Revealed: House of Lords members have given £109m to political parties

Peers who sat in the House of Lords during the last parliament have given a combined £109m in political donations, almost £50m of which was contributed before they secured their seats.

In a detailed study of the role the Lords plays in financing British politics, the Guardian has found that £1 in every £14 raised since donations were first published in 2001 came from peers either before or after they entered the second chamber.

The total contribution is almost certainly higher, as the data only counts donations to parties and individual MPs by those who sat in the Lords during the last parliament.

Peers are chosen from lists put forward by political parties, and the Conservatives have benefited more than any other party from those they nominated, taking 62% of the £109m. Labour took a 21% share and 16% went to the Liberal Democrats.

The findings will fuel debate around the role of the UK’s second chamber and the means used to select its members. Campaigners have called for a ban on political donors becoming peers, and raised concerns about the “privileged access” such donations can buy.

Historically, reasons have not needed to be given for political appointments, but the government has recently changed the rules so leaders of political parties must explain future nominations.

Guardian analysis shows that 266 peers made a political donation in the period covered by the analysis, with 115 of these donating at least once before they entered the Lords.

Analysis of Electoral Commission figures shows:

• A group of 20 super-donors – all male – have given more than £1m each.

• Nearly £48m came from donors before they joined the Lords, with 91% of that sum going to the Conservatives.

• Donations after joining the Lords were split more evenly, with 42% given to the Conservatives, 33% to Labour and 25% to the Lib Dems.

• The top three donors were David Sainsbury, with £25m to Labour and the Lib Dems, and the Conservative supporters Anthony Bamford with £10m and Michael Farmer with £9m.

Dr Susan Hawley, the executive director of Spotlight on Corruption, said: “The ongoing link between political party donations and peerages is deeply damaging to trust in parliament and politics more widely. Peers play a public service role, and carrying on being a party donor is incompatible with that role. Donations from current members of the Lords should be stopped immediately.”

She called for a ban on political donors becoming peers and an urgent overhaul of the appointments process, with political parties surrendering their power to select peers to a beefed-up House of Lords appointments commission.

The commission, set up in 2000 to ensure transparency in the appointments process, vets nominees put forward by the prime minister. It also nominates a small number of people, typically two a year, to sit as crossbench peers unaffiliated with any political party.

Cash before honours

Political financing within the Lords is dominated by a small group of 20 super-donors – mostly financiers and businessmen – who have given in excess of £1m to the parties they support. Their combined donations of £92m account for the vast majority of the money analysed by the Guardian.

That figure includes individuals who donated large sums before being nominated. Parties have collected a total of £48m from donors who went on to join the Lords, with most of that sum coming from just 13 individuals. All but one gave to the Conservatives, and three were former treasurers of the Conservative party, responsible for leading its fundraising.

The numbers suggest becoming a major donor is one established route to securing a seat in the Lords.

Selling honours is a criminal offence. However, state prosecutors have advised that the law only applies if there is evidence of “an unambiguous agreement” to award a peerage in exchange for a gift. So long as any expectation remains unspoken, neither the donor nor the recipient are breaking the law.

A second tier of political donors – those who give between £100,000 and £1m before joining the Lords – have also tended to support the Conservative party. There were 21 of these in the last parliament. Fifteen were Tory benefactors, four were Labour and two donated to the Lib Dems.

In general, super-donors make smaller contributions to the work of the house once inside.

Analysis shows that peers who gave £1m or more before joining the Lords spoke 20 times on average over the course of the last parliament. That average includes the politically active Michael Farmer, who spoke 204 times. Removing him from the calculation means the rest of this group made an average of four speeches each – fewer than one a year.

Members of the £100,000 to £1m club were more likely to contribute in the chamber. They spoke 180 times each on average, compared with 188 times for peers overall.

The lord giveth and the lord taketh away

Money from those writing big cheques before entering the Lords tends to dry up once they secure their seats, the analysis shows. All but one of those who gave more than £1m before being nominated reduced their donations afterwards, when averaging them over time. The exception was the JCB diggers boss Anthony Bamford, who left the Lords last year.

The Guardian contacted the 13 peers who had donated more than £1m before joining the house. Rami Ranger, the chair of the consumer goods group Sun Mark, said he had not got a peerage for money and that he had “done more for Britain than many”, sharing a list of his business, political and community service achievements.

Lord Farmer, a former Tory party treasurer, said he donated in order to further his political values around family life. He said: “Generally, treasurers are given peerages shortly before or when they leave office, with similar pathways in the Labour and Liberal Democrat parties.”

Stanley Fink was a Tory co-treasurer. Photograph: Chris McAndrew/UK Parliament

The hedge fund manager Stanley Fink said his donations to the Tory party remained constant outside general elections, where he occasionally gave more. He said: “Truthfully, I received my peerage for being co-treasurer of the party,” and he had never used donations as a means of advancing policies.

The businessman Michael Bishop agreed that he had not donated as much since entering the second chamber with the title Lord Glendonbrook. Regarding his speaking record, he said he had Australian and British citizenship and travelled a lot. He said he did not claim attendance allowances.

Michael Spencer, a billionaire businessman and former Tory treasurer, noted there was no state funding of political parties in the UK. He said that although he did not often speak in the Lords, he attended and voted regularly, did not claim expenses, and continued to support the Conservative party financially from time to time.

The billionaire Peter Cruddas said he had been appointed to the Lords by Boris Johnson “to support his government to get Brexit done following his election victory” and that he had a strong voting and attendance record in the chamber.

David Sainsbury is the biggest donor currently in the Lords. Photograph: David Levene/The Guardian

The wider group of 20 super-donors also includes peers who have given huge sums since joining. Peers such as David Sainsbury, the former supermarket group chair, whose donations since 2001 outstrip those of any other member. He was Labour’s largest individual donor (£15m), then gave to the Lib Dems (£10m) while Jeremy Corbyn was Labour leader, before retiring from the second chamber in 2021.

The multimillionaire former Carpetright chair Philip Harris, who became a peer in 1996, donated more than £2.4m to the Conservative party from 2001 onwards before switching sides with a £5,000 gift to Labour last year.

The Domino’s Pizza entrepreneur Rumi Verjee donated just over £900,000 to the Lib Dems before being nominated by the party’s former leader Nick Clegg, and went on to give another £1.3m to the party once in the chamber.

Waheed Alli, who was last year embroiled in the “passes for glasses” scandal, is also high up the list, donating almost £1m to Labour after becoming a peer.

The analysis shines a light on the high value of donations handed to political parties and raises questions about the balance of influence enjoyed by individuals who are major party funders and also legislators.

A spokesperson for the campaign group Transparency International said: “It’s clear some parties have an unhealthy and increasing dependency on a small number of very wealthy donors. The privileged access and potential influence money can buy, especially for those donors sitting in our legislature, reinforces the view that politics is a profession reserved for the rich, and inaccessible to ordinary people.”

The figures only cover the historical donations of those peers who have sat in the Lords since the 2019 election. That means donations from former peers such as Michael Ashcroft, who has given millions to the Conservative party but who resigned in 2015, are not included in the total.

Political parties have only been obliged to publish donations data since the creation of the Electoral Commission in 2001, meaning the Guardian was unable to analyse donations before that date.