Sadiq Khan and Swaran Singh set for House of Lords before Starmer exit

London,UPDATED: Jul 17, 2026 16:16 IST

Indian-origin academic Swaran Singh and London Mayor Sadiq Khan are among 26 people set to enter the House of Lords ahead of Keir Starmer's departure as British prime minister next week. Starmer, who announced last month that he would step down as Labour Party leader, will meet King Charles III on Monday to formalise his resignation and make way for Andy Burnham to take charge as the new prime minister.

Political peerages are usually conferred by the monarch as part of a resignation honours process when a prime minister leaves office. However, Downing Street said this cross-party list of nominations had already been in the works before Starmer made his resignation speech last month.

Singh, a Professor of Social and Community Psychiatry at the University of Warwick, a consultant psychiatrist with the Coventry and Warwickshire Partnership NHS Trust, and a former Equality and Human Rights Commissioner, is among three nominations from the Opposition Conservatives. Now in his 60s, he led the independent investigation into discrimination, including Islamophobia, within the Conservative Party, known as 'The Singh Investigation'.

According to his University of Warwick profile, Singh first trained as a surgeon in New Delhi before moving into psychiatry after seeing the impact of violent trauma on children and young people. He moved to the UK in 1991, carried out research on ethnic influences in mental health as a lecturer, and later joined the University of Warwick, where he is Director of the interdisciplinary Centre for Mental Health and Wellbeing Research.

Khan, who received a knighthood from King Charles in June last year and became Sir Sadiq, will now become Lord Sadiq Khan as a Labour peer in the House of Lords. The 55-year-old London-born politician of Pakistani heritage has been Mayor of London since 2016 and was earlier the Labour MP for Tooting in south London. He is among Starmer's 16 nominations for peerages, alongside South Asian heritage human rights expert Parvais Jabbar, co-founder of the Death Penalty Project.

The Liberal Democrats will also have five new peers in the House of Lords. Once a political party's nominee clears the vetting process, appointments to Parliament's upper chamber are made by the King on the advice of the prime minister and are then "graciously conferred" by the monarch.

In all, the latest list includes nominees from across parties, with Singh and Khan among the prominent names set to join the Lords as Starmer prepares to leave office.

With PTI Inputs

- Ends