It is “sheer nonsense” to suggest that Prime Minister Boris Johnson pressured the security services to alter their assessment of a Russian businessman’s suitability for a seat in the House of Lords, a senior British minister has said. British–Russian media mogul Evgeny Lebedev, whose father worked as a KGB agent, was made a lifelong member of the upper house of Parliament in July 2020. According to a report by The Sunday Times, the MI5 and MI6 security agencies initially said granting the peerage to Lebedev could pose a national security threat, but later withdrew the assessment after the prime minister personally intervened. During Prime Minister’s Questions in the House of Commons on Wednesday, Labour deputy leader Angela Rayner repeatedly pressed Deputy Prime Minister Dominic Raab over Lebedev’s appointment. She asked if Raab could guarantee that Johnson “never asked anyone to urge the security services to revise, reconsider, or withdraw their …