 On 11 October 1993, he was created a life peer as Baron Dixon-Smith, "of Bocking in the County of Essex".In December 1998, he was appointed the Conservatives' local government spokesman in the House of Lords by party leader William Hague.In July 2008, he was forced to apologise to the chamber after using the racist idiom, "nigger in the woodpile", during a House of Lords debate.