Peter Gummer

Peter Gummer   (businessman, propagandist)
Born	24 August 1942
Nationality	UK
Alma mater	The King's School (Rochester), Selwyn College (Cambridge)
Spouse	Naomi Gummer
Member of	Ditchley/Governors
Lobbyist who arranged a land deal where Prime Minister David Cameron made up to £250,000.

Peter Selwyn Gummer, Baron Chadlington is an English businessman. He has been an influential figure in PR for many decades. He started his own firm, Shandwick, in 1974. This quickly became the largest PR company in the UK.

He is a PR adviser, long-standing supporter and donor to the Conservative Party and select politicians. In 2011, he bought the property next to Prime Minister David Cameron, for then to sell it on to Cameron, a deal which added up to £250,000 to Cameron's property value.

Background

Gummer was born on 24 August 1942 to Selwyn Gummer, a Church of England priest, and his wife Margaret Mason. Gummer has two brothers; John Gummer, Baron Deben, former Chairman of the Conservative Party, and Mark Selwyn Gummer, a businessman. He was educated at The King's School, Rochester before matriculating to Selwyn College, Cambridge, where he read Moral Science and Theology, with the aim of becoming a priest. Reading the works of philosophers such as Albert Camus led him to change his mind, and after gaining a Bachelor of Arts and Master of Arts he instead went into journalism.

Career

While writing for a trade press department Gummer found that he enjoyed the business side of things far more than the journalism, and decided to go into business. After several years working for other companies he founded a public relations (PR) firm called Shandwick in 1974, serving as its chairman. Within seven years Shandwick was the largest PR company in the United Kingdom, and in 1984 it became publicly listed. In 1998 it was sold to the Interpublic Group of Companies, and is now part of Huntsworth. Initially chairman of Huntsworth, Gummer was appointed chief executive on 25 September 2005 after the resignation of Richard Nichols, the group's previous chief executive. Gummer left this position in April 2015, instead becoming an executive director, and left the company the following year.

As well as his public relations work Gummer is also a non-executive director of Britax, a former director of Halifax and a visiting fellow at the University of Gloucestershire. He has been made a fellow of the Chartered Institute of Public Relations, the Institute of Directors, the Chartered Institute of Marketing and the Royal Society of Arts. In September 1996 Gummer became Chairman of the Royal Opera House. Following a report by the House of Commons Culture, Media and Sport Committee led by Gerald Kaufman which described the management of the Royal Opera House as "abysmal" with "incompetence, disastrous financial planning and misjudgement", Gummer resigned in December 1997. On 16 October 1996, he was created a Conservative working peer, with the title of Baron Chadlington, of Dean in the County of Oxfordshire.

Adding £250,000 to David Cameron's home value

Gummer, the chief executive of the Huntsworth Group, which owns a number of public affairs firms, bought the house and land neighbouring Prime Minister David Cameron’s constituency home for £715,000. The Conservative peer then sold Cameron the land for £137,000, while the house is empty.

Cameron and his wife Samantha bought the home in 2001, shortly after he became the MP for Witney, spending £650,000 on the main home and a further £10,000 for the separate piece of land. Gummer bought the neighbouring property, which is opposite the Prime Minister’s, in November 2010, six months after Cameron became PM, for £715,000. One local estate agent estimated that buying the extra land would have added up to £250,000 to the value of the Prime Minister’s constituency home.

John Mann, a Labour MP, said: “It looks like a rich man buying a house and land for Cameron as a favour. The problem is that the rich man is at the same time lobbying David Cameron’s government.

Cameron had ensured the deal was cleared by Sue Gray, the Government’s head of propriety and ethics and James Bowler, the principal private secretary at Number 10. The Downing Street spokesman added: “Both of them advised that, because this was a public transaction and the full market rate was paid for the land, there was no need to declare it in the list of ministers’ interests.”

Downing Street sources added: “Lord Chadlington and David Cameron are long-standing friends and there is no suggestion whatsoever of any conflict of interest or financial gain.”

His [Wikipedia] page has been edited to remove unwanted things.

Personal life

He married Lucy Dudley-Hill on 23 October 1982. They met after she came to Shandwick for a job interview, and after five days they were engaged. They have four children; Naomi, born 10 January 1984, Chloe, born 17 November 1985, Eleanor, born 5 August 1988 and James, born 4 August 1990.

Naomi Gummer, presumably as an extension of her husbands' network, is director of public policy (Northern Europe) for Uber, previously she was an adviser at Google, and a political adviser to Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt.

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