Ex-Minister is urged to quit the Lords over £6m-a-year links to Russian energy f irm
A FORMER Tory Energy Minister must quit his job for a Russian energy giant and resign from the House of Lords, the Defence Secretary has said.
Lord (Greg) Barker has earned up to £6million a year as executive chairman of aluminium giant EN+, which boasts sanctioned oligarch Oleg Deripaska as a major shareholder. Lord Barker retains his seat in the House of Lords while working full-time for the company.
Ben Wallace told The Mail on Sunday that Lord Barker must sever ties with the Russian company and quit the House of Lords for good.
Mr Wallace also called on the Tory peer to ‘explain why he works with people like Deripaska’.
The Cabinet Minister’s intervention will pile further pressure on Lord Barker as well as raise questions about peers’ links to Russia.
Last week politicians across Europe resigned from their roles on Russian companies following Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.
Esko Aho, the former prime minister of Finland, quit the board of Russian bank Sberbank, and Matteo Renzi, Italy’s ex-prime minister, walked away from his role at Delimobil, Russia’s largest carsharing service.
Asked whether Lord Barker should follow suit and either quit EN+ or quit his seat in the House of Lords, Mr Wallace said: ‘He should quit all of them.’ He added: ‘I think Lord Barker should explain why he works with people like Deripaska.’
In 2018, Mr Wallace, then Security Minister, refused a meeting with Lord Barker who he said was ‘requesting government assistance for Russian associates’.
It led to the House of Lords’ Commissioner for Standards launching an investigation into the peer, who was cleared of any wrongdoing.
Lord Barker was the Conservative MP for Bexhill & Battle until 2015 and served as Energy Minister
in David Cameron’s government. The peer joined EN+ in 2017, just before the company’s London listing.
The United States introduced sanctions against EN+ in 2018, but these were dropped after Mr Deripaska gave up his controlling stake. He retained a 44.95 per cent shareholding. At the time a spokesman for Lord Barker said the US Treasury decided to remove the sanctions from EN+ Group because of the ‘unprecedented and sweeping corporate governance and ownership changes that Lord Barker oversaw and the consequent removal from control of the group of Oleg Deripaska’.
When Lord Barker was made executive chairman of the aluminium giant in 2019, he took a voluntary ‘leave of absence’ from the House of Lords.
Controversial leave-of-absence rules allow peers to take openended breaks while keeping their titles, use Lords facilities and even use Lords stationery.
They cannot vote or speak and do not have to register their outside interests.
Peers and MPs have described the system as a ‘loophole’ that allows peers to ‘keep almost all of the perks while simply not having to declare [interests]’.
Cross-party politicians have called for the leave-of-absence rules to be scrapped.
In 2020, Lord Barker earned £2.98million including pay and bonuses from EN+, and in 2019 his remuneration package was £6million, according to the company’s accounts.
Last week Labour MP Chris Bryant also called on Lord Barker to cut his ties with the Russian business following the invasion of Ukraine.
Mr Bryant said anything else was ‘granting tacit consent to the criminal invasion’. EN+ was approached for comment.
‘Granting tacit consent to the criminal invasion’