A House of Lords vetting body is facing pressure to reject Liz Truss’s proposed nomination for the former Vote Leave chief Matthew Elliott over critical findings relating to the funding of one of his pro-Brexit campaigns.
The reported nomination by the former prime minister has provoked multiple complaints to the Lords appointments commission.
The independent body, which is chaired by Lord Bew, has an obligation to vet party political appointees for “propriety” and risks to the reputation of the chamber before a final decision by the prime minister, Rishi Sunak.
According to email correspondence seen by the Guardian, complaints from one member of the public about Elliott were “noted” by the appointments commission in March.
The commission does not publicly comment on its advice although Bew wrote to all the party leaders in 2022 to complain that recent nominations had put his committee in an “increasingly uncomfortable” position without specifying which nominations he had in mind.
Recent controversial nominations have included the Evening Standard owner and son of a former KGB agent, Evgeny Lebedev.
An announcement from Downing Street on who will benefit from the resignation honours list of the two most recent former prime ministers, Truss and Boris Johnson, is expected within days.
Truss, who was unapologetic about the failures of her short-lived time in No 10 during a visit to Washington last week, has reportedly nominated a number of key allies to the Lords for her resignation honours.
They are said to include Mark Littlewood, the director general of the free market libertarian Institute of Economic Affairs thinktank, which backed Truss’s mini-budget, Ruth Porter, a former deputy chief of staff, Jon Moynihan, a Conservative donor and businessperson, and Elliott, the former chief executive of the official Vote Leave campaign.
Elliott’s critics claim the financial arrangements between, the Political and Economic Research Trust (Pert), an educational charity he founded in 2006, and his political campaigns should be a cause for concern for the appointments commission.
He left his role as secretary in 2010.
Throughout its existence, Pert has paid a majority of its grants to organisations that Elliott has been associated with, such as the TaxPayers’ Alliance and Business for Britain. As an educational charity, Pert benefits from tax relief on donations.
After a complaint from the former deputy prime minister John Prescott, the Charity Commission first investigated Pert in 2011 after claims the charity had been “used as a vehicle to channel funds enhanced with gift aid to the TaxPayers’ Alliance”, an organisation founded by Elliott in 2004.
The investigation found the allegations to be uncorroborated but warned of the “reputational risks to the charity if its relationship with the Alliance was not properly managed”.
The TaxPayers’ Alliance later said it had an “arms length” relationship with Pert and that the charity was “quite demanding in their requirements concerning the quantity, quality and nature of the research to be undertaken”.
In 2015 the Charity Commission again investigated Pert, citing public concerns as to whether it was “appropriate for a charity to support non-charitable organisations with political aims”.
It subsequently found a lack of controls over Pert’s funding. As a result, Business for Britain, where Elliott was a director, was asked in 2016 by Pert to pay back a £50,000 grant that the campaign organisation had received two years earlier.
“The advancement of education cannot be used to promote a political or pre-determined point of view nor promote a position on a contested area unless that view is uncontroversial,” the Charity Commission said at the time.
A member of the public who has written to the Lords appointments commission claimed the funding arrangements for Elliott’s campaigns raised questions as to his suitability for a peerage.
While Elliott was not a director of Pert from 2010 onwards, the Charity Commission’s findings were said by critics to highlight an overly cosy relationship.
In a separate letter to the appointments commission, Wendy Chamberlain, the chief whip of the Liberal Democrats, claimed Elliott appeared to fail the test of having a past that “would not reasonably be regarded as bringing the House of Lords into disrepute” and in being in “good standing … with the public regulatory authorities”.
A spokesperson for Elliott rejected the accusations in both letters, noting that he was not responsible for the administrative failures of Pert. They added that Business for Britain had been “happy” to repay the funds in 2016.
“Both of these letters contain factual inaccuracies, spurious and completely unfounded claims and confuse the activities of three separate organisations,” the spokesperson said.
“Mr Elliott resigned from the Research Trust in February 2010, three years before Business for Britain launched. Any criticism of the trust’s administrative processes in the ensuing years is therefore not Mr Elliott’s responsibility, but solely a matter for the trustees overseeing the organisation at the time.
“In 2014, the Research Trust part-funded a research project by Business for Britain. In 2016, after the announcement of the EU referendum, the Research Trust asked Business for Britain to repay the grant. Business for Britain was happy to comply. The repayment was made immediately in 2016 and not, as is incorrectly suggested in this correspondence, in 2017.
“Similarly, Mr Elliott had no responsibility for any of the TaxPayers’ Alliance’s day-to-day activities for much of the period concerned, having stepped down as chief executive in July 2012. Conflating the activities of three separate organisations is completely misleading, inaccurate and demonstrates a total disregard for the facts.”
Pert did not respond to a request for comment.
• This article was amended on 17 April 2023. Matthew Elliott was not Liz Truss’s chief of staff as stated in an earlier version.
