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

Figures seen by the Guardian show the two peers each attended just 1.12% of sessions in past four years Evgeny Lebedev’s longstanding commitment to being the most relaxed member of the House of Lords has come under threat from another peer, Ian Botham, with both recording identical attendance rates of 1.12% over the past four years. According to Lords records seen by the Guardian, Lebedev and Botham – who were both appointed by Boris Johnson – each managed to make it to seven of the 625 sessions of the upper house that took place from the start of 2022 to the end of 2025. One consolation for Lebedev, the newspaper proprietor, son of a billionaire Russian oligarch and friend of Johnson, is that he has beaten his own mark. From November 2019 until the end of 2022, Lebedev attended Lords sessions at the slightly higher rate of 1.25%, getting to four of a possible 318. Under Lords rules, to keep their seat in the upper house peers must attend at least one sitting in each year-long parliamentary session. Lebedev and Botham, the former cricketer who was made a peer in September 2020, have just about managed this in recent years. Lebedev attended once in 2022, rising to twice in each of 2