Alok Sharma, the former Indian-origin Conservative Party MP who decided not to seek re-election in this week’s general election, will now take his seat in the House of Lords after being granted a peerage by King Charles III.
The 56-year-old Agra-born MP, who was knighted as Sir Alok in last year’s King’s New Year Honours list for his contribution to tackling climate change through his leadership as president of the COP26 climate summit two years ago, has now become Lord Sharma.
Sharma was among the seven nominations made by outgoing Prime Minister Rishi Sunak for his traditional “dissolution peerage”, under which former Prime Minister Theresa May also became a peer in the upper house of the UK Parliament.
Sharma said in a post on X on Friday that he was “very pleased to be appointed to the House of Lords but very sad to see many good Conservative candidates lose, including in Reading West and Mid Berkshire” after his party’s general election results were poor.
His former constituency was won by Labour’s Olivia Bailey, whom Sharma said was a “decent person who I think will serve the area passionately.” Sharma’s Reading West constituency, like many other constituencies across the UK, had undergone boundary changes and now becomes Reading West & Mid Berkshire.
Announcing his decision not to contest the next general election in September last year, Sharma said: “This was not an easy decision for me. It has been the honour of my life to serve as an MP for a constituency in the city I grew up in and a privilege to serve in government and represent the UK on the international stage.”
He added: “I will continue to support my Conservative colleagues and serve the people of my constituency throughout the remainder of my term as an MP, while championing the issues I care deeply about in Parliament, particularly climate action.”
Sharma was selected as a parliamentary candidate in 2006 and has served as a Tory MP since 2010. In her role as a Cabinet minister since then, she was appointed Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy and International Development, until she was given a Cabinet-level role as COP26 president by former PM Boris Johnson in January 2021.
During Rishi Sunak’s tenure as Prime Minister, he sat on the back benches in the House of Commons and often expressed his concerns about the government’s delays in some of the targets towards meeting the country’s climate action net-zero pledge by 2050.
“Cuts and changes in policy create uncertainty for businesses and the public. Ultimately this makes it more difficult to attract investment and increases costs for consumers,” he said.
Sharma was among a number of high-profile Tory allies including former Defence Secretary Ben Wallace who decided not to stand for re-election in the 2024 elections.
(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
