Critics say perception that peerages may be a reward for donations harms upper house’s reputation – especially when peers do little to participate
When Theresa May appointed the businessman Rami Ranger to the House of Lords in her 2019 prime ministerial resignation honours list, he described his peerage as “the fulfilment of another lifelong dream”.
Ranger came to Britain from India in 1971 and built up a marketing and distribution company, Sun Mark. Having made his fortune, he became interested in joining the House of Lords.
He applied twice for a non-political peerage, in 2007 and 2010, but the House of Lords appointments commission (Holac), which recommends a small number of distinguished experts each year to be crossbench peers, turned him down. After that, Ranger became a major donor to the Conservative party, and he had given approximately £1.4m by the time May awarded him a seat.
But in his five years as a peer, Ranger’s contribution to the core Lords work – scrutinising, debating and improving legislation that comes from the Commons – has been minimal. He has spoken only five times, asked no written questions and sat on no committees. The average peer speaks 188 times per parliament, Guardian analysis found.
Ranger has also been officially censured over his conduct: in January 2023 he apologised for derogatory comments about Pakistanis, then five months later the Lords commissioner for standards judged he had bullied and humiliated a journalist. He was stripped of his CBE and lost the Conservative whip for a year.
Ranger and three other major Conservative party donors – Michael Spencer, Anthony Bamford and Peter Cruddas – were named and criticised by the Labour peer George Foulkes in a 2021 Lords speech for their level of participation in the house. Foulkes described peerages that Conservative prime ministers had awarded to party donors as “cash for honours”, which he condemned as “scandalous”.
“Many of those ennobled, including the noble lords Lord Spencer, Lord Bamford, Lord Cruddas and Lord Ranger, have hardly spoken or asked a question since their appointment. They bring this house into disrepute,” he said.
Ranger said in response to questions from the Guardian that he had not “bought his peerage”. He pointed to his success in business and said he had raised “the profile of Indians and India in Britain” and been involved in many Conservative party and community activities.
“I raised thousands of pounds for the party apart from being a significant donor to the party myself,” he said. “I enjoy massive standing amongst Tory leaders because of my work for the party.”
The “cash for honours” allegation is serious in British politics, and it has been a perennial concern about peerages, which endow lifelong participation in lawmaking. Selling honours has been a criminal offence for a century, since a law was passed in 1925 after a corruption scandal involving the Liberal prime minister David Lloyd George. But apart from Lloyd George’s historic fixer, nobody has ever been prosecuted.
The Crown Prosecution Service has interpreted the law narrowly, issuing guidance that granting honours – including peerages – as a reward for donations is not an offence. The criminal law only applies if there is “an unambiguous agreement” to award an honour in return for a gift.
The CPS gave that explanation in 2007 when announcing there would be no charges after a 16-month Metropolitan police investigation into a Labour peerages scandal dating from the last time the party was in government. After the 2005 general election, Tony Blair had nominated for seats in the Lords four supporters who had advanced loans to the party.
All three main political parties have for decades awarded peerages to financial backers, some of whom have not then greatly participated in the work of the Lords. After the Conservative party returned to government in 2010, many more substantial Tory donors were given peerages than those of Labour or the Liberal Democrats. Party leaders have never before had to explain why a person has been nominated, but under a change the government introduced in December, they will in future have to provide a 150-word summary of their reasons.
The Conservative peer Philip Norton, an authority on the constitution, has put forward a bill in the Lords to reform the appointments system so that peerages are awarded to people of “conspicuous merit” who have “a willingness and capacity to contribute to the work of the house”.
The bill proposes that Holac would advise prime ministers on whether their nominations fulfil those criteria – although a prime minister could still ignore the advice. Lord Norton told the Guardian that the perception that peerages may have been a reward for donations damaged the reputation of the Lords, particularly if such peers did not substantially participate.
“It prompts the idea that if you are going to reward people who are major donors to a party, don’t do it with a peerage,” Norton said. “There may be other ways of giving them some bauble rather than putting them in the Lords.”
