[2] From May 2010 to January 2013, Sassoon was the first Commercial Secretary to the Treasury and was appointed to the House of Lords as a Conservative.

[5] Thereafter he attended Eton College,[6] a senior boarding school, also in Berkshire, followed by Christ Church at the University of Oxford,[6] where he read Philosophy, Politics and Economics.

In 2007, he was named president of the Financial Action Task Force on Money Laundering, also responsible for combating terrorism financing.

[10] In May 2010, he was named Commercial Secretary to the Treasury, a minister whose portfolio included financial services and business.

In consequence, it was announced he would be made a life peer, and on 3 June 2010 he was introduced in the House of Lords as Baron Sassoon, of Ashley Park in the County of Surrey.

[11][12] In the 2012 Cabinet reshuffle it was announced he would be replaced by Lord Deighton in January 2013 as Commercial Secretary to the Treasury and in line with Sassoon's desire to return to the private sector.

[13] In November 2017, he was mentioned in the Paradise Papers as one of the beneficiaries of a Cayman Island trust fund worth $236 million in 2007, and defended its assets as being of non-UK origin contributed only by his grandmother, who had died more than 40 years prior.