Yet another bought seat in the HoL !!!

Tony Bliar did it during his premiership, much against many people's wishes and complaints, now that scumbag Boris has been proved to have done the same !!!


Disgraced Tory who Boris Johnson gave House of Lords seat against official advice donates £500k to party
Watchdog objected to Peter Cruddas appointmnet due to role in previous cash-for-access scandal

Jon Stone
Policy Correspondent
@joncstone
25 minutes ago
commentsA scandal-hit banker gifted the Tories half a million pounds after Boris Johnson gave him a seat in the House of Lords against official advice, it has emerged.

Three days after he was introduced in the Lords as a Tory peer Peter Cruddas handed £500,000 to Conservative central office, according to newly released Electoral Commission records.

Lord Cruddas, a former Tory treasurer, had been subject to objections from the Lords sleaze watchdog because of his role in a previous cash-for-access scandal.

In 2012 had stepped down from the role after the Sunday Times alleged that he had offered undercover reporters access to then prime minister David Cameron in exchange for £250,000 donations.

While he successfully sued the newspaper for libel, an appeal court found that the central allegations around "cash-for-access" was supported by the facts. Judges described the former Treasurer's actions as "unacceptable, inappropriate and wrong".
Lord Cruddas, a financier who was once named the richest man in the City of London, was estimated last year to be worth £860 million and had previously given more than £3.5million to the party.

Labour's party chair Anneliese Dodds said: "The Conservative Party that brought us allegations of cash for access when Peter Cruddas was Treasurer seems to have turned its attention to peerages.

"Whether it’s handing out taxpayers’ money to their mates or giving peerages to disgraced donors, there is always one rule for the Conservatives and their chums and another for the rest of us."

House of Lords Appointments Commission said in December last year that it was unable to support Mr Johnson's appointment of the financier.

Despite a letter from the Commission, the prime minister said the concerns about the former Tory official and banker were "historic", assuming the committee: "that I see this case a clear and rare exception".


It represented the first time the Commission's advice had not been followed by a PM.

Mr Johnson wrote: "The most serious accusations levelled at the time were found to be untrue and libellous. In order to avoid any ongoing concern, Mr Cruddas resigned from his post, and offered an apology for any impression of impropriety, and reflecting his particular concern for integrity in public life.

"An internal Conservative Party investigation subsequently found that there had been no intentional wrongdoing on Mr Cruddas' part."

 

Hmmmm - He might not get to warm his bum on a seat in the HoL if the Good Law Project have their way !!!


Good Law Project


Peter – or Baron, as for now we must call him – Cruddas was once a Treasurer of the Conservative Party.

In March 2012 the Sunday Times published a rather mean piece about him which included the claim that (as the Court put it) “in return for cash donations to the Conservative Party, [he] corruptly offered for sale the opportunity to influence government policy and gain unfair advantage through secret meetings with the Prime Minister and other senior ministers.”

He sued the Sunday Times for defamation and, to be fair to him, he won but the Court of Appeal also said the claim above was substantially true. As a candidate for a great honour you would think he was, well, you would think he was an odd one.

On the other hand, he is Very Rich. And he has given quite a lot of money to the Conservative Party: over £3m. He gave a quarter of a million quid to them on 10 January 2020 and a few weeks later it emerged he’d been nominated as a Baron by Boris Johnson.

He was crowned, or whatever happens to them, ‘Baron’ Cruddas on 2 February 2021 and a few days later, on 5 February 2021, he gave the Tories another half a million. We’re not saying any of this was pre-arranged – there’s no evidence of that and buying and selling peerages is a crime – but the timing of it all is, well, it is odd.

Given his past record, the House of Lords Appointments Commission thought he wasn’t the kind of man we should be giving a peerage to. And it advised Boris Johnson not to make him a Baron. But Boris did anyway – making history by ignoring the Appointments Commission for the first time ever.

We don’t only think it is odd. We also think it is unlawful. We think a fair-minded and informed observer, presented with the facts of the matter, would conclude that there was a real possibility or danger of bias in the Defendant’s decision making. We also think that the Prime Minister took legally irrelevant considerations – past donations and the prospect of future donations – into account in making him a Baron.

And so we’re suing. We’ve instructed Bindmans LLP, Dan Squires QC and Alice Irving. You can read our letter here.

Make no mistake, we intend to issue proceedings. But this time, we’re not setting up a crowdfunder. What we’d really like you to do instead is (1) sign our petition calling for him to be stripped of his peerage and (2) share this update with your friends and family.

 

When have you ever known opposition MP.s NOT squabble over seats in the upper house.

My friend got his seat without donating a single penny to either government party.

 

Oh so whose arse is he now licking ???

 

Sadly, he died in 2014 aged 90, having never been the same person since his daughter and another family was so tragically killed in that tsunami a decade earlier.

In he 48 years that I knew and worked with him, he was the most honest and straightforward person who I have ever known. The thought of him being influenced or using influence to obtain his goals is just laughable.

Is their anyone in life who you think is decent or honest who has achieved anything by talent and hard work.

 

Yes there are many people, even in political life, people who, like me are Republican and want to see the entire House of Lords and the aristocracy abolished once and for all !!!