the times | Thursday November 11 2021 9
News
The former Welsh secretary took a
£15,000-a-year job at a diagnostics
company a few weeks before it was part
of a consortium that secured a £75 mil-
lion government contract for lateral
flow tests.
Alun Cairns is the latest Conserva-
tive MP to be revealed as having
worked as a paid adviser to a company
that was awarded valuable government
contracts during the pandemic.
Alongside parliamentary duties, he
agreed to work up to 70 hours a year for
the BBI Group as a senior adviser “pro-
viding strategic advice to the board”.
BBI Group, which is based in Wales,
was part of a small group of companies
led by Abingdon Health in the UK
Rapid Test Consortium, which was
working on a coronavirus antibody test.
Cairns started the position on July 1
last year, a month after the Department
of Health and Social Care (DHSC) had
given the consortium £10 million for
the materials it needed to produce a
rapid antibody test.
In mid-August the government
handed the consortium a £75 million
contract to produce one million lateral
flow tests.
At the time Mario Gualano, BBI’s
chief executive, said: “The contract was
awarded without a tender due to the
urgency created by the pandemic.”
The contracts awarded to the con-
sortium have been the subject of a High
Court challenge by the Good Law
Project amid controversy over the
accuracy of the tests and the involve-
ment of Lord Bethell, the former health
minister.
Angela Rayner, Labour’s deputy
leader, called for the government to
publish details of any correspondence
with Cairns or the companies involved.
Emails between civil servants fromTory advised miner while
serving as trade envoy
George Grylls Political ReporterA Conservative MP has been paid over
£250,000 to advise an international
mining company while serving as Boris
Johnson’s trade envoy to a country that
has large deposits of gold, copper and
coal.
Daniel Kawczynski, the Conserva-
tive MP for Shrewsbury & Atcham, is
the UK’s trade envoy to Mongolia.
Trade envoys are unpaid roles
appointed by the prime minister to
boost investment with countries where
there is an opportunity to deepen
economic ties. The prime minister
appointed Lord Botham, the former
England cricket captain, as his trade
envoy to Australia in August.
At same time as being the Mongolian
trade envoy, Kawczynski is paid
£36,000 a year by the Electrum Group,
a mining company based in New York.
Since first being appointed to the role in
2018, he has earned £258,000.
According to documents seen by the
Daily Mail, Kawczynski, 49, has tried to
set up meetings with representatives of
the Mongolian mining industry and has
held talks with the country’s ministers.
He denied that he had made represen-
tations to the Mongolian government
on behalf of Electrum, telling the paper:
“I made it abundantly clear to civil ser-
vants when I got this role, I declared
that I have an outside interest.”
The Tory backbencher, who was first
elected in 2005, is also facing the pro-spect of a ban from the Commons after
he admitted that an apology which he
had been forced to make for abusive
behaviour towards an aide had been
insincere.
Kawczynski was found guilty of
“threatening and intimidating” behav-
iour towards a Commons staffer after
an investigation by Kathryn Stone, the
parliamentary commissioner for stan-
dards, and was forced to apologise.
However, he told the Daily Mirror
that making the apology was “some-
thing I am going to have to do” and that
he would “use the script he had been
provided”, although he denied that this
meant he was doing it “with his fingers
crossed behind his back”.
On the day he apologised he told
BBC Radio Shropshire: “I must apolo-
gise because if I don’t apologise then I
risk the option of being sanctioned fur-
ther — namely being suspended from
the House of Commons or expelled
from the House of Commons.”
Kawczynski voted to spare Owen Pa-
terson a 30-day suspension for paid lob-
bying as Johnson failed in an attempt to
overhaul the parliamentary standards
system. Paterson, a former cabinet min-
ister, represented the neighbouring
Shropshire constituency to Kawczyn-
ski until he resigned last week.
In June the Conservative Party said it
did not tolerate bullying and that
Kawczynski had been spoken to by
Mark Spencer, the chief whip, before
his apology in the Commons.and a mixed reception from the crowds at Glasgow Central station on his return to the city for the Cop26 climate summit
ucts are safe and effective to use, and we
may be unnecessarily limiting the range
of sanitising products available.”
The task force called on the govern-
ment to review guidance “to place alco-
hol- and non-alcohol-based on a level
playing field”.
Duncan Smith, 67, the MP for
Chingford & Woodford Green, was first
elected to parliament in 1992 and served
as Tory leader from 2001 to 2003. He
was a director of Byotrol between June
2009 and May 2010, when the Conserv-
atives were in opposition. He and the
firm, which provides the NHS with 92
per cent of its non-alcohol sanitiser,
were approached for comment.
