Almost a quarter of peerages awarded this year have been to Conservative party donors, close associates or former colleagues of Boris Johnson, according to analysis by the Guardian, which raises fresh concerns about cronyism. On Tuesday, in a highly unusual move, the prime minister announced he had given a peerage to the Tory donor Peter Cruddas, in defiance of advice from the House of Lords. Cruddas is one of 13 out of 54 people ennobled this year to have either funded the Conservatives or who have an employment or personal connection to Johnson, the Guardian has established. The list includes three donors, four people who worked at the Telegraph with Johnson and four who worked with him at City Hall when he was mayor of London. The prime minister’s brother Jo Johnson, who stood down from the cabinet and as an MP last year, was also made a peer this year, as was Boris Johnson’s friend Evgeny Lebedev. Johnson is reported to have attended at least four weekend parties at the Russian-born newspaper owner’s restored Perugia mansion. The Electoral Reform Society (ERS), which wants an elected second chamber, said the appointments gave the impression prime ministers were “able to appoint donors and allies on a whim – and in unlimited numbers”. This year’s peerages have taken the total size of the Lords to more than 830, despite a cross-party agreement three years ago that numbers should over time be reduced to 600. Willie Sullivan, a senior director at the ERS, said: “The Lords was already packed to the brim with donors and party loyalists, but this past year has seen a bad situation get even worse. “It would be tempting to call cronyism in the Lords an abuse of the system, but the system itself is fundamentally broken. This situation cannot go on. Public trust is at rock bottom.”
Cruddas resigned as Conservative co-treasurer in 2012 after the Sunday Times claimed he was offering access to the prime minister for up to £250,000. Cruddas was eventually awarded £50,000 in damages after a libel action although aspects of the allegations were upheld. As well as Cruddas, two more party donors and former party treasurers, Aamer Sarfraz and Michael Spencer, have been ennobled this year. Spencer’s personal investment company IPGL also donated £20,000 directly to Johnson’s leadership campaign. Charles Moore, who was reported to be the government’s choice to be the next chair of the BBC until he ruled himself out, and Dean Godson, the director of the Policy Exchange thinktank, both worked at the Spectator and the Telegraph with Johnson and received peerages this year. They were joined by two other ex-Telegraph colleagues, the former Conservative MEP Daniel Hannan and Veronica Wadley. Wadley was also a senior adviser to Johnson when he was mayor of London, having previously championed his candidacy and rubbished his incumbent opponent, Ken Livingstone, while she was editor of the Evening Standard. Lebedev replaced Wadley as editor when he bought the Standard in 2009 but the paper continued its full-throated support for Johnson in his 2012 re-election campaign, running an unusual front page editorial urging voters to back the “right choice for London”. Two of Johnson’s former deputy mayors from his City Hall days were made peers this year – Sir Edward Lister, recently appointed as Johnson’s interim chief of staff after Dominic Cummings’s departure, and Stephen Greenhalgh, who was directly appointed to the upper house to serve as a minister. The list of ennobled ex-City Hall colleagues is completed by Daniel Moylan, who was Johnson’s chief adviser on aviation and championed the failed “Boris island” Thames estuary airport plan. James Wharton, the former MP for Stockton South who was Johnson’s Tory leadership campaign manager, was made a peer in August. He was the subject of a political row last week over his qualifications to be the government’s preferred candidate for chair of the Office for Students, the independent watchdog charged with regulating universities. No 10 has been approached for comment.