Former sleaze watchdog allowed wife to use Commons for lobbying event

Sir Kevin Barron attended breakfast for YMCA Awards but stated he had no relevant interest to declare

THE FORMER head of the Commons sleaze watchdog hosted a lobbying event in the House of Commons for a group run by his wife, The Sunday Telegraph can disclose.

Sir Kevin Barron, then chairman of the standards committee, sponsored a breakfast for YMCA Awards, which routinely lobbies MPs and ministers over skills policy and was led by Lady Andrée Deane-Barron.

Sir Kevin attended the event, along with six other MPs and peers, including the Government’s apprenticeships ambassador.

Sir Kevin stated on an official sponsorship – obtained by this newspaper – that he had no relevant interest to declare. He only declared his wife’s involvement almost a year later, shortly after stepping down from the committee. On Friday his spokesman blamed an “admin error”.

Separately, the MPs’ Code of Conduct states that MPs must register “details of any of their family members involved in lobbying the public sector”. But Lady Deane-Barron’s work, which included running YMCA Awards’ “advocacy strategy”, was not declared on his register of interests until two months ago, a month after he stepped down from the standards watchdog.

The disclosures will raise fresh questions about the system of MPs policing their own conduct. Sir Alistair Graham, the former chairman of the separate Committee on Standards on Public Life, has warned that members of the Commons standards committee need to be “whiter than white”.

Last year The Telegraph revealed that Sir Kevin was among a series of MPs who had sponsored Commons passes

‘An admin error was noticed when the record was published and immediate attempts were made to rectify this’

for spouses involved in lobbying, under a scheme that allows parliamentarians to give their husbands, wives or civil partners access to Parliament.

In 2016 he breached the code of conduct by signing a contract that included a commitment to host events in Parliament. The committee ruled that the breach was “minor” and “inadvertent”, after Sir Kevin said his fees were donated to charity.

The YMCA Awards website states that it works with similar bodies to “lobby on behalf of our stakeholders” – companies that provide training and seek to employ workers with the body’s qualifications.

A photograph posted online shows Lady Deane-Barron addressing the breakfast event in a Commons dining room in Nov 2017, with Sir Kevin sitting two places to her right. She is wearing her parliamentary pass.

Lady Deane-Barron told The Sunday Telegraph the event was to “celebrate” the achievements of YMCA in “apprenticeships and pre-apprenticeships … That’s not lobbying.” But a summary on the YMCA website says the event marked the launch of a “Vanguard Group” intended to build on “enormous successes lobbying policymakers”.

The group hoped that MPs would “reflect upon what they have heard and use the Vanguard Group’s expertise to guide them in creating and influencing policy”.

Lady Deane-Barron was an independent “government affairs consultant” until 2012, with clients from the film and pharmaceutical industries.

Her YMCA role, which began in 2017, included “head[ing] up the advocacy strategy as it relates to external stakeholders, particularly Westminster and Whitehall”. On Friday she said she was no longer a “full-time employee”.

A spokesman for Sir Kevin said: “An admin error regarding the booking form was noticed when the events record was published and immediate attempts were made to rectify this situation. No rules in the Code of Conduct have been broken.”