When do you contact referees for the House of Lords application?

The good news is you don't have to provide referee contact details until you know you have an interview. So you're not going to have to call up to half a dozen influential contacts and say something like, oh, I'm toying with the idea of applying to the House of Lords, if I do, would you be a referee, please? And they're thinking, oh blimey, what's he up to now or what she up to now? What you're actually saying is I've applied to the House of Lords and I've got an interview and they're thinking, blimey, they've got an interview for the Lords. That's an amazing achievement. Of course, I'm going to support them, because it won't do me any harm to have a contact in the upper house. And secondly, they'll do me a favour if they get in. So it's a much more powerful ask when you've got that foot in the door and you know you've got your interview lined up.