Tory MPs are sitting on controversial Westminster pressure groups while also being paid thousands of pounds from ‘vested interests’ in the same industries, Daily Mail analysis has found.
The backbenchers run the risk of accusations of lobbying by the back door.
They hold often lucrative advisory roles with major businesses while also helping run unofficial parliamentary bodies that promote the same sectors.
It has heightened concerns that All-Party Parliamentary Groups (APPGs) are the next controversy in the wake of the Owen Paterson sleaze lobbying saga and Sir Geoffrey Cox’s £5.5million second career as a barrister. There are almost 750 APPGs devoted to everything from individual countries to industries and sports, which try to get ministers to attend their events then take up their causes.
It has heightened concerns that All-Party Parliamentary Groups (APPGs) are the next controversy in the wake of the Owen Paterson sleaze lobbying saga and Sir Geoffrey Cox’s (pictured) £5.5million second career as a barrister
Some MPs and peers sit on dozens of them and they are allowed to host meetings in Westminster rooms and produce official-looking reports to influence Government policy.
Yet the groups have no formal status and can be funded by private companies, trade bodies or even foreign governments.
The Committee on Standards is already investigating APPGs and has been sent evidence by campaigners that some are a ‘front’ for lobbyists to gain access to ministers while others are being used by corrupt regimes to give a false veneer of legitimacy.
Now the Mail has found that at least ten Conservative MPs who are chairmen or vice-chairmen of APPGs are also being paid or receiving free trips and tickets from organisations within the same sectors.
Among them is a former Cabinet minister who is paid £15,000 a year for advising a private hire business and who joined an APPG for the taxi industry just months afterwards.
Now the Mail has found that at least ten Conservative MPs who are chairmen or vice-chairmen of APPGs are also being paid or receiving free trips and tickets from organisations within the same sectors (file image)
Among them is a former Cabinet minister who is paid £15,000 a year for advising a private hire business and who joined an APPG for the taxi industry just months afterwards (file image)
One MP who is chairman of the Packaging Manufacturing Industry APPG also receives £30,000-a-year to be chairman of the Food Service Packaging Association.
Another who is a paid adviser to the Betting and Gaming Council is also chairman of the racing and bloodstock APPG.
While they are not breaking any rules, campaigners say that the coming crackdown on outside earnings should see MPs no longer allowed to sit on interest groups if they are also paid by the same industries. Sir Alistair Graham, chairman of the committee on standards in public life from 2003 to 2007, said: ‘This just shows that all-party parliamentary groups are very often totally controlled and dominated by interested parties outside of parliament rather than MPs themselves.
‘I think it’s a very unregulated area that needs tightening up.’
On the involvement of industry bodies who regularly finance APPGs and act as their point of contact, he added: ‘I don’t think it’s right.
‘They are not then genuinely cross-parliamentary groups, they are add-ons to industry associations where they can seek to influence public policy because that’s the only reason they are providing money – to seek to control their interests.’
Director of reform group Unlock Democracy Tom Brake said: ‘I struggle to understand how MPs who are prominent on APPGs representing sectors of industry are not lobbying on behalf of those sectors.
‘Their whole purpose is to promote a particular cause or sector and that happens by writing to government ministers, inviting them to speak at meetings.’
He said it was a ‘murky area’ and had drawn it to the attention of the Commons Committee on Standards, which is carrying out an inquiry into APPGs.
In written evidence to the committee inquiry into APPGs, campaign group Transparency International said: ‘It is possible organisations are using this privileged access to MPs and the ability to book rooms within the parliamentary estate, as a way of impressing clients and at the very least appearing to influence the views of parliamentarians.’
In written evidence Lord Evans, the former MI5 chief and current chairman of the committee on standards in public life, wrote: ‘APPGs come with the badge of parliamentary branding, and it is therefore likely that members of the public would assume that APPGs’ activity is led solely by their MPs.
‘However, APPGs are often funded and staffed by external organisations, leaving them vulnerable to the accusation that they provide official “cover” for private sector interests.’
He added: ‘Involvement in APPGs must not operate on a “pay to play” basis, where those who provide financial and/or secretarial support gain privileged access at the exclusion of others.’
From racing to taxis, who’s hitched a ride
THE EX-MINISTER WHO CAN ALWAYS HAIL A CAB
Alun Cairns
MP for Glamorgan
Vice-chairman of the APPG on taxis
Former Welsh Secretary Alun Cairn
Former Welsh S`ecretary Alun Cairns joined an APPG for the taxi industry just months after becoming an adviser to a major minicab firm.
The ex -Welsh Secretary is paid £15,000 a year for providing ‘strategic advice’ to Veezu, Britain’s biggest private hire business, under a deal agreed in September last year.
He was told by the watchdog that monitors the revolving door between politics and government – the Advisory Committee on Business Appointments – that he must ‘not become personally involved in lobbying the UK or Welsh Government on behalf of Veezu’.
But in January this year he became a Vice-Chairman of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Taxis, whose purpose is to ‘promote the interests of the taxi trade in parliament’. The APPG’s secretariat received £40,000 this year in funding from taxi firms and the Licensed Taxi Drivers’ Association union for cabbies.
Minutes of its Annual General Meeting, at which Mr Cairns was one of ten MPs elected as an officer of the group, state ‘it was firmly agreed among all attendees that a strong push for the long-overdue taxis legislation would be
