At least 10 Sunak ministers retain roles as private company directors
At least 10 of Rishi Sunak’s ministers have been allowed to keep their roles as directors of private companies while serving in government after getting special permission to retain their business interests.
Among those to carry on with directorships are Dominic Johnson, a senior business and trade minister who is director of an investment company with more than £4m of assets; and Chris Philp, a senior Home Office minister who is also director of an investment company and a partner in the property firm Pluto.
The directorships were disclosed in the new register of ministerial interests at a time when senior Conservatives serving in government appear increasingly reluctant to give up their business links, with less than two years before another election. Allowing ministers increasingly to stay on as directors is a departure from precedent. They would normally be expected to give the roles up on taking office.
Viscount Camrose, a hereditary peer and minister in the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, was allowed to retain directorships in five investment companies, while Lord Callahan, an energy minister, is the director of his own consultancy.
Tom Tugendhat, a Home Office minister, declared a directorship of a consultancy that he said he was winding up, while Lord Markham, a health minister since September, remains part-owner of a private Covid testing company despite having repeatedly said he was in the process of divesting his stake. He is also director of two other companies.
The list of ministerial interests also shows that Andrew Griffith, a Treasury minister with responsibility for new regulation of controversial cryptocurrencies, is an investor in Brent Hoberman’s Firstminute Capital LLP, a seed investor
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