previously vowed to abolish the House of Lords - was creating 19 new peers, the PM's official spokesman refused to comment on 'speculation' first reported by the Times.

But Downing Street pointed to Sir Keir's removal of hereditary peers from the Lords as 'one of the biggest reforms to Parliament in a generation' and said the Government was also 'exploring further reform' of the upper House.

Labour's manifesto vowed to replace the Lords with 'an alternative second chamber that is more representative of the regions and nations'.

Pressed on whether Sir Keir still believed the Lords should be scrapped, his spokesman added: 'It's normal practice for prime ministers to recommend individuals for peerages.'

Asked whether Sir Keir would bring forward a resignation honours list when he formally quits as PM - despite having once said he wouldn't do so - his spokesman pointed to the premier's words on Wednesday at the NATO summit, in which he said he would 'look at that in the usual course of things'.

A Tory source accused Labour of gerrymandering, adding: “It is yet another example of Labour’s disregard for constitutional convention for their own political ends.'

But Labour hit back saying that the allocation of peerages reflected the fact that when the last 92 hereditary peers were removed from the Lords earlier this year, some 15 of them became Tory life peers, more than for other parties.