To the House of Lords, where it transpires that two peers are to be suspended after they were deemed to have breached lobbying rules. Undercover footage recorded by the Guardian caught Lord Dannatt and Lord Evans of Watford offering parliamentary services to clients who were hoping to lobby the government. The House of Lords’ standards watchdog launched separate investigations into the two men – and now Richard Dannatt faces a four-month suspension while David Evans will be suspended for five months, once the House of Lords approves the commissioner’s sanctions. Oh dear…

Lord Dannatt was found to have offered a potential client private meetings with ministers – and was secretly filmed informing undercover reporters that he could introduce them to politicians. He also claimed that he would ‘make a point of getting to know’ the best-placed politician. After exposing the crossbench peer, the newspaper found three other cases in which Dannatt had offered parliamentary services in exchange for payment. Crikey!

One occasion saw the peer lobby ministers to financially support a business looking to purchase a fertiliser factory. Another involved Dannatt – the former head of the British army – writing to Home Office ministers for ‘assurances’ they were taking action against Palestine Action after the group’s protestors attacked a Teledyne factory – that of a US defence firm that paid Dannatt. And he also arranged a meeting with the UK’s top diplomat in Ghana with the director of a goldmine firm to get support from the Ghanaian government for the business, in which Dannatt had shares. Initially, the veteran Lords’ member denied wrongdoing – but he has since made a statement accepting the punishment, and noting: ‘I also understand that acting in the national interest in good faith, which was my motivation, is not an excuse for breaching the code of conduct’. Indeed.

Meanwhile Labour peer Lord Evans was found to have broken the rules on four separate occasions, offering to introduce undercover reporters posing as property developers to fellow parliamentarians. The investigation also found that the Labour man had used his position to get his colleagues in the Lords to speak at events that his son was hosting in parliament, telling journalists during their sting operation that it was ‘great being a Labour peer at the moment because we’ve got our mates who now have senior jobs’. Now, after 27 years in the House of Lords, Evans has had the Labour whip removed. Will the publicity of these cases prevent more peers from falling into the same trap? Stay tuned…