A Lib Dem peer faces being suspended from the House of Lords until June 2022 for sexually harassing a woman.
A parliamentary committee found that Lord Lester of Herne Hill was guilty of offering the complainant “corrupt inducements to sleep with him”.
The Lords’ privileges and conduct committee found Lester had breached the House of Lords code of conduct, which asks peers to “act on their personal honour”.
Peers will hold a vote on whether to endorse the finding on Thursday.
It is said Lester, a prominent human rights lawyer, repeatedly harassed a woman and offered her a peerage in exchange for sex several years ago.
It is believed the woman decided to come forward in the wake of the #Metoo movement.
The committee, which recommends the 82-year-old face the longest parliamentary suspension since the Second World War, heard evidence, including how Lester warned the alleged victim of “other repercussions” if she did not accept.
Lester, who attempted to appeal against the complaint and denies the allegations, has previously refused to comment on the matter.
The victim’s paraphrased evidence to the committee reads: “As we were approaching the House of Lords building, he pointed to it and said ‘do you see that building?’ to which I replied ‘yes’, he told me it was the most powerful of decision-making.
“He said ‘if you sleep with me I will make you a baroness within a year’.”
The woman told Lester that were she ever to enter the House of Lords it would be on merit.
She went on: “The impression he conveyed was that he was a man of power who could make things happen and that I was powerless in comparison.
“I felt angry of the impression he gave of the House of Lords having a culture where this type of behaviour was acceptable and not unusual.”
She added: “He said that if I did not [have sexual relations with him], he would see to it that I never had a seat in the House of Lords and warned me there would be repercussions for me, which he did not specify.
“I was a ‘good girl’ and did what he was asking, I would be in the House of Lords and could visit his house abroad with him.”
A breach of the parliamentary code in relation to “personal honour” is a wide-ranging allegation that Parliamentary officials say is “whatever the House of Lords collectively considers dishonourable”.
The code says that “the term “personal honour” has been used for centuries to describe the guiding principles that govern the conduct of members; its meaning has never been defined and has not needed definition, because it is inherent in the culture and conventions of the House.
It adds that the term is “ultimately an expression of the sense of the House as a whole as to the standards of conduct expected of individual members. ”‘Personal honour’ is thus … a matter for individual members, subject to the sense and culture of the House as a whole.”
Lord Lester was made a peer in 1993, and was revered for his work on drafting race relations legislation in Britain.
The peer, who is a member of the joint Lords/Commons committee on human rights, was given a lifetime achievement award for human rights by Liberty and Justice in 2007.
He served as a special adviser to Roy Jenkins at the Home Office in the 1970s and moved with him from the Labour Party to found the Social Democratic Party in 1981.
In 2007 he was appointed by then-prime minister Gordon Brown as a special adviser on constitutional reform.