Anyone out there with a working definition of a “working peer”?

In a House of Lords briefing on the subject it merely says the term is used by the press to describe a peer appointed by a political party in the expectation that they would attend regularly.

In a letter dated 2 March 2000, William Hague told the Chair of the Political Honours Scrutiny Committee, Lord Thomson of Monifieth:

“I am putting his name forward once again because I value his abilities and wish to make political use of them as a working peer within the House of Lords to which, I believe, he would bring new strengths.”

Hague goes on: “I am sure that you will appreciate that, in the light of what has gone before, I would not be renominating Mr Ashcroft if I had any doubts as to his suitability and was not anxious to make use of him on the Conservative benches in the House of Lords.”

My colleague in the last Parliament, Peter Bradley, then MP for The Wrekin, wrote to the then Cabinet Secretary, Sir Andrew Turnbull, on 2 November 2004, to ask for the umpteenth time if Ashcroft had fulfilled the undertakings he gave to get his peerage.

He told Turnbull: “The records show that since he took his seat on 24 October 2000, Lord Ashcroft has spoken precisely once, on 12 December that year, and voted on 80 occasions out of a possible 622, a rate of 13%.”

After stonewalling Peter Bradley, Turnbull is now more open.

He told the Times on 4 March 2010

“We were taking Hague's word that he had negotiated this deal and it turns out that he had negotiated a deal with a loophole.”

Hague, said Turnbull, “had not done his due diligence”.

“We had been assured by Hague that this was the real deal. It turns out that Ashcroft is being economical with the truth and that Hague fell for it.”

It is a pity that Sir Andrew Turnbull had not diligently resoponded to the points raised repeatedly by Peter Bradley when they were in correspondence about the issue from 2003 to 2005.

Peter Bradley first raised the issue before Ashcroft even got his peerage. But the mandarins turned a deaf ear.

They must now tell us what they know.