Boris Johnson’s young peer – and his lucrative contracts – show it’s time to reform the Lords

Ross Kempsell was just 31 when he was appointed to the Lords by Boris Johnson. He has since set up a wide array of business interests which include being a paid adviser to one Boris Johnson. There can be no justification for public money going to him or Baroness Charlotte Owen, writes Alan Rusbridger

Boris Johnson and Ross Kempsell, now Baron Kempsell of Letchworth (Getty/Parliament TV)

Enough for the moment about Baroness Charlotte Owen. She is most definitely one to watch, especially, as revealed last week, she is now working for Boris Johnson’s new environmental business. She’ll probably not start making speeches about the benefits of nuclear power – that’s not quite how consultants work – but I’m sure the lobby correspondents will be keeping a watching brief on things.

But what, people have been asking, of Baron Kempsell, who was ennobled by Boris Johnson at the same time as Charlotte?

You will remember how Johnson was keen to reward the last few loyalists in the Downing Street bunker, including two – Nigel Adams and Nadine Dorries – who were vetoed by the official House of Lords vetting committee. 

Where Adams and Dorries failed, Kempsell and Owen succeeded, both of them key figures in “Operation Save Big Dog”, the internal battle to rescue Johnson after MPs forced a vote of no confidence in his leadership. 

Kempsell, at 31, was not quite the blank sheet of paper that Owen was when the two were handed their seats in the Upper Chamber in July last year. A Cambridge graduate, he had enjoyed a modest journalistic career with the libertarian Guido Fawkes website; and then on Murdoch’s Talk Radio and Times Radio. 

His most memorable story came in June 2019, when he teased out of Johnson the improbable claim that he relaxed by making model buses out of disused wine crates. 

Within three months of this landmark interview, Kempsell was briefly a moderately senior (£70k-ish) adviser to Johnson before becoming political director at Conservative campaign HQ. According to Guido Fawkes, he honed the research department “into a war-room with a focus on attacking the opposition and driving the news agenda”. 

His campaign to Save Big Dog having famously failed, he would ordinarily have been ringing up his old mates at Talk Radio to ask if any shifts were going. But fate had other ideas, and he was instead parachuted into the Upper House, where he could well have another 50 years of making laws for the rest of us.

Charlotte Owen was just 29 when she was given a life peerage by Boris Johnson (AFP/Getty)

If it all feels a bit random, it is. There are hundreds of British journalists with a more distinguished track record than Kempsell. One way of looking at his record as a political strategist/campaigner, is that it was one of abject failure. Yet here he is, literally lording it over us because Boris Johnson saw something in him. Yup, the man who hand-picked Dominic Cummings for Downing Street, Gavin Williamson for education secretary, Priti Patel for the Home Office and Paul Dacre for Ofcom.

How is Baron Kempsell doing? Well, since he took his seat in July last year, he has voted 73 times and, as of March (the latest month to be publicly filed), attended 28 times. It was eight months before he made his maiden speech and, to his credit, he charged no attendance allowance until then. In March this year he claimed £2,052 (tax-free) for turning up seven times. He’s asked 65 questions.

But Baron Kempsell has been a busy bee on other fronts – selling his skills as a political and media strategist to all and sundry.

He has formed a company called Hyannis Strategy Limited, whose clients include his mentor, Boris Johnson, as well as the Policy Exchange think tank and GBNews, to which he is also a contributor. The latest accounts filed at Companies House show this business is going very well indeed, with assets of more than £2m at last count.

Next, he is the CEO and founder of another company. This one’s called Maple Research Limited, which is said to supply business intelligence, due diligence and reputation management. Then there’s an executive education start-up called JKEP Education, which lasted all of a year and two weeks before it was closed down. And he’s also founded a media advice and business intelligence company called Arcani Intelligence Ltd.

As if that wasn’t enough, he is a senior adviser for WJL Partners, which provides communications and management advice to CEOs. That’s “WJL” as in Sir William John Lewis, knighted by Boris Johnson for his comms advice before he went off to be a somewhat controversial publisher of The Washington Post.

Even that is not enough for a man of Baron Kempsell’s energy, since he has recently joined the Media Advisory Board of a company called Grayling (motto: “creating advantage”) which is a “go-to resource for media intelligence, storytelling and relationship building”. Its clients include Visa, eBay, Google and Amazon.

I make that five jobs, on top of his new role at the House of Lords. He has also found time to visit Israel, his expenses part paid by Jamie Reuben – a property developer, supporter of Boris Johnson and major Tory party donor. And the government of Bahrain paid for him to attend a defence and security conference.

The Kingdom of Bahrain was kind enough to entertain him in the royal box at the Royal Windsor Horse Show in May. And the government of Turkey took him to a football game, while the government of Qatar took him to Doha.

None of this, I hasten to say before the lawyers do, is improper. It has all been properly declared and is, to that extent, above board. But it is simultaneously a bit opaque. Who – apart from the three declared customers of one of the companies he works with – are his clients? On behalf of whom does he consult, lobby, mingle, dine, advise, have a quiet word?

And when the Kingdom of Bahrain stumps up to purchase a royal box seat at the Royal Windsor Horse Show, are they entertaining Ross Kempsell, former little-known journalist and spad, or Baron Kempsell of Letchworth? What quo might be expected for the quid? In the Latin sense rather than any monetary transfer.

Johnson created a new peer for every 16 days in office. Liz Truss survived only 49 days in Downing Street yet managed to ennoble no fewer than 32 friends and colleagues – that’s a new peer for every day and a half in the job.

The Upper Chamber is broken. By all means get rid of the last of the hereditary peerages but that is shuffling a couple of deckchairs. The noble peers Kempsall and Owen are doubtless good and well-meaning souls, but there’s no conceivable reason why they should be looking forward to half a century of legislating for the rest of us.

In his brief time in Whitehall, Kempsell helped establish the Evaluation Task Force to drive continuous improvements in the way public money is spent. There is, I suggest, no justification for public money being spent on him or Baroness Owen attending the House of Lords. He should evaluate himself out of one of his six jobs. Soon.