Boris Johnson ignited one of the greatest modern Lords controversies in 2020 when he nominated Cruddas, a £3m-plus Tory donor and former party treasurer who had also given £50,000 to Johnson’s leadership campaign. Holac, which vets nominees for “propriety” concerns, advised against appointing Cruddas, and Johnson became the first prime minister to override the commission.
Johnson himself confirmed that Holac’s reason was reporting by the Sunday Times after an undercover sting in 2012. Cruddas sued for libel and the courts upheld parts of his claim and awarded damages. But the court of appeal found in favour of the newspaper on one of the allegations, that as Tory party treasurer Cruddas had “offered for sale” the opportunity to influence government policy through “secret meetings” with ministers.
Johnson explained in a letter to Paul Bew, Holac’s then chair, that he saw Cruddas’s case as “a clear and rare exception” and expected him to make a “hugely valuable contribution to the work of the house”.
During his four years in the Lords, Cruddas’s contribution has not been huge: he has spoken in only two debates, served on committees in 2021 and 2022, and asked 13 written questions.
Cruddas responded to a request for comment by saying his peerage was not due to financial support for the Tory party or Johnson but because he backed Brexit. He was a director and treasurer of the Vote Leave campaign and donated more than £1.4m, he said.
“When Boris became PM he asked me to be a member of the House of Lords to support his government to get Brexit done following his election victory,” he said.
Cruddas, a City billionaire who had a disadvantaged upbringing, said Johnson also asked him “to support British business entrepreneurs from the Lords”. He defended his level of participation, pointing to regular voting and attendance, which he said showed “active involvement”
Johnson also gave a peerage in 2020 to Spencer, a City broking billionaire and former party treasurer, who has donated approximately £7.5m to the Tory party, personally and from his finance company, IPGL, and provided private plane travel for David Cameron and George Osborne in the mid-2000s. Spencer has not spoken in the Lords since his maiden speech. He has asked three written questions and not served on any committees.
Spencer told the Guardian: “It is true I do not speak in the House of Lords, due very much to the fact that I still work full-time on many businesses I am involved with that contribute to the success of the UK economy. When I do attend the house for voting and meeting other peers, which is on a regular basis, I never claim any attendance fees.”
Spencer said he was “extremely active” in politics more broadly, as chair of the Centre for Policy Studies, a rightwing thinktank, and the Conservative Party Foundation.
Bamford has donated approximately £10m to the Conservative party, personally and via the JCB companies he co-owns, and JCB provided helicopter and private plane travel for Cameron in 2010. In his decade of Lords membership, from after Cameron gave him a peerage in 2013 to his retirement last year, Bamford spoke five times altogether, asked no written questions and served on no committees. He did not respond to the Guardian’s invitation to comment.
Labour has since 2010 awarded a peerage to one £1m-plus donor, William Haughey, a Scottish refrigerator businessman who donated £1.4m before his 2013 nomination by Labour’s then leader, Ed Miliband. Haughey has spoken only four times in debates, the last time in January 2016. He has never submitted any written questions or served on any committees.
He told the Guardian that he was asked to become a peer by Miliband due to a campaign he had started, as a major employer in Scotland, on increasing the number of “meaningful” apprenticeships.
“I explained at the time of my acceptance that as I was still the CEO of a global company my attendance would be curtailed,” he said, adding that he had also been unable to participate for a period due to health reasons. “I am certain I was not asked to join the House of Lords because of any donations I may have made.”
The former Scottish National party MP Angus MacNeil has long campaigned against peerages for party donors, and made the original complaint to the police that prompted the investigation into the Labour party during its last period in government.
“I blew the whistle on cash for honours. It’s totally in plain sight – the coincidence that those who give a big lump of cash to a party get themselves in the Lords,” MacNeil said. Recognising that the century-old law was interpreted narrowly, so it was not an offence to reward donors with peerages, he argued: “The answer is to outlaw the practice.”
Cameron, May, Johnson, Miliband and Bamford did not respond to invitations to comment.
Additional reporting by Olivia Lee
