LONDON (AP) – A lobbying scandal swirling around former British Prime Minister David Cameron has deepened with claims that a senior civil servant held down a part-time job with a now-bankrupt financial firm that was awarded lucrative government contracts. The main opposition Labour Party called a vote in the House of Commons on Wednesday to demand a full parliamentary inquiry into the relationship between government ministers, civil servants, and Greensill Capital. This financial services firm collapsed last month, threatening thousands of jobs at a British steelmaker it helped finance.
The Conservative government has launched an investigation led by a lawyer, but opponents doubt it will get to the truth. Opposition parties are calling for stricter rules on contacts between business representatives and government officials, saying Britain’s laxly enforced lobbying regulations leave the door open to corruption. Opposition Labour Party leader Keir Starmer said the revelations showed the “sleaze and cronyism at the heart of this Conservative government.”
“We need to overhaul this whole broken system,” he said.
Over last month, a series of news reports revealed that Cameron lobbied senior government officials on behalf of a finance firm founded by Australian banker Lex Greensill, a former adviser to Cameron’s 2010-2016 Conservative-led government.
Greensill Capital was given a lucrative role in “supply chain finance” arrangements that saw it pay contractors on behalf of the government before being reimbursed by the Treasury. The system was designed to expedite payments to contractors, including pharmacies supplying the National Health Service, but critics say the government should just have paid the contractors directly.
Cameron worked as a part-time adviser to Greensill after he left office and held shares in the company.
On Tuesday, it emerged that a senior civil servant, Bill Crothers, began working as a part-time adviser to Greensill’s board in September 2015, two months before he left his job as the government’s chief commercial officer – in charge of government purchasing.Prime Minister Boris Johnson shared “the widespread concern about some of the stuff we’re reading at the moment.” “I think it is a good idea in principle that civil servants should be able to engage with business and should have experience of the private sector,” Johnson told lawmakers in the House of Commons. But, he added, “It’s not clear that those boundaries had been properly understood.”
British media began digging into Cameron’s work for Greensill after the company’s collapse forced the owner of Liberty Steel, which employs about 5,000 people, to seek a government bailout. Greensill was one of the company’s key financial backers. News reports have revealed that Cameron sent text messages to Treasury chief Rishi Sunak to secure government-backed loans for Greensill under a program to help companies hurt by the COVID-19 pandemic. He also lobbied Health Secretary Matt Hancock on behalf of a Greensill product that would have allowed healthcare workers to receive advance payments on their salaries.
