The donors, the law and the extent of involvement in scrutiny of government

Critics say narrow CPS interpretation of the law over who can be appointed has created a problem for the upper house

- David Conn

When Theresa May appointed the businessman Rami Ranger to the House of Lords in her 2019 prime ministerial resignation honours list, he described his peerage as "the fulfilment of another lifelong dream".

Ranger came to Britain from India in 1971 and built up a marketing and distribution company, Sun Mark. Having made his fortune, he became interested in joining the House of Lords. He applied twice for a non-political peerage, in 2007 and 2010, but the House of Lords appointments commission (Holac), which recommends a small number of distinguished experts each year to be crossbench peers, turned him down.

After that, Ranger became a major donor to the Conservative party, and he had given approximately £1.4m by the time May awarded him a seat.

But in his five years as a peer, Ranger's contribution to the core Lords work - scrutinising, debating and improving legislation that comes from the Commons - has been minimal. He has spoken only five times, asked no written questions and sat on no committees. The average peer speaks 188 times across each parliament, Guardian analysis found. Ranger has also been officially censured over his conduct: in January 2023, he apologised for derogatory comments about Pakistanis, then five months later the Lords commissioner for standards judged he had bullied and humiliated a journalist. He was stripped of his CBE.