 In 1992 he was appointed as an advisor to Peter Lilley, Secretary of State for Social Security, following the death of Robert Maxwell and the discovery that he had stolen hundreds of millions of pounds from his companies' pension funds.He headed the Maxwell Pensioners' Trust and in 1995, brokered a £276 million out-of-court settlement, known as the Major Settlement, between the pension schemes and those institutions against which the schemes had potential legal claims.He was created a life peer in 1995 as Baron Cuckney, of Millbank in the City of Westminster, sitting as a Conservative in the House of Lords.