The levelling up secretary, Michael Gove, has defended the Evening Standard proprietor, Evgeny Lebedev, after fresh questions were raised about the prime minister’s decision to nominate him for a peerage.
The Sunday Times reported that the security services had concerns about Lebedev, whose father was a KGB agent, as far back as 2013, with the then head of MI6, John Sawers, refusing to meet him.
Boris Johnson has been accused of brushing off security concerns, raised by the House of Lords appointments commission, to press ahead with nominating Lebedev as a Tory peer. He had developed a close relationship with Lebedev, attending parties at his Italian castle, including when he was foreign secretary.
Speaking on Sophy Ridge on Sunday on Sky News, Gove appeared to suggest to reopen the question of the peerage would be to play into the hands of Vladimir Putin.
“I think one of the things that Vladimir Putin would like us to do, is to have an approach in the UK that said that everyone of Russian ancestry was somehow persona non grata,” he said.
He added that no one had previously raised concerns with him about Lebedev. “I have met Lord Lebedev, in public, and nobody has ever suggested to me that that was wrong,” Gove said. “He’s made clear through the pages of the Evening Standard, the newspaper of which he is a proprietor, that he wholeheartedly disapproves of this conflict. He’s been critical of Vladimir Putin’s actions.”
Johnson rejected the idea he had overruled security concerns to push through Lebedev’s nomination last week, calling it “simply incorrect”.
However, the Labour leader, Keir Starmer, has written to the House of Lords appointments commission to ask what advice it provided when Johnson sought to nominate Lebedev.
Starmer wrote: “I understand that the role of the commission has never been to publicise the advice it provides on political nominees but reports of the political views, personal links, and financial interests of Lord Lebedev are deeply troubling.”
In the aftermath of the poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko, Lebedev approvingly tweeted a Daily Mail article asking whether MI6 had some involvement, saying: “Was Litvinenko murdered by MI6?… Certainly more to it than the generally accepted Putin link.”
Starmer wrote: “The accusations made by Lord Lebedev that the British security services had any involvement in the murder of Alexander Litvinenko is insulting. I have seen first-hand the real impact of Russian interference in Britain and the difficulties prosecutors encounter when dealing with those who act on behalf of Putin. This is clearly a matter for national security.”
Lebedev robustly defended his record on Friday, saying he was “not some agent of Russia”, and suggested the fresh scrutiny of his situation amounted to “Russophobia”.
“Being Russian does not automatically make one an enemy of the state, and it is crucial we do not descend into Russophobia, like any other phobia, bigotry or discrimination,” he said.
