A peer nominated by Boris Johnson is set to be banned from House of Lords bars for a year for a foul-mouthed tirade against two women.
The House of Lords Conduct Committee recommended that Lord Kulveer Ranger also be suspended from the House for three weeks following an investigation into an incident in Parliament’s Strangers’ Bar on January 17.
The committee’s report said Lord Ranger had been “visibly drunk” and made “various inappropriate comments” to a group of people in Strangers’ Bar after 10pm.
He then returned to the same group and “acted aggressively, shouting and swearing”, calling some of them “f*****g useless” and “invading their personal space”.
One of the complainants, JK, told the Lords Standards Commissioner that it had been “clear immediately” that the peer was quite drunk because he was “sort of stumbling around and sort of falling a little bit”.
JK said the group had a conversation during which Lord Ranger asked if a publication was “a porn magazine”. JK said this was mainly directed at Witness 2. She said that Lord Ranger asked the female members of the group how old they were.
“He was physically intimidating, repeatedly jabbing his finger very closely towards myself and [LM]’s faces and roughly grabbed our parliamentary passes which were around our necks to read our names and places of work,” she added.
The second complainant (LM) recalled: “Lord Ranger came to speak to me and [JK]. Not having met him before, we asked him about his interests in the Lords and his work before he joined.
“Lord Ranger got cross, raised his voice, called us ‘f****** useless” and suggested we do some ‘f****** research’. He was clearly drunk and despite our attempts to de-escalate, he remained angry.”
JK explained further about the incident: “As he was getting quite angry, he then came very close to us and was pointing with his hand quite close to both our faces … I think [LM] asked him a question and he got quite close to her and I felt quite scared.
“So, I, in an attempt to diffuse the situation, sort of reached out, didn’t touch him at all, but kind of reached out to sort of create some distance because I felt like he was getting very close … and he was quite tall. It just felt quite intimidating.
“So, I kind of … reached out, didn’t quite touch his shoulder, but my hand was like maybe an inch from his shoulder … there wasn’t the space to go because he was so close, but I was kind of trying to sort of without touching him sort of move him back a bit.
“At which point he yelled, which I think is what alerted [Witness 1] and [Witness 2], because they were next to us having a separate conversation … to the incident. He yelled … I can’t remember if it was, ‘Don’t touch me’, or, ‘Don’t f****** touch me’. I have a feeling it was, ‘Don’t f****** touch me’ … I was quite alarmed and I immediately apologised.”
At one point the peer, who bar staff had stopped serving alcohol to, was encouraged to leave by one other person who was present.
Lord Ranger, a former transport adviser for Mr Johnson who was ennobled in the former Prime Minister’s resignation honours list, subsequently apologised to the two complainants.
He said he did not recall the incident but remembered drinking several glasses of wine on the day in question, first in the Woolsack Bar and later in the Strangers’ Bar.
He was “deeply mortified at the descriptions of my behaviour” and “saddened to hear that I caused you distress”.
He did not attempt to excuse his behaviour but said it was a “wholly uncharacteristic outburst” at a time when his family health issues had “taken a significant toll” on his physical and mental health.
The peer accepted that his conduct “befits the definition of bullying and harassment”, adding that “the House is right to call out my behaviour and sanction it”.
He repeated his apology to the two complainants, expressing the hope that at some point he would be able to apologise in person for his conduct.
The commissioner originally recommended that Lord Ranger be suspended for just one week but the Conduct Committee increased the sanction after finding his behaviour had been “particularly serious”.
The committee said: “Lord Ranger’s bullying behaviour was prolonged in duration, with two separate incidents separated by up to an hour, alcohol was an important factor, and it led to a finding of harassment as well as bullying.”
The committee also noted the impact on the complainants, one of whom said the incident had made her “more wary about her interactions with people” and left her with trouble sleeping.
The commissioner stated: “After they left the bar, JK told me she and LM were “really shaken up” and that she had never experienced ‘a situation like that before. It was really quite shocking, and it felt like it had come out of nowhere’.
“JK and LM thought they should do something about it because they both found the experience ‘pretty terrible’ and ‘pretty awful’.
“Her perception was that, because she and LM were women and because of their age, Lord Ranger felt he could act the way he did towards them because he was in a position of power.
“She did not think he would have acted that way to the male in their group or ‘any other sort of male MP, journalist or whoever it might be’.
“JK thought he was using his position as ‘a male, as a Peer, as someone with more power than us to sort of make us feel afraid and sort of, I don’t know, threatened’.”
As well as suspending Lord Ranger for three weeks, the committee recommended he be banned from the House of Lords bars for 12 months to “underline the House’s disapproval of alcohol-related misconduct” and invited House of Commons authorities to institute a similar ban for its own facilities.
The suggested sanctions still need to be approved by peers, who are expected to vote on the recommendations in early June.
