Britain wants a "rich mix" of people in the upper chamber of parliament and wealthy businessmen should not be excluded from the House of Lords, Britain's trade minister said on Monday after media reported that political donations led to peerages.
"We want a rich mix in the House of Lords but voices with experience," International Trade Secretary Anne-Marie Trevelyan told Sky when asked about a Sunday Times report that those who had donated over 3 million pounds ($4 million) to the Conservative Party had then got peerages.
"I don't think that someone who happens to have been an extremely good businessman and made a great deal of money through business activity, usually also an enormous amount of philanthropy as well - those are the sorts of people across our country, amazing people of all political colours, that they should be barred from going to the House of Lords."
($1 = 0.7414 pounds)
(Reporting by Guy Faulconbridge; editing by Sarah Young)
