David Lammy hands taxpayer-funded Foreign Office job to Labour donor

FOREIGN Secretary David Lammy has given a taxpayer-funded position to one of his political donors.

The top Labour MP has given the role of non-executive director at the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office to Karen Blackett, a former UK president of advertising and communications giant WPP.

Blackett donated £5000 to Lammy’s office ahead of the 2024 General Elections, Adam Ramsay and Peter Geoghegan reported on the Democracy for Sale substack.

According to a job listing from the Foreign Office posted late last year, non-executive directors can expect remuneration of £15,000 to £20,000 per annum for around 20 days of work.

Blackett and Lammy co-founded the Black Equity Organisation in 2021, a charity on which she still sits on the board of trustees.

The Foreign Office said her appointment was "part of a fair and open public recruitment campaign which fully adhered to the governance code on public appointments".

Her UK Government profile mentions the donation to Lammy, as well as the fact that she has "interviewed Rachel Reeves MP twice: Onstage at The Business Engagement Day of The Labour Party Conference in September 2024, and in May 2025 for the Thirty Club of London".

Carla Denyer, the co-leader of the Green Party, said that Lammy had “serious questions to answer about how Blackett came to be appointed and whether any assessment was done of how her previous job, as the president of the PR firm with the most fossil fuel industry clients in the world, might conflict with the FCDO’s role in tackling the climate crisis”.

Last year, the Civil Service Commission – an independent body which regulates appointments to the Civil Service – launched a review when several people with close links to the Labour Party were hired outside of normal processes after the General Election in July.

Foreign Secretary David Lammy (Image: PA) Ian Corfield, who has donated more than £20,000 to Labour politicians in the last decade, was one of the appointments to be scrutinised. He was initially made a temporary director of investment at the Treasury, but the role became unpaid after backlash.

Labour also faced criticism for hiring Jess Sargeant, who previously worked for the Labour Together think tank before she took a role in the Cabinet Office, and Emily Middleton, a consultant who was named a director general in the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, and worked closely with Science Secretary Peter Kyle in the months before the election.

After accusations of cronyism, the Civil Service Commission’s chief, Gisela Stuart, said in a letter to top civil servant Simon Case she was “largely satisfied” with how different departments had handled the requests.