Tory lobbied for Russian’s company after £10k donation

A TORY MP has been ordered to apologise for breaking parliamentary rules by asking a question in the Commons that ‘sought to benefit’ a company that had given him £10,000.

David Morris asked the question and sent a follow-up email to the Business Secretary relating to energy firm Aquind – owned by a Russian-born oil and gas tycoon.

It came shortly after the company had donated the five-figure sum to Mr Morris.

MPs are prohibited from lobbying for financial or material benefit for a person or organisation from whom they have received a donation in the previous six months. Mr Morris had accepted the £10,000 from the firm in September last year. But then in the Commons in October he asked for energy watchdog Ofgem to make regulations to ‘protect’ companies such as Aquind through a regulatory regime.

An inquiry ruled the MP for Morecambe and Lunesdale had inadvertently breached the code of conduct. The report by the parliamentary commissioner for standards, Kathryn Stone, concluded that Mr Morris’s question ‘sought to confer a financial or material benefit on the company’.

The standards committee recommended that Mr Morris apologise to the House of Commons by means of a personal statement.

Viktor Fedotov, a former executive at the Russian oil and gas giant Lukoil, has owned Aquind since February last year. The firm’s donation to a Tory MP is entirely legal and Mr Fedotov is not accused of any wrongdoing.

‘Inadvertently breached the code’