office. Sir Eric Miller, knighted in the Lavender List, committed suicide in 1977 while under investigation for fraud; he too had helped fund Harold Wilson's Leader's office. In the 1960s, Roy Thomson had some justifiable claim to a peerage as a Canadian and later British publisher. As even his company history observes, "Roy had noted that all proprietors of newspapers seemed to become members of the House of Lords. He had also noted this was emphatically 'a good thing'" and he showed himself ready to do whatever was required to achieve this goal, believing at first that it could be a simple open purchase but moving on to explicit lobbying of prime ministers. He contributed money to charitable bodies which were deemed to improve his chances. Eventually, having bought The Scotsman, The Sunday Times and later The Times, he became sufficiently important to Harold Wilson that he was given a hereditary peerage as Baron Thomson of Fleet. As recently as 2004 the issue of large donations to a political party being linked to the award of a peerage arose when Paul Drayson donated £500,000 to the Labour Party. His company, Powderject (now part of Novartis), had also received a valuable government contract to make vaccines. See also Reform of the House of Lords Cash-for-questions affair Cash for Influence Political funding in the United Kingdom David Abrahams (Labour party donor) Tony's Cronies References External links 'Loans for Honours' Affair: Media demand explanation about Tony Blair's second police interview – Greg Hurst, The Times, 2 February 2007. Guide to peers and House of Lords TIMELINE – Cash-for-honours investigation, Reuters, 20 July 2007. British honours system Labour Party (UK) scandals 2006 in the United Kingdom 2006 in British politics House of Lords Peerage of the United Kingdom Tony Blair 2007 in British politics Political funding in the United Kingdom