Angela Rayner, Labour’s deputy
leader, said: “The prime minister needs
to explain why he think it is justified for
one of his MPs to be paid by a company
that stands to benefit from a recom-
mendation of a task force chaired by
that same MP. This is exactly the kind of
brazen conflict of interest that proves
that the Conservatives think it is one
rule for them and another for the rest of
us. Did this MP declare an interest
when these matters were discussed and
reported on by the task force? Why is
the prime minister failing to act over
these glaring conflicts of interest?”
Steve Goodrich, head of research and
investigations at Transparency Inter-
national UK, told The Guardian: “The
informality of a government task force
might seem like an agile way to develop
new policy but without basic govern-
ance arrangements it provides an open
door to vested interests. If those propos-
ing a major reform [could] benefit from
it financially, this should at least be a
matter of public record and probably
should be subject to independent
review.”Sir Iain Duncan Smith is facing ques-
tions over having a £25,000-a-year
second job advising a hand sanitiser
company and chairing a government
task force that suggested rules that
could affect the business.
The Conservative MP and former
party leader chaired the Task Force on
Innovation, Growth, and Regulatory
Reform, which reported back in May
after he and two other MPs were asked
by Boris Johnson to make recommen-
dations on Britain’s approach to regula-
tion.
The report proposed changes to the
guidance around the use of non-alco-
holic hand sanitiser. No mention of By-
otrol, a company based in Chester that
employs Duncan Smith for 12 hours a
month, is made in the report. However,
the firm welcomed the fact that an “in-
fluential UK government-sponsored
task force has recommended a regula-
tory ‘green light’ for alcohol-free hand
sanitisers”, The Guardian reported.
The task force’s report said: “Current
guidelines in the UK on non-alcohol
based hand sanitisers are unclear. As a
result, there is confusion in industry
and among consumers as to what prod-IDS accused
of ‘brazen’
approach to
second role
George Greenwood, Eleni Coureatax haven, which is being investigated
for corruption”.
Earlier this week Starmer faced ques-
tions about discussions he had in 2017
about taking a role advising Mishcon de
Reya, a top law firm.
He turned it down after criticism that
it would conflict with his job leading La-
bour’s Brexit policy. Asked about it on
Sky News, Starmer said: “I was in dis-
cussion, nothing happened.”
He added: “I have given written pie-
ces of legal advice since I’ve been an MP
but I have now given up my legal certifi-
cate. I gave it up the best part of two
years ago. That means I’m no longer
qualified to give legal advice, and my
job is to represent people in Holborn
& St Pancras and to bring down this aw-
ful government.”
Starmer was shadow Brexit secretary
in 2017 and critics said it was inappro-
priate for him to work for a firm that
took part in Brexit-related legal cases.
Mishcon de Reya acted for the activist
Gina Miller in her successful legal chal-
lenge to block the government’s at-
tempts to trigger Article 50 without ob-
taining consent from parliament.
The Conservative MP James Clever-
ly wrote to Starmer in 2017 saying “the
public will rightly detect a conflict of in-
terest” and asked him to clarify whe-
ther the role would involve lobbying.
The Labour manifesto in 2019 com-
mitted the party to banning MPs from
holding most second jobs. Asked on
Sunday if this was still Labour policy,
Starmer said: “On consultations and di-
rectorships et cetera, we’ve been saying
for many, many years that they should
go... We went a step further in 2019 to
say no second jobs, with clear exemp-
tions. No consultants has been a long-
standing position in the Labour Party.”
News
Covid firm won £75m
government contract
Billy Kenber Investigations Reporter late June 2020, shortly before Cairns
took up the role, suggest that the con-
tracts were referred to a “VIP route”
sponsored by Bethell.
The legal case brought by the Good
Law Project has also led to Bethell
admitting that he deleted texts and
WhatsApp messages relating to coro-
navirus-testing contracts. He has said
he mistakenly believed that the com-
munications were backed up.
There is no evidence that Cairns was
involved in the contracts or the deci-
sion to refer the contract to the VIP
lane. However, critics demanded trans-
parency over any communications he
may have had with government offi-
cials while working for the company
and said his decision to take the paid
work risked creating a perception thatbusinesses could secure advantages by
hiring MPs as advisers.
Cairns approached the government’s
advisory committee on business ap-
pointments for advice before taking up
the BBI job. It advised that “given your
role and profile as a former secretary of
state, there is an inherent risk it could
be perceived your contacts might assist
BBI Group unfairly”. It imposed condi-
tions, including requiring Cairns not to
draw on privileged information.
He was also required not to lobby the
government or advise the company on
bidding for a government contract until
two years after his resignation as Welsh
secretary in November 2019.
Cairns and BBI did not respond to
requests for comment.ANDREW MILLIGAN/PAAlun Cairns was
told not to advise
on govenment
contract bids until
this month