Cameron cutie bags ‘revolving door’ top job at £1.5bn IT firm

THE controversial erng revolving door between n Whitehall and business has turned again.

After amassing ‘tens of millions’ as an executive of Google and Facebook, American-born ‘ Cameron Cutie’ Joanna Shields (pictured) che was plucked from the private sector by ex-PM David avid Cameron to become his adviser dviser on the digital economy and was ennobled as Baroness Shields of Maida Vale in 2014. But fewer than four years y later, Lady Shields has shed the ermine-edged robes rob of the House of Lords to return to the private sector se and become CEO of BenevolentAI, a £1.5 billion i London start-up. She has just taken up a full-time paid role with her new employer which harnesses ha artificial intelligence ge to help discover new drugs dru to treat diseases such as Parkinson’s. Pa The baroness, who stepped down from fro her government role last year, once helped raise $400,000 in a single evening for Barack Obama

during his first presidential campaign at a soiree held for supporters at the Notting Hill home of Elisabeth Murdoch.

While she will no longer attend sittings in the Lords and can’t claim a daily allowance of up to £300, she has not ruled out a return to the Upper House one day.

‘To go out and do this [as CEO of BenevolentAI] and invest my time 100 per cent knowing one day I will go back into the Lords in an active status is why that institution is so powerful,’ she says.

Perhaps she is getting out in time. A petition demanding a referendum on the abolition of the House of Lords has comfortably passed the 100,000 signatures required for it to be debated in Parliament.

Peers have been accused of frustrating the result of the EU referendum after the Government faced rebellions on Brexit legislation in the upper house.

Shields, 55, who arrived in London as a single mother with a one-yearold son well over a decade ago, declined to accept a salary throughout her time working for the Government. Once spoken of as a potential Conservative mayoral candidate for London, she now shares her life with Andy Stevenson, sporting director of Force India Formula One team.