Daily Mail reports my exposé of gambling minister John Whittingdale MP

1. On 19 August 2021, the Daily Mail newspaper reported my exposé of gambling minister John Whittingdale MP (see 16 August 2021 post).
2. Here’s a copy of the Daily Mail story in its print edition (“What are the odds of that?”): https://dralexmay.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/daily-mail-19-aug-2021.pdf.

The Times reports my exposé of gambling minister John Whittingdale MP

1. On 18 August 2021, The Times newspaper reported my exposé of gambling minister John Whittingdale MP (see 16 August 2021 post).
2. Here’s a copy of the Times story in its print edition (“Lotto minister’s daughter works for Camelot lobbying company”): https://dralexmay.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/the-times-18-aug-2021.pdf.

ASA refers Branshaws ad for magnetic copper bracelet to its Compliance team

1. On 20 July 2021, the Advertising Standards Authority (“ASA”) said in an email that it had referred an ad for a magnetic copper bracelet that appeared in the Daily Mail newspaper on 9 June 2021 (“My Arthritic Pain Has Completely Vanished!”) to its Compliance team, following my complaint to the advertising regulator.
2. The ASA wrote: “We have previously investigated and upheld complaints about the issue that you have highlighted therefore, [sic] we have referred your complaint to our Compliance Team for further action.”
3. The advertiser is Prime Star Shop Limited, which trades as Branshaws (see 15 June 2021 post).
4. Branshaws claims its bracelet alleviates joint pain due to arthritis. However, there’s no credible evidence such bracelets are effective against joint pain.
5. Another problem: the ad separately refers to two reputable institutions: the Whittington Hospital in north London and the University of Southampton.
6. Neither the hospital nor university is happy for Branshaws to use its name in the ad (I asked both institutions in writing). Further, the firm hadn’t sought the permission of either institution to do so.
7. For full details of the case, see 15 June 2021 post (“Arthritis and copper-bottomed nonsense”).

Gambling minister’s daughter works for public affairs firm acting for Camelot

1. The daughter of John Whittingdale MP, the minister for gambling and lotteries since March 2021, works for the public affairs firm acting for Camelot, the commercial company that runs the National Lottery.
2. The latest list of ministers’ interests, dated May 2021, reveals that Mr Whittingdale’s daughter works for Pagefield Communications (“Pagefield”), a public affairs and lobbying firm. The former culture secretary makes the disclosure on the register of MPs’ financial interests, too.
3. Pagefield, sure enough, lists Alice Whittingdale as one of the “practitioners (employed and sub-contracted) conducting PA [public affairs] activities this quarter”, on the current PRCA Public Affairs Board register (from 1 March 2021 until 31 May 2021).
4. There Pagefield discloses Camelot as one of its fee-paying clients. In fact, the operator of the National Lottery is a longstanding Pagefield client. What’s more, Mark Gallagher, founder and owner of Pagefield, used to sit on the “main board” of Camelot “as group corporate affairs and bid campaign director”, according to his profile on the Pagefield website.
5. The current National Lottery licence is due to expire in 2024. In August last year, the Gambling Commission, the gambling regulator set up under the Gambling Act 2005, launched the competition to award the next licence. The competition, the fourth for the National Lottery licence, is ongoing.
6. As well as the National Lottery licence competition, Mr Whittingdale has ministerial responsibility for the government review of the Gambling Act 2005. His predecessor in post, Nigel Huddleston MP, began the review in December 2020 to ensure gambling laws are “fit for the digital age”.
7. Mr Whittingdale as gambling minister has a conflict of interest, actual, potential, or perceived, because his daughter works for the public affairs firm acting for Camelot.
8. The press office at the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport (DCMS) didn’t respond to requests for comment.

The Holocaust Memorial Charitable Trust: where’s the £5m donation?

1. On 29 July 2021, to no one’s surprise, the government finally approved the proposed Holocaust Memorial and Learning Centre in Victoria Tower Gardens, next to parliament in Westminster. It is therefore timely to revisit linked charity The Holocaust Memorial Charitable Trust (“HMCT”), about which I first wrote on 26 June 2019.
2. HMCT, chaired by business leader Gerald Ronson, is a related party to charity The Gerald and Gail Ronson Family Foundation (“GGRFF”) (see 19 July 2019 post).
3. The latest accounts for GGRFF, made up to 31 December 2019, disclose a related-party transaction (p.19): “A further grant of £50k (2018: £5m) was made to The Holocaust Memorial Charitable Trust of which Gerald Ronson CBE is a Trustee.”
4. Meanwhile, the first accounts for HMCT are made up to 31 March 2020. These show HMCT received £200k income in its first financial year.
5. Therefore, the first accounts for HMCT don’t record the alleged £5m grant from GGRFF of 2018. Why not?
6. Accountant Jeremy Trent is contact for both HMCT and GGRFF, according to the public register of charities (see 19 July 2019 post). As previously, both HMCT and GGRFF didn’t respond to requests for comment via Mr Trent.

