The government is facing a legal challenge to the nomination of CMC Markets’ founder Peter Cruddas for a peerage after it emerged he had donated £500,000 to the Conservative Party three days after his elevation to the House of Lords.

Ahead of taking legal action, the not-for-profit Good Law Project sent a letter to the government on 11 June, laying out its intentions to challenge Cruddas’s peerage appointment on the grounds it was unlawful.