Top Story February 10, 2021 LONDON: Tory peer Lord Freud has apologised in the House of Lords after being found to have breached the Code of Conduct by seeking to interfere in a legal decision. Lord Freud – along with five MPs – wrote to senior members of the judiciary raising concerns that a more junior judge was considering publishing character references provided for ex-MP Charlie Elphicke, who was convicted of sex offences. Lords commissioner for standards Lucy Scott-Moncrieff found there was “an inherent dishonour in Lord Freud choosing to leverage his position as a parliamentarian to seek to influence the trial judge by writing in private to two other senior judges, and in acting carelessly by failing even to consider the constitutional propriety of him doing so”.