So just who did Air Miles Eddie get his £200k from?

NO SOONER has Eddie Lister been made the Prime Minister’s envoy for the Gulf and ‘special projects’ than I can reveal a potential conflict of interest.

What’s more, Lister, who became a lord in November, has also broken parliamentary rules by failing to declare his own special project in the register of outside interests.

New peers are meant to declare them within a month of taking their seat but Lister’s entry remains blank three months in and counting. Which means we have no idea what our special envoy’s company, Edward Lister Consultants, does and, more importantly, for whom?

The firm, set up in 2016, has no website and no other employees, but a near-£200,000 cash pot, according to its latest accounts. But that’s where the transparency so essential for effective democracy ends.

Last night, Baron Udny- Lister refused to answer questions about his company, its clients and whether they include foreign governments, namely China and the Gulf states. His past tells us that ‘Air Miles Eddie’, the nickname he acquired based on expense claims while righthand man to Mayor Boris of London, was popular with some of the world’s leading human rights violators.

At City Hall, he declared gifts and hospitality from the Emir of Qatar, the president of Azerbaijan and a Saudi prince currently detained on corruption charges. Lister’s silence risks making a mockery of efforts to tighten antiquated transparency rules for the House of Lords.

Only recently, all peers have been required to declare how much they are paid by foreign governments or state-backed companies. It beggars belief that people on a foreign power’s payroll can still have a legislative role in Parliament – or even get a government job.

Take Lord Maude, who runs Francis Maude Associates (FMA), a consultancy founded to advise foreign governments. The former Tory minister went back to the Cabinet Office as an adviser – while refusing to disclose which foreign states FMA continues to service.

A RECORD number of Hong Kong nationals fleeing repression in China last year qualified to be fast-tracked for British citizenship. A Freedom of Information Act r equest about t he Home Office’s British National Overseas (BNO) passport applications from Hong Kon g reveals 316,980 approvals in 2020, almost doubling the total number of BNO holders and giving them access to a new visa scheme. In 2018, just 17,676 were approved.