LABOUR strategists were breathing a sigh of relief this week after David Lock's name was excluded from the new list of working peers.

It was nothing personal - but they had feared the consequences of Tony Blair handing the former minister in the now defunct Lord Chancellor's department a seat in the Lords just a month before the local and European elections.

The former Wyre Forest MP had been considered a near certainty by political commentators for a seat in the Upper House.

But he was not among the 46 new Peers - 23 of them Labour - named by Downing Street last weekend.

A Labour party insider said: "People with connections to Wyre Forest say it would have smacked of arrogance."

Or, to put it another way, the people of Wyre Forest boot Mr Lock out at the 2001 General Election in protest at the downgrading of Kidderminster Hospital.

The Government sticks up two fingers by sending him back to Westminster at just about the first possible opportunity.

Sources point out that it would also have reminded voters - whose memories of the health rumpus which surrounded Mr Lock's downfall are starting to fade - of why they turned against Labour in the first place.

And, for old time's sake, they may have been inclined to give the party another whack to the nose at the Thursday, June 10, polls.

This is something Labour, already facing a tough election campaign, can ill-afford. Hence the sighs of relief.

The list did still feature some potential for controversy - with Labour donor Paul Drayson, the subject of a mini-scandal when his firm, Powderject, was awarded a contract to produce smallpox vaccine for the Government, named.

Mr Drayson, who has now sold Powderject, stressed his Peerage was unconnected to his donation.

Also included were former Labour general secretary Margaret McDonagh, Tory Sir Stanley Kalms, president of the Dixons chain of stores, and for the Lib Dem's former BT chairman Sir Iain Vallance.

A Labour spokesman said the party's new peers had experience in a wide range of fields.

They would help ensure "Labour's agenda is delivered, despite the best efforts of the Tories, who even after this list remain the largest party in the House of Lords as they have been for the last 100 years and more", he added.