David Cameron is once again being probed by the lobbying watchdog over whether he should have registered as a consultant lobbyist, it was reported last night
The Office of the Registrar of Consultant Lobbyists confirmed it was investigating the Tory former Prime Minister, according to the Financial Times.
The regulator said it was “in relation to potential unregistered consultant lobbying”, and the paper said an inquiry began around August 2.
It comes after claims earlier earlier this year that the ex-Conseravtive leader, who quit Downing Street in July 2016 following the Brexit referendum, lobbied the then Vaccines Minister Nadhim Zahawi and the then Health Secretary, Matt Hancock, on behalf of US biotech firm Illumina.
Mr Cameron has worked as a paid adviser for Illumnia since 2019.
Open Democracy reported in July that the ex-PM met Mr Zahawi less than two months before Illumina won £870,000 of contracts over genome sequencing from Public Health England.
In August, the Times reported that in April 2019 Mr Cameron lobbied Mr Hancock regarding a multimillion pound contract with a company owned by the Department of Health.
Under rules drawn-up in 2014, when Mr Cameron was in No10, people and organisations that lobby ministers or permanent secretaries on behalf of clients are required to register with the regulator.
It comes after Mr Cameron was blasted earlier this year over his lobbying of Treasury ministers and officials on behalf of supply chain finance firm Greensill Capital, for which he worked.
In the aftermath of the scandal, he said: “As a former Prime Minister, I accept that communications with government need to be done through only the most formal of channels.”
A Department of Health spokesman told the FT the 2019 contract was a follow-on deal to an 2014 sequencing contract with Illumina.
“[It] was awarded in the correct way, through the proper process and any suggestion of undue ministerial involvement in the decision making is completely wrong,” the ministry added.
A Government spokeswoman told the Mirror: “This contract, signed to help save lives through better diagnosis, was awarded in the correct way, through the proper process and any suggestion of undue ministerial involvement in the decision making is completely wrong."
She added: “Extensive due diligence was carried out and as set out in the transparency notice the contact was directly awarded because Illumina was the only company considered to have the technical capability to deliver this crucial work.
“The 2019 contract was a follow-on contract to the original sequencing contract with Illumina in 2014 and the company’s expertise is being used to help the government rollout the world’s first whole genome sequencing programme to better diagnose patients with rare disease and certain cancers.”
