Conservative peer Peter Gummer has said he will leave the House of Lords after an investigation found he committed five breaches of standards in Covid PPE deals and failed to co-operate with previous investigations.
Lords standards commissioner Martin Jelley also found that Gummer, whose peerage is Lord Chadlington, “failed to act on his personal honor” by failing to co-operate with earlier inquiries, which cleared him.
Chadlington’s presentation to the government in April 2020 of a company in which he had a financial interest as a potential supplier of personal protective equipment (PPE) to the NHS, his contact with then health minister Matt Hancock and further advice to the company were deemed to be breaches of the code governing the conduct of his peers.
He was found to have committed three breaches of the rule that peers “must not seek to profit from being a member of the chamber by accepting or agreeing to accept payments or other inducements or rewards in return for providing parliamentary advice or services”.
A 12-month suspension, which was upheld by the conduct committee after Chadlington appealed, is at the high end of sanctions for misconduct by his peers. Chadlington responded that he would retire from the House of Lords and leave the Conservative Party.
In April 2020, Chadlington presented a company he had a financial interest in to the government as a potential PPE supplier. The company, SG Recruitment, a small, loss-making agency, was awarded £50m in PPE contracts in a matter of weeks, processed by the then Conservative government’s “VIP lane” for people with political connections.
However, despite the government contracts, SG Recruitment, which was later renamed, went into liquidation in December 2023 due to £1.1 million in taxes to HMRC. It later emerged that the Department of Health and Social Care had completely rejected the PPE supplied under the first contract as “unusable”. He had paid the company £24 million.
Chadlington, an influential Conservative figure and party donor who is a close friend of David Cameron, headed a large multinational public relations conglomerate during his professional career and previously advised John Major.
The findings are the result of the third investigation by the House of Lords standards commissioner into Chadlington’s involvement in the introduction of SG Recruitment to the government. Jelley launched the investigation last March after the group Covid Bereaved Families for Justice (CBFFJ) raised complaints about Chadlington’s conduct.
Chadlington was cleared by previous standards investigations in 2022 and 2023, which followed reports in The Guardian and complaints from Labor peer George Foulkes. The then Lords standards commissioner, Akbar Khan, determined the second time that it was “regrettable” that Chadlington had not provided more complete information at the first inquiry.
He told Khan in a written response to the second inquiry in August 2023 that he did not “facilitate a submission” from SG Recruitment majority owner David Sumner to Conservative peer Andrew Feldman, who was advising the DHSC on the procurement of PPE.
The CBFFJ complained to the commissioner after the Covid inquiry considered SG procurement contracts as part of its session into Boris Johnson’s government’s procurement of PPE during the pandemic. Chadlington’s text messages and emails, which were released by the inquiry, showed he asked Cameron for help with advice on approaching the government. Cameron gave him the phone number of Feldman, a close friend of the former prime minister.
Chadlington then sent an email, which was published by Covid research and previously revealed to The Guardian, to Sumner introducing him to “my friend Andrew Feldman. He can help you with the personal protective equipment we discussed this morning. Leave me off the chain. Peter.”
Chadlington did not tell either of the two Lords inquiry commissioners that he had sent that email. In his appeal to the third investigation, Chadlington said he did not find that email until he commissioned “forensic electronic searches” of his devices for the Covid investigation. The Lords’ conduct committee, rejecting his appeal, said: “Any reasonably diligent search would have uncovered the email.”
A week after Chadlington sent that email, the DHSC awarded SG Recruitment a £24 million contract to supply coveralls. A month later, SG Recruitment won a second contract, worth £26.1m, to supply hand sanitiser.
Chadlington was chairman, paid director and shareholder of SG Recruitment’s parent company, Sumner Group Holdings (SGH), registered in Jersey.
The third standards inquiry again considered whether Chadlington breached Lords conduct rules which prohibit peers from lobbying ministers or officials for companies in which they have a financial interest. It also found that when Chadlington did not co-operate with earlier investigations, he breached paragraph 9 of the Lords’ code of conduct, which: “Members of the chamber… must always act on the basis of their personal honor in the performance of their parliamentary duties and activities.”
In a response issued by his lawyers, Chadlington said: “I totally reject the conclusions of this appeal and the commissioner.”
He added: “While the committee has acknowledged that I did not act dishonestly, it is important to make clear that I never took advantage of a presentation, properly made and with honorable intentions, at a time of unprecedented national crisis.
“Any mistakes I made were honest. I apologized for them and I do so again today. For more than three years, since I turned 80, I have discussed retiring with House officials, but I did not wish to do so while these investigations were ongoing.
“I have now decided, having proudly served as a peer for 30 years, that the time is right to stand down and resign my membership in the Conservative Party.”
Lord Foulkes said: “I welcome this decision. It is regrettable that Lord Chadlington did not co-operate with the previous commissioner’s investigations and therefore this has dragged on for so long before the truth comes to light.”
In a statement, the CBFFJ said: “We welcome this decision. It vindicates the complaint brought by grieving families and shows that those who abused their position during the pandemic can be held accountable.
“This is very important for the families, who always pushed hard for the then government’s multi-million pound contracts and the ‘VIP lane’ to be properly scrutinized by the Covid investigation.”
