Sue Gray, the “partygate” investigator who went on to become Sir Keir Starmer’s chief of staff, will take her seat in the Lords on Tuesday four months after leaving the heart of Government.
Ms Gray was set to take up a newly created role as “envoy to the nations and regions” after a break from Government but Number 10 announced a month after her departure that she had decided not to take up the job.
The former senior civil servant was among 30 new Labour peers who were announced last December by Downing Street as it seeks to rebalance Parliament’s unelected second chamber.
Civil service impartiality was later thrown into question amid Tory criticism of her move to quit the Cabinet Office after decades in Whitehall and join Labour as Sir Keir’s chief of staff.
Ms Gray went from an influential but little-known arbiter of conduct in Government to a household name when she took on the probe into Covid rule-breaking at Boris Johnson’s Number 10 in 2021.