Charity Commission continues to engage with major Tory donor’s charity that employed Sir John Hayes MP

1. On 11 March 2021, I revealed that the first accounts for a grant-making charity set up and run by a major Tory donor show the charity spent £25k holding a Christmas party in November 2019 – which raised roughly the same amount! In other words, the party actually raised nothing for the charity after costs.
2. The charity, Esharelife Foundation, is of interest for another reason: from 5 January 2019 until 30 June 2019, senior Tory MP Sir John Hayes was “non-executive director”. Sir John was paid £6k per quarter to “promote Esharelife’s charitable work”, which required “an estimated maximum of 1.5 days per month” of the MP for South Holland and The Deepings’ time.
3. The Advisory Committee on Business Appointments (ACOBA) approved the MP’s other job at the charity – seemingly failing to notice the pre-existing association between former transport minister Sir John and Dr Maurizio Bragagni, the business leader who founded and runs Esharelife (see 8 April 2019 post).
4. On 12 June 2021, Dr Bragagni was awarded an OBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List “for business and voluntary political service”.
5. When asked for comment on the findings in my 11 March 2021 post, a spokesperson for the Charity Commission wrote on 5 May 2021: “We have assessed the issues raised in your blog post, and engaged with the charity, and can confirm that we have no regulatory concerns at this time, and will not be taking further action. The charity has made clear that Sir John Hayes has never been paid a salary by the registered CIO, or its predecessor charity.”
6. In a series of emails to the commission, I challenged the accuracy of the information in the final sentence of its original response.
7. I first referred to Sir John’s disclosures on the register of MPs’ financial interests about his other job to “promote Esharelife’s charitable work”. Those disclosures show the employer to be Esharelife, which the MP identifies there as a “charitable foundation”.
8. I then referred to the ACOBA advice letter to Sir John for the other job. There the employer is shown to be Esharelife Limited, which is described as a “charitable foundation”. Now dissolved, Esharelife Limited never had a registered charity number, however. Presumably Esharelife Limited is the “predecessor charity” to which the commission refers.
9. For the above reasons, I challenged the accuracy of the information in the final sentence of the commission’s original response.
10. I finished with my consequent concern that the charity has potentially made false claims to the commission in relation to who paid Sir John to “promote Esharelife’s charitable work”.
11. By reply, a spokesperson for the Charity Commission wrote on 2 June 2021: “Just to note that we’re looking further into the matters you raise. We can’t say more at this stage but I hope to be able to come back to you with more detail in due course.”
12. Having heard nothing, I requested an update exactly six weeks later. In response, a spokesperson for the commission said in an email on 15 July 2021: “I can confirm that we are engaging with the charity to clarify a number of outstanding issues and cannot comment further.”

Lord Vaizey and FTI Consulting appear to breach Public Affairs Code

1. Political lobbyist FTI Consulting lists former culture minister Ed Vaizey (Lord Vaizey) as one of the “practitioners (employed and sub-contracted) conducting PA [public affairs] activities this quarter”, on the current PRCA Public Affairs Board (PAB) register (from 1 March 2021 until 31 May 2021) (screen shot in Figure 1).

Figure 1. FTI Consulting entry on current PRCA Public Affairs Board register: Ed Vaizey (Lord Vaizey) is listed

2. As a member of the House of Lords, Lord Vaizey, who stood down as an MP at the 2019 general election, possesses a parliamentary pass.
3. Nevertheless PAB expressly forbids public affairs practitioners holding a parliamentary pass. Therefore, it appears that both the peer and FTI Consulting have breached para 15 of PAB’s Public Affairs Code.
4. What’s more, para 9 of the Public Affairs Code stipulates that PAB “members must not employ any MP, MEP, Member of the House of Lords, or any member of the Scottish Parliament or Senedd Cymru or the Northern Ireland Assembly or the London Assembly to conduct public affairs in any capacity”.
5. Then there’s a second problem. Lord Vaizey ceased being a paid “adviser” to FTI Consulting as of 31 January 2021, according to the register of lords’ interests.
6. Yet the current PAB register, which covers from 1 March 2021 until 31 May 2021, shows the peer as active in public affairs on behalf of FTI Consulting.
7. Why the discrepancy between the register of lords’ interests and the current PAB register?
8. Lauren Haywood, contact for FTI Consulting on the current PAB register, didn’t respond to requests for comment. Nor did Lord Vaizey at his parliamentary email address.