Ex-minister told lies about drug firm job
PM BORIS Johnson faces a fresh lobbying scandal after a former health minister apparently broke rules and lied about a £200-anhour role for a drug company.
The firm was later handed a Covid-19 testing contract worth £100,000.
Winchester MP Stephen Brine started raking in £1,600 a month giving “strategic advice” to Sigma pharmaceuticals, just months after quitting as Public Health Minister in March 2019.
Mr Brine repeatedly claimed on the public Register of Members’ Interests that he’d been given the green light to take the job by
Parliament’s revolving-door watchdog.
But the Sunday
Mirror can reveal he broke the Ministerial
Code by not consulting them until after he had brazenly started working for the firm.
Mr Johnson still faces party infighting and plunging poll numbers over his botched response to the Owen Paterson lobbying scandal.
Mr Brine quietly quit his job at Sigma on November 22, after the Prime Minister vowed to ban MPs from “exploiting their positions” with consultancy jobs.
Ex-ministers must consult watchdog the Advisory Committee on Business Appointments before taking any job within two years of leaving government. But an ACOBA spokesman told the Sunday Mirror it had refused to give Mr Brine advice on the job because he only contacted the watchdog after starting work for Sigma.
Labour deputy leader Angela Rayner last night wrote to ACOBA chairman Lord Pickles, asking him to clarify the “troubling” situation.
She told the Sunday Mirror:
“It takes quite the brass neck to apparently use the cover of the
Business Appointments process when there has been no decision, and no approval.
“Steve Brine has been making a mockery of the system while making over £200 an hour to advise a pharmaceutical company. This is why we need the clarity of a ban on second jobs for MPs, so this can’t go on any longer.”
Mr Brine told the Sunday Mirror: “I am going to look into this with the House authorities, at the earliest opportunity, and make sure everything is in order. I am grateful for your bringing it to my attention.”
Mr Brine already faced questions over a meeting he attended in February between Sigma and the then-vaccines minister Nadhim Zahawi.
Two months later the firm was awarded a £100,000 Government contract to supply Covid-19 tests to pharmacies.
But both the firm and Mr
Brine deny he acted as a lobbyist, and insist he played no role in the deal.
Approached about the meeting last month, Bharat Shah, the founder of Sigma, also said Mr Brine was an adviser and not a lobbyist. He said Mr Brine “was not involved with or had any knowledge of” the lateral flow test contract.
There’s no suggestion of any wrongdoing by Sigma.
The Ministerial Code states: “Former ministers must ensure that no new appointments are announced, or taken up, before the Committee has been able to provide its advice.”
And ACOBA’s guidance for ex-ministers states: “A retrospective application is one where an appointment or employment has been taken up or announced before the Committee has provided its full and final advice. This is a breach of the government’s rules.”