Photograph: Olivier Hoslet/EPA
Britain’s former EU commissioner Lord Hill of Oareford is facing calls for an inquiry after taking up six roles with multinational companies since leaving office.
Hill, a former leader of the upper house who resigned as an EU commissioner after the Brexit referendum in June 2016, now works for the Swiss bank UBS, the insurer Aviva, the Spanish energy company Iberdrola, the accountancy firm Deloitte, the legal firm Freshfields and Times Newspapers.
Transparency campaigners have written to the European commission claiming there are potential conflicts of interest involving four of the positions, which have not been assessed by the body’s ethics committee.
They claim there is an overlap between Hill’s former responsibilities in the commission and the policy interests of UBS; and that there is potential overlap with his roles at Aviva, Iberdrola and Deloitte, which cannot be assessed because there is little public information about his new jobs.
In response, Lord Hill said he has at all times followed the rules set out by the commission and has chosen to work rather than receive generous allowances from the EU taxpayer.
The allegations come as the government and European institutions face further pressure to clamp down on former ministers and civil servants who want to take up roles in the private sector that may allow them to exploit their EU contacts.
Former ministers have taken a number of lucrative roles related to European affairs since Brexit.
William Hague has joined Citigroup’s Brexit client transition unit, Francis Maude joined Covington and Burling, the former chancellor George Osborne joined Blackrock to advise on, among other topics, “European politics”, and David Cameron’s former press chief Sir Craig Oliver moved on to the lobby firm Teneo.
Hill, 57, who is public school and Cambridge educated, was elevated to the peerage in 2010 by his long-term ally Cameron before taking up a role as the academies minister under Michael Gove.
His commission appointment in 2014 followed a career in lobbying and public relations. He worked for Lowe Bell Communications, Quiller Consultants, Bell Pottinger and Huntsworth, a listed PR firm.
Hill, who wished to remain in the EU, was the commissioner for financial stability, financial services and capital markets union. He resigned two days after the EU referendum, saying: “What is done cannot be undone and now we have to get on with making our new relationship with Europe work.”
The campaign and research group Corporate Europe Observatory has written to the commission’s president, Jean-Claude Juncker, calling for “an urgent conflict of interest assessment” of Hill’s jobs by the commission’s ethics committee.
Margarida Silva, a campaigner at the organisation, has claimed that Hill’s new role as a senior adviser for the Swiss bank UBS creates serious risks of conflicts of interest.
Hill is advising UBS corporate clients on Brexit, according to an announcement by the bank in May. A memo sent to staff by the firm’s head of corporate client solutions said Hill would “offer richer advice in relation to Brexit and the wider political and economic environment to our CCS clients”.
Silva wrote that the overlap between the policy interests of UBS and Hill’s former policy portfolio were self-evident. “We fear that this role is not compliant with the former commissioner’s responsibility to act with integrity and discretion,” she said.
Silva also wants the commission to investigate Hill’s roles at Iberdrola, Deloitte and Aviva, noting that Aviva is an active EU lobbyist which is declared on parliament’s website. “There is no publicly available information regarding the start date or the content of these roles,” she said.
When Hill left his position, outgoing commissioners were expected to inform the commission within 18 months if they intended to take up a new job. This would then be assessed by a three-person ethics committee.
In March, the EU ombudsman, Emily O’Reilly, ruled that former commissioners were to be bound indefinitely by the duty to act with integrity and discretion as according to the treaty on the functioning of the European Union (TFEU).
It followed severe criticism of the commission over the decision to allow its former head José Manuel Barroso to take up a potential lobbying job with Goldman Sachs.
In response, Juncker introduced a new code of conduct for senior officials, extending the cooling-off period to two years for ex-commissioners and three for a former president.
In a statement, Lord Hill said: “I have at all times followed the rules set out by the commission, so obviously anything I have taken on has either been approved by the commission – and recorded in the public domain – or happened after the 18-month cut-off which applied in my case.
“More generally, I could have chosen to keep on receiving the generous transitional allowance funded by the European taxpayer. Instead, I chose to work, and provided I follow the rules, which I have in full, I think that is the better course of action.”
