In June 2005 she was made a life peer as Baroness Tonge, of Kew in the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames,[2] which entitled her to a seat in the House of Lords.

[citation needed] Tonge was a councillor in the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames from 1981 to 1990, and served as chair of the Social Services Committee.

Blair replied that he supported a "diverse school system", and praised the teachers at Emmanuel College for their commitments to "deliver[ing] better results for our children".

[8] Tonge was concerned about Blair's response, because it implied the government was "prepared to accept money from anybody, regardless of the doctrine or religious beliefs of the donor".

[10] Yad Vashem museum chair Avner Shalev criticized Tonge and King for making the comparison with conditions under Nazi rule.

[12] Tonge refused to apologise, commenting "I was just trying to say how, having seen the violence and the humiliation and the provocation that the Palestinian people live under every day and have done since their land was occupied by Israel, I could understand".

[13][14] Kennedy said her comments were "completely unacceptable" and "not compatible with Liberal Democrat party policies and principles", adding "there can be no justification, under any circumstances for taking innocent lives through terrorism".

[19] In response, Liberal Democrat leader Sir Menzies Campbell wrote to Tonge, commenting that her unacceptable assertion had "clear anti-Semitic connotations".

[20][21] An all-party group of peers led by the former Archbishop of Canterbury, George Carey, said, in a letter to The Times, that "the language deployed by Baroness Tonge, as a member of the House of Lords, was irresponsible and inappropriate".

[21][23] In November 2008, Tonge visited the Gaza Strip again, this time with Lord Ahmed, Clare Short, and members of the European Parliament.

Will the Government, therefore, show leadership and call for the immediate—and I mean immediate—establishment by the United Nations Security Council of an independent fact-finding commission to Palestine to investigate all breaches of international law?

[25]In March 2009, Tonge joined a six-person delegation of British politicians which met with Hamas political leader Khaled Meshaal in Syria.

Tonge told an interviewer that their goal was to force the British government to talk to Hamas and press the United States to do likewise.

[28] On 1 February 2010, The Palestine Telegraph, of which Tonge was then a patron, published an article which made false claims[29][30][31][32][33] that an Israel Defence Forces emergency aid hospital in Haiti (deployed in the aftermath the 2010 Haiti earthquake) was secretly harvesting organs and selling them on the black market, based partly on a report made on Hezbollah's Al-Manar television which cited a YouTube video produced by a group called AfriSynergy Productions.

"[39] On 12 February 2010, Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg removed her from her position as health spokeswoman in the House of Lords calling the comments "wrong, distasteful and provocative".

In an email message sent to an anti-Israel activist, Tonge wrote that she had called for an inquiry to dispel any rumours and that the idea that organs could be being harvested in the situation which existed in Haiti was ludicrous and nonsense.

[35][40][41][42] In 2012, Tonge appeared at an Israeli Apartheid Week talk at Middlesex University on 23 February 2012,[43][better source needed] during which she said: "Beware Israel.

[1] In October 2018, Tonge faced calls to resign over a post she made on Facebook in the aftermath of the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting, in which she claimed that the Israeli government's actions towards Palestinians may have contributed to a rise in anti-Semitism.

[56] Tonge made a similar comment in January 2021 during a House of Lords debate concerning rising anti-Semitic incidents in universities, saying "The victims are innocent Jewish people—students, in this case.

In November 2015, she was made an Honorary Fellow of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists for services to women's health in the UK and in developing countries.