The House of Lords conduct watchdog has opened an investigation into the Conservative peer Lord Chadlington after new details about his introduction of a firm that was awarded £50m in PPE contracts were reported by the Guardian.
The inquiry by the standards commissioners into Chadlington, whose real name is Peter Gummer, follows a request sent by the Labour peer George Foulkes.
According to the commissioners’ website, Chadlington is under investigation for alleged breaches of rules forbidding peers from seeking 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 service” and using “parliamentary means to confer exclusive benefit” on behalf of a third party in which they have a financial interest or receive payment.
SG Recruitment gained a Covid contract days after being placed in the high-priority “VIP lane” for companies with political connections. At the time it gained the contract, Chadlington was a shareholder and a paid director of SG Recruitment’s parent company, Sumner Group Holdings. Chadlington was identified by the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) as the “source of referral” of the small healthcare recruitment agency, meaning he had identified the company to the government.
Lawyers acting on behalf of Chadlington said: “Our client has always acted with full transparency in respect of his dealings in the House of Lords, including in responding to the [first] Lords commissioners’ inquiry, and will continue to do so as necessary.”
Chadlington was previously cleared in July 2022 by one of the commissioners, Akbar Khan, of breaching the rules against peers lobbying the government to benefit companies in which they have a financial interest. The commissioner concluded that Chadlington’s “only involvement” had been to provide SG Recruitment’s chief executive, David Sumner, with the email address of another Tory peer, Andrew Feldman, who was advising the DHSC on PPE procurement.
As a result, Khan decided Chadlington had not referred SG Recruitment or Sumner Group Holdings to the department.
But new information provided by Chadlington’s lawyers to the Guardian, and not disclosed to Khan’s initial investigation, revealed Chadlington had first spoken with Feldman in a phone call and that he had suggested SG Recruitment as a “potential candidate” to supply PPE.
“Lord Feldman suggested that Mr Sumner [the CEO of SG Recruitment] email him at his DHSC email address, which Lord Feldman provided to our client for that purpose,” the lawyers said.
They added that Chadlington “did not recommend” or “provide any assurances” as to SG Recruitment, and did not receive any financial benefit from the contracts it later secured from the government.
A House of Lords spokesperson told the Guardian that the investigation would be carried out by Khan.
