A Conservative peer has been cleared of breaking lobbying rules for a second time by the House of Lords watchdog over introducing a company that was awarded government PPE contracts worth £50m.
The watchdog had been asked to reopen his investigation into Lord Chadlington after it emerged that there was an exchange with the government that had not been fully provided to his first inquiry.
In a report published on Wednesday, the House of Lords commissioner for standards, Akbar Khan, concludes that “on the balance of probabilities, there is insufficient evidence” to suggest Chadlington, whose real name is Peter Gummer, had broken parliamentary rules that forbid peers from lobbying for companies that pay them or in which they have a financial stake.
He also ruled that it was “regrettable” that during his first investigation Chadlington did not disclose how he initially contacted the government and introduced the company.
Chadlington has now said he exchanged text messages with his fellow peer Andrew Feldman, who during the first wave of the Covid pandemic in March 2020 had been brought into the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) as an unpaid adviser on PPE procurement.
On 19 April 2020, Chadlington texted Feldman: “Andrew I work with a company with PPE. D says you are helping. Shall I put you in touch? Peter.”
Feldman responded: “Yes please. Best use my DHSC email address … Thanks very much. Andrew.”
Khan did not identify who D was. Chadlington’s lawyers did not respond to a question from the Guardian asking who D was.
After Chadlington’s text message David Sumner, the chief executive of SG Recruitment, contacted Feldman, who referred his offer of PPE to the DHSC’s “VIP lane” that gave priority to politically connected companies.
On 21 April, Feldman forwarded to DHSC officials an email from Sumner, saying: “An interesting offer from David Sumner who was introduced to me by Lord Chadlington.”
In a later email, he told officials Sumner “seems like a decent guy”.
A week after Chadlington’s text in 2020, the DHSC awarded SG Recruitment a £24m contract to supply coveralls, and the next month a £26m contract to supply hand sanitiser.
Chadlington, a Conservative grandee appointed to the House of Lords in 1996, was a shareholder and paid director of theSG Recruitment’s parent company, Sumner Group Holdings.
The Lords inquiries had been prompted by reporting in the Guardian on how Chadlington had introduced SG Recruitment to Feldman.
In a report last year, Khan cleared Chadlington of promoting SG Recruitment on the grounds that his only involvement in the awarding of the contracts was to provide Feldman’s email address to Sumner.
Khan reopened his investigation in the summer. In Wednesday’s report, Khan ruled: “Having considered the content of the text exchange, in which Lord Chadlington does not name the company in question nor make any kind of ‘bid’ on its behalf, I do not consider this alters the substantive finding of my original investigation – that Lord Chadlington had no involvement in the bidding for contracts and there is no evidence to suggest that the fact that Lord Chadlington provided Mr Sumner with the email address played any part in the decision to award the government contracts to SG Recruitment UK.”
Chadlington apologised to Khan for not drawing the two text messages to his attention, saying it was an “innocent mistake”.
Khan said he did not consider “there was any attempt to deliberately mislead me during my original investigation”.
Chadlington’s lawyers said: “Our client has now twice been investigated by the commissioner, and twice been found not to have committed any breach of the House of Lords code of conduct in relation to the award of PPE contracts to SG Recruitment. As far as our client is concerned, this matter is now closed.”
