\n<\/p>\n
The Conservative peer Peter Gummer has said he will leave the House of Lords after an investigation found he committed five breaches of standards over Covid PPE deals and failing to cooperate with previous inquiries.<\/p>\n
The Lords standards commissioner, Martin Jelley, found that Gummer, whose peerage title is Lord Chadlington, committed three breaches of the code governing peers\u2019 conduct by: introducing a company in which he had a financial interest to the government in April 2020 as a potential supplier of personal protective equipment (PPE) for the NHS; having contact with the then health secretary, Matt Hancock; and giving further advice to the company.<\/p>\n
The breaches were specifically of the rule that peers \u201cmust not seek to profit from membership of the house by accepting or agreeing to accept payment or other incentive or reward in return for providing parliamentary advice or services\u201d.<\/p>\n
Jelley also found that Chadlington committed two breaches of standards, including that he \u201cdid not act on his personal honour\u201d, by failing to cooperate with two previous investigations, which cleared him.<\/p>\n
A 12-month suspension, which was upheld by the conduct committee after Chadlington appealed, is at the upper end of penalties for peers\u2019 misconduct. Chadlington said in response that he would retire from the House of Lords and quit the Conservative party.<\/p>\n
In April 2020, Chadlington introduced a company in which he had a financial interest to the government as a potential supplier of PPE. The company, SG Recruitment, a small, loss-making agency, was awarded \u00a350m in PPE contracts within weeks, processed by the then Conservative government\u2019s \u201cVIP lane\u201d for politically connected people.<\/p>\n
Despite the government contracts, however, SG Recruitment, which was later renamed, went into liquidation in December 2023 owing \u00a31.1m in taxes to HMRC. It then emerged that the Department of Health and Social Care had entirely rejected the PPE supplied under the first contract as \u201cunusable\u201d. It had paid the company \u00a324m.<\/p>\n
Chadlington, an influential Tory grandee and party donor who is a close friend of David Cameron, headed a multinational public relations conglomerate during his professional career, and previously advised John Major.<\/p>\n
The findings are the outcome of the third investigation by the House of Lords commissioner for standards into Chadlington\u2019s involvement in introducing SG Recruitment to the government. Jelley launched the investigation last March after complaints were made about Chadlington\u2019s conduct by the Covid Bereaved Families for Justice (CBFFJ) group.<\/p>\n
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<\/span>Show more<\/p>\n Chadlington was cleared by previous standards investigations in 2022 and 2023, which followed reporting in the Guardian and complaints by the Labour peer George Foulkes. The then Lords standards commissioner, Akbar Khan, determined the second time that it was \u201cregrettable\u201d that Chadlington had not provided fuller information to the first inquiry.<\/p>\n The peer told Khan in a written response to the second investigation in August 2023 that he did not \u201cfacilitate an introduction\u201d of SG Recruitment\u2019s majority owner, David Sumner, to the Conservative peer Andrew Feldman, who was advising the DHSC on PPE procurement.<\/p>\n The CBFFJ complained to the commissioner after the SG Recruitment contracts were considered by the Covid inquiry as part of its session on Boris Johnson\u2019s government\u2019s procurement of PPE during the pandemic. Chadlington\u2019s text messages and emails, which were published by the inquiry, showed he requested help from Cameron with advice on approaching the government. <\/strong>Cameron gave him the phone number of Feldman, a close friend of the former prime minister.<\/p>\n Chadlington then sent an email, which was published by the Covid inquiry and disclosed previously to the Guardian, to Sumner introducing him to \u201cmy friend Andrew Feldman. He can help you with PPE we discussed this morning. Drop me off chain. Peter.\u201d<\/p>\n Chadlington did not tell either of the two Lords commissioner investigations that he had sent that email. In his appeal to the third investigation, Chadlington said he did not find that email until he commissioned \u201cforensic electronic searches\u201d of his devices for the Covid inquiry. The Lords conduct committee, rejecting his appeal, said: \u201cAny reasonably diligent search would have uncovered the email.\u201d<\/p>\n One week after Chadlington sent that email, the DHSC awarded SG Recruitment a \u00a324m contract to supply coveralls. A month later, SG Recruitment was awarded a second contract, for \u00a326.1m, to supply hand sanitiser.<\/p>\n Chadlington was the chair, a paid director and a shareholder in SG Recruitment\u2019s parent company, Sumner Group Holdings (SGH), registered in Jersey.<\/p>\n The third standards investigation considered again whether Chadlington broke the Lords conduct rule prohibiting peers from seeking to profit from their membership of the house. It also found that when Chadlington failed to cooperate with the previous inquiries, he breached paragraph 9 of the Lords code of conduct, that: \u201cMembers of the house \u2026 should act always on their personal honour in the performance of their parliamentary duties and activities.\u201d<\/p>\n In a response issued by his lawyers, Chadlington said: \u201cI wholly reject the findings of this appeal and of the commissioner.\u201d<\/p>\n He added: \u201cAlthough the committee have acknowledged that I did not act dishonestly, it is important that I make clear that I never profited from an introduction, properly made with honourable intent, at a time of unprecedented national crisis.<\/p>\n \u201cAny errors that I did make were honest. I have apologised for them and I do so again today. For more than three years, since reaching 80, I have discussed retiring with house officials but did not wish to do so while these investigations were ongoing.<\/p>\n \u201cI have now decided, having proudly served as a peer for 30 years, that the time is right for me to retire and resign my membership of the Conservative party.\u201d<\/p>\n Lord Foulkes said: \u201cI welcome this decision. It is unfortunate that Lord Chadlington failed to cooperate with the previous commissioner\u2019s investigations and therefore this has dragged on for so long before the truth has come out.\u201d<\/p>\n In a statement, the CBFFJ said: \u201cWe welcome this decision. It vindicates the complaint brought by bereaved families and shows that those who abused their position during the pandemic can be held to account.<\/p>\n \u201cThis matters deeply to families, who always pushed very hard for the then government\u2019s multi-billion pound contracts and \u201cVIP lane\u201d to be properly examined by the Covid inquiry.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Conservative peer Peter Gummer has said he will leave the House of Lords after an investigation found he committed five breaches of standards over Covid PPE deals and failing to cooperate with previous inquiries. The Lords standards commissioner, Martin Jelley, found that Gummer, whose peerage title is Lord Chadlington, committed three breaches of the<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":46096,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[5383,5333,3568,189,1037,2957,12835,150,3859,15189,13008,2268],"class_list":{"0":"post-46095","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-health","8":"tag-breached","9":"tag-covid","10":"tag-deals","11":"tag-finds","12":"tag-investigation","13":"tag-leave","14":"tag-lords","15":"tag-news","16":"tag-peer","17":"tag-ppe","18":"tag-standards","19":"tag-tory"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46095","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=46095"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46095\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/46096"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=46095"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=46095"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=46095"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}