Iceland executive chair Richard Walker is poised to become a Labour peer, according to reports.
Labour sources confirmed to BBC that Walker will be nominated when the government appoints a new wave of peers later this month, saying he has been “a committed champion of families dealing with the cost of living” and “will be a strong voice in Parliament”.
Walker, 45, took over leadership of the frozen food chain from his father, Malcolm Walker, in 2023. Both men have previously backed the Conservatives, with Walker donating nearly £10,000 to the party in 2020 and being placed on its approved parliamentary candidates list two years later.
However, he fell out with the party in 2023, publicly criticising the government’s approach to the economy and climate change and saying it had “drifted badly out of touch with business and the economy, and with the everyday needs of the British people”. He later endorsed Keir Starmer.
Walker has since been seen at Labour’s 2024 manifesto launch and has pressed for policies including closer EU relations and a more optimistic economic narrative.
Earlier this week, he publicly backed the government’s budget measures affecting the retail sector, arguing they represented a long-overdue recognition of the pressures on the high street.
“The chancellor’s move on business rates is overdue recognition that you can’t keep weighing down bricks and mortar and then wonder why towns feel hollowed out,” he wrote on LinkedIn. “It won’t solve everything, but it’s a move to levelling the playing field with the big online retailers and gives businesses like ours more room to do what matters most: serve our communities.”
His appointment would give Labour a rare business-sector advocate in the Lords at a time when the party is seeking to strengthen its representation in the upper house, where it is still outnumbered by the Conservatives despite its Commons majority.
Walker was awarded an OBE in 2022 for services to business and the environment.