Lords investigate peer who wrote to Treasury on behalf of crypto firm

The former Labour party general secretary Iain McNicol is under investigation by the House of Lords standards watchdog after he wrote to the Treasury on behalf of a cryptocurrency company that was paying him.

- Rowena Mason

The Lords commissioners for standards said they had launched an inquiry into Lord McNicol over potential breaches of the code of conduct, citing a clause that states members "must not seek to profit from membership of the house by accepting or agreeing to accept payment or other incentive or reward in return for providing parliamentary advice or services".

The inquiry is the third to be launched by the standards commissioners in response to revelations in a months-long investigation by the Guardian into the commercial interests of members of parliament's second chamber.

McNicol, who previously served on Keir Starmer's frontbench, wrote to the Treasury as an adviser to a Dubai- and Zurich-based company called Astra Protocol, a tech startup which launched a cryptocurrency token that has plunged in value by 99.7% since its peak.