Evgeny Lebedev and Ian Botham have lowest Lords attendance, records show | House of Lords

Evgeny Lebedev’s long-standing determination to be the most comfortable member of the House of Lords has come under threat from another peer, Ian Botham, both of whom have recorded identical turnout rates of 1.12% over the past four years.

Lebedev and Botham, both appointed by Boris Johnson, managed to attend seven of the 625 sessions of the upper house from the beginning of 2022 to the end of 2025, according to Lord’s records reviewed by the Guardian.

One consolation for newspaper owner Lebedev, the son of a billionaire Russian oligarch and friend of Johnson, is that he achieved his own goal. Lebedev attended Lord’s sessions at a slightly higher rate of 1.25% from November 2019 to the end of 2022, reaching four out of a possible 318.

Under the Lords’ rules, their peers must attend at least one session of each annual parliamentary session to retain their seats in the upper house. Former cricketer Lebedev and Botham, who were made a peer in September 2020, have almost achieved this in recent years.

Lebedev participated once in 2022 and doubled in 2023, 2024 and 2025. Botham has appeared twice in 2022, once in 2023 and twice more in 2024 and 2025. However, Botham, unlike Lebedev, showed some excitement at the start and has gone on to make 26 appearances in 2021.

But a different opponent, Lebedev, whose official title is Baron Lebedev of Hampton and Siberia, appears to be stepping up his game a bit. Although he had never voted in his first six years in the Lords, he did so twice this year. Similarly, one in six of his speeches took place this month.

Botham – Baron Botham of Ravensworth, North Yorkshire – has not spoken in the Lords since November 2020 and has not asked any written questions since November 2024. He has voted 21 times, but not since July 2021.

The way the Lords work differs from the House of Commons; their peers often have jobs outside the chamber or other areas of expertise, and so they tend to contribute only occasionally.

Similarly, attendance records do not take into account work in the Lords Committee; This can take significant time; however, neither Lebedev nor Botham ever served on these committees.

Peers can take a leave of absence from the Lords or retire completely without losing their titles. Some older members of the Lords also attend very sporadically, but none appear to attend as consistently as Lebedev and Botham.

The House of Lords currently has 868 members, 842 of whom are active, making it the world’s largest legislature outside China’s National People’s Congress.

While the newly passed bill will remove the last 92 hereditary peers from the House of Lords, wider efforts to reduce its size have met with little success, with retirements canceled due to a high proportion of new appointments made by various prime ministers.

Keir Starmer has created 96 peers so far. Johnson created the 87 and was criticized for nepotism with a number of appointments, including that of Lebedev. Other colleagues of Johnson’s creations included his own sister, Jo.