Senior Conservative MP says he 'can't believe' Boris Johnson gave Evgeny Lebedev a peerage

• Tory MP Bernard Jenkin said he "can't believe" Boris Johnson gave Evgeny Lebedev a peerage.
• Jenkin chairs the Liaison Committee, which is due to question the Prime Minister on March 30.

Senior Conservative MP Bernard Jenkin said he "can't believe" Boris Johnson gave a peerage to Evgeny Lebedev, the Russian-born son of a KGB agent and proprietor of two British newspapers.

Jenkin made the remarks in a private session of the House of Commons standards committee taking evidence from Parliament's director of security held on February 8. Insider has seen a redacted transcript of the session, published today.

In a discussion on foreign influence and the funding of all party parliamentary groups, Jenkin said "Russia and China" were an "absolute no-no" for accepting hospitality from.

He later said the rules on political parties accepting political donations had minimal requirements, which he said leads to a lack of proper scrutiny of donors.

"We end up with all these Russian donors giving money to the Conservative party, and indeed to other parties, because nobody is obliged to say, 'Who is this guy? What business is he in? Is he, in fact, a crook? You can't accept money from him", Jenkin said.

"Mind you, he gave a peerage to Lebedev — I can't believe it. It seems to me that that is part of the change in attitude that is required," he added.

On March 5, The Sunday Times reported that in March 2020 Johnson intervened to secure Lebedev a peerage. It said that the House of Lords Appointments Commission had warned against granting Lebedev a seat, citing intelligence from MI5 and MI6.

Johnson met Lebedev at his home on March 19 2020, two days after the rejection by the Commission, the Sunday Times reported.

The security services later withdrew their advice about the peerage being a threat to national security following Johnson's insistence that the peerage go through, The Sunday Times reported. His peerage was announced in July 2020 as Lord Lebedev of Hampton and Siberia.

Lebedev filed written questions, his first Parliamentary contributions since his maiden speech, on the day Insider published a story highlighting his lack of contributions for most of his parliamentary career.

Jenkin chairs the Liaison Committee, made up of all of the House of Commons select committee chairs, which will question Johnson at the end of March.

Insider's Catherine Neilan reported Jenkin called for the Conservative party co-chairman, Ben Elliot, to be replaced. It came amid concerns about work carried out by Elliot's concierge company for the ultra-wealthy, Quintessentially, and his connections with Moscow-linked donors.