UK Labour Party Slams Gov’t for Missing Deadline to Issue Advice on Peerage for Russian Businessman

Last year, the British intelligence services reportedly warned against granting a peerage for Evgeny Lebedev, the owner of the Evening Standard and The Independent newspapers, on national security grounds. Lebedev, who is thought to be a close friend of Prime Minister Boris Johnson, once said he was not an “agent of Russia”.

The UK Labour Party’s deputy leader Angela Rayner has hit out at the government over its failure to meet the 28 April deadline for publishing the security advice that Downing Street received about granting a peerage to Russian-born businessman Lord Evgeny Lebedev.

Rayner argued that by failing to release the documents, the government was “once again bending the rules to dodge scrutiny” of the issue.

She claimed that “this last-minute delay just kicks the can further down the road, and has all the hallmarks of a government with something to hide”.

“If the prime minister wasn’t involved in forcing through the appointment of an individual of concern to our intelligence services, why won’t he come clean and publish the guidance in full, as parliament voted for?” the Labour deputy leader added.

According to her, the “whole thing reeks of a cover-up” by Prime Minister Boris Johnson amid questions over his involvement in sending Lebedev, the owner of the Evening Standard and the Independent newspapers, to the House of Lords in 2020. BoJo has previously denied that he intervened to secure Lebedev’s peerage.

Rayner’s remarks come after Michael Ellis, Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General, said in a letter to Commons Speaker Lindsay Hoyle that the government “regrets” not responding in time. He pledged to respond “promptly” following parliament’s return from its break on 10 May after “necessary consideration has been given to the material”.

“As you will know, the [MPs’] motion provided that redactions could be made ‘for the purposes of national security’, a consideration which is of utmost importance given the government’s responsibility to protect information when disclosure is not in the public interest”, Ellis pointed out.

He added that the government was also “giving considerations to other principles, such as the need to protect the data of private individuals, communications with Her Majesty [Queen Elizabeth II] and also to the conferring by the crown of any honour or dignity”. The minister confirmed that all the security services’ advice “has now been collated” but said that “all necessary considerations” had not been completed yet.

In March, MPs voted for the material on Lebedev’s peerage to be released after the Sunday Times reported that last year, MI5 had raised security concerns when the 41-year old media mogul was nominated by Johnson to join the House of Lords.

In a separate development last month, Labour called for an investigation into BoJo’s nomination of Lebedev for a peerage. In a letter to Paul Bew, chair of the House of Lords appointments commission, Labour leader Keir Starmer urged him to “make available to the public the vetting advice provided” on the Evening Standard’s owner’s peerage.

The Guardian previously referred to Lebedev, the son of Alexander Lebedev, a billionaire Russian banker and former KGB officer, as a friend of Johnson, “whom he has regularly invited to his Christmas and summer parties in London and at his palazzo in Umbria, Italy”.