House of Lords Appointments Commission

Welcome to the Appointments Commission’s website

In May 2000 a historic change was made to the way in which non–party–political members of the House of Lords are appointed. The Appointments Commission was given the key role of recommending to Her Majesty The Queen the names of individuals we think should be appointed on merit.

We ask the public to self–nominate or to nominate others they think should be appointed to the House of Lords and the Commission assesses all the nominations against the published criteria.

Eight new non-party-political appointments, recommended by the Commission, were announced in 2007 (six on 15 February and two on 18 October).  They joined the seven announced on  3 May 2006 and those in 2005 ( two on 22 March and five on 22 July).  Seven were previously  announced on 1 May 2004 and the first fifteen appointees were  announced in April 2001.

This website also sets out information about:

• the Appointments Commission, including the Commission’s role, membership, code of practice and register of interests;
   
• the nomination process. You can read the updated information pack [114KB DOC] in its entirety or go straight to the introductory letter, the nominations process, the criteria the Commission will use in assessing nominations and the  nomination form [44KB DOC].

Please use the website feedback form to give us your comments on the work we do. And, of course, may I encourage you to think about nominating someone – it might be yourself - who you think meets our criteria?

Dennis Stevenson

Chairman of the Appointments Commission