Lord faces suspension for taking cash from firm he lobbied for

Last Updated: December 19, 2022By Tags: , , , , , , , ,

Not a backhander: in fact, Lord Shrewsbury seems to have been open in his dealings with the government and the firm for which he was lobbying. But the activity was not permitted and he should have known.

Crossbench peer Lord Shrewsbury may be suspended from the House of Lords for nine months after he was paid £57,000 after lobbying for the government to buy a firm’s products during the Covid-19 crisis.

What about the Tory peer who (allegedly) took £29 million under similar circumstances, then?

According to the BBC,

The Earl of Shrewsbury was found by the Lords Conduct Committee to have approached ministers on behalf of a company marketing Covid-19 sanitiser products, which he worked for.

The committee recommended he should be suspended for nine months, which is subject to a vote by the upper house.

He was paid £57,000 by healthcare company SpectrumX for his work as a consultant over a period of 19 months between 2020 and 2022.

In 2020, at the height of the Covid pandemic, the firm was seeking regulatory approval for products including hand sanitisers and a walk-in disinfectant tunnel.

The peer approached ministers, including then-Health Secretary Matt Hancock to promote the company’s tunnel in return for a £3,000 monthly retainer, the committee’s report found.

He referred himself to the commissioner following allegations about his conduct in relation to the company in the Sunday Times.

Dare we hope that this recommendation indicates the direction of travel for members of either House of Parliament who are found to have broken lobbying rules in such a way – with an increasingly-severe scale of penalties for those found to have broken the rules, depending on the amount of money they took and the effectiveness (or lack of the same) of the product they were touting?

That would be useful with regard to that other case, mentioned above.

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3 Comments

  1. Roger Gough December 20, 2022 at 12:07 am - Reply

    Nothing will change. When Cameron left office he warned that ‘the next scandal will be that of lobbying’.

  2. stainglass44 December 20, 2022 at 9:53 am - Reply

    GOOD HE SHOULD BE

  3. El Dee December 21, 2022 at 9:03 am - Reply

    It’s almost as if every COVID contract Boris oversaw was done so that a Tory could get a bung and that the Tory party is inherently corrupt..

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