Mike Katz will become Lord Mike Katz – pictured with Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer

A FORMER councillor is among dozens of Labour figures gifted seats in the House of Lords by Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer.

Mike Katz, who represented Kilburn until he was deselected by Labour members in the ward in 2014, will become Lord Katz after Mr Starmer released his first raft of peerages since reaching Downing Street.

The Prime Minister had previously suggested he wanted to scrap an unelected second chamber at parliament and Labour had criticised the Tories for their choice of appointments in opposition.

Luciana Berger during her time as Liberal Democrat parliamentary candidate, pictured with former Lib Dem councillor Matt Sanders

But he found room for 30 new peers, including Thangam Debbonaire, the former shadow culture secretary who lost her seat in Bristol to the Greens despite Labour’s landslide win in July, and Luciana Berger, a former council candidate in Camden and MP in Liverpool who is back in the party after previously joining the ill-fated Change UK party and then the Liberal Democrats.

Simon Pitkeathley, the head of the business interest group Camden Town Unlimited, which is working to bring the High Line project to Camden Town, was also made a life peer. His mother, Baroness Pitkeathley, is already in the chamber where she is the deputy speaker.

Business guru Simon Pitkeathley, who runs Camden Town Unlimited

Mr Katz said he was proud of the work the Jewish Labour Movement, which he chairs, had done to break down anti-semitism in the party and that he would be bringing “Labour values” to the red benches at Westminster.

New Tory opposition leader Kemi Badenoch nominated writer Toby Young – who ran a Covid sceptics website during the pandemic – to join them in the Lords. The “free speech” campaigner is an alumnus of William Ellis School in Highgate.