The army of private sector secondees who helped Labour win

Private firms have given Labour £1.8m worth of secondments and pro-bono work since 2022. What do they get in return?

Welcome to the first edition of Dark Arts under a Labour government. Is the sky not bluer? The air not warmer? Is the sweet sound of birdsong not now even more beautiful? Etc etc.

A couple of weeks back I shared a piece of work that has been months in the making. Lovebombed by lobbyists: How Labour became the party of Big Business was the culmination of some of the reporting that has appeared in these newsletters and much more beyond. It highlights the mammoth lobbying effort that has taken place almost completely out of view over the past 18 months, as powerful interests attempted to shape Labour’s platform in anticipation of the party forming a government. 

Dark Arts would like to think it was a pretty comprehensive piece of investigative journalism. But it’s important to highlight what wasn’t in that piece. To borrow a concept from former US secretary of defence Donald Rumsfeld, within this huge lobbying effort were known knowns, known unknowns and unknown unknowns. We know about hundreds of the meetings that have taken place between frontbenchers and lobbyists, and we know things were discussed at these meetings that we do not know about. But because our investigation was, for the most part, reliant on a wide range of open-source data, we do not know how many meetings have taken place that we don’t know about – nevermind who was there, or what was said. 

So, with that in mind, now that the election is over and the stakes aren’t quite so high, a request of Labour staffers and/or lobbyists: get in touch and help us fill in the gaps. You can gloat about the many meetings Dark Arts wasn’t able to squirrel out, or dish the dirt on what went on inside some of the meetings we did. We, of course, won’t reveal your identity (unless you’re into that kind of thing). As ever, I’m on ethan.shone@opendemocracy.net – and I’m now also a fully fledged member of the Westminster press gallery and have been known to trade drinks for intel.

This week’s top story looks in detail at the many private sector firms that sent members of staff to work for Labour at significant cost to themselves — but keep reading beyond that for details on all the lobbyist MPs who’ve entered parliament, how the new pensions minister lobbied Labour about pensions last year, and more.

Labour’s corporate staffer army

One interesting feature of Labour’s operating model in the past couple of years has been utilising a large number of secondees: workers employed by (and paid by) private companies or think tanks who are sent to work for the party. These staffers develop policy, help the party engage with business and advise on campaigning. Dark Arts has asked every firm that has provided Labour with a staffer the all-important question: how do you expect to benefit from this arrangement? We’re yet to receive an answer – funny that. 

There have been multiple references to some of these secondees in these pages and elsewhere, but Dark Arts felt it worthwhile to highlight the full extent of this practice. 

Labour has received more than £1.8m worth of secondments and pro-bono work since 2022. More than 20 individuals have been sent from private companies to work in various positions in the party’s HQ and the offices of its senior figures, including leader Keir Starmer, new chancellor Rachel Reeves and new business secretary Jonathan Reynolds.  

Four lobbying firms provided members of staff during that time. Dark Arts believes this practice shouldn’t be allowed for any party, due to the obvious potential for serious conflicts of interest. There’s a question to be raised about secondments from private companies in general, but it’s particularly hard to understand how the rules allow them for public affairs firms, which have an obvious interest in pushing the agendas of their clients, including those who we don’t know about. 

For six months between September 2022 and March 2023, lobbying firm Weber Shandwick had a staffer working for Anneliese Dodds. At the time, Dodds was the shadow equalities minister, as well as the party chair and, crucially, the chair of the party’s National Policy Review – a role that put her at the heart of the early work on Labour’s policy platform. Another lobbyist, Lowick Group, put a member of staff in Reynolds’ office for a month in late 2022, while Peter Mandelson’s Global Counsel sent a staffer into the team of Tulip Siddiq, then the shadow economic secretary to the Treasury, between November last year and April. FGS Global also managed to get one of its senior members of staff into Reeves’ office for a few months immediately prior to the election. Specialist hydrogen lobbying outfit Beyond2050 has given the party around £18,000 in staff costs. 

Collectively, these arrangements were valued at more than £120,000. But with the companies having clients such as JP Morgan, Offshore Energies UK, News UK, Serco, KKR, Taylor Wimpey, the Bank of America and Palantir, that figure may be little more than pocket change to them. 

Reynolds and Siddiq were popular choices for other firms looking to second members of staff – perhaps unsurprisingly given how influential their briefs are to big businesses and, in Siddiq’s case, the financial services sector. NatWest spent just over £15,000 to provide Reynolds with a staffer for a few months, while a well-known former Labour adviser who joined HSBC from lobbying firm Portland in 2021 was sent back to work for the party at a cost of more than £73,000 for the bank. 

Oliver Wyman, the financial consultancy that has forged close ties with Labour in the past 18 months, spent more than £58,000 providing a member of staff to Siddiq’s office. The firm has just been contracted to advise Reeves’ National Wealth Taskforce, which will mobilise expensive private capital to fund infrastructure and green investment. The value of the deal is unknown at present, but watch this space. 

Rapidly rising Labour MP Darren Jones, who is tasked with checking the sums on all policy proposals before they reach the desk of his Treasury boss, Reeves, has also proved a popular choice. He received a staff member from both consultancy Baringa and major construction advisory firm Arup – both of whom had parliamentary passes from November up until the election.

Arup’s staffer helped Jones’ office to run a high-profile review into major infrastructure projects that, among other things, asked big corporations “are there any regulatory changes or policy recommendations that you believe would be beneficial to accelerate investment and delivery?” The results of this consultation are yet to be made public – don’t hold your breath. 

Big consultancies have also very much been in on the act. PriceWaterhouseCooper has provided Labour with more than £205,000 worth of pro-bono work in the past few years, while Ernst and Young has given the party more than £305,000 and had a member of staff working in the new prime minister’s team for several months, as a parliamentary pass holder. For most of the past year, Starmer’s team also included a staffer from City consultant Grant Thornton, at a cost to the firm of £57,000. 

While these consultants are not lobbyists, to Dark Arts’ eye there is a similar risk of conflicts of interest arising. Like lobbyists, they have private sector clients that could benefit significantly from insider knowledge and whose interests the consultant may well find themselves advocating for while working Labour. IT consultancy Public Digital has also provided a staffer, as has Faculty AI, an AI firm favoured by Dom Cummings that has worked closely with the Tony Blair Institute on policy development.

And then, as ever, there’s Labour Together. 

Both in terms of value and number of staff, Labour Together has been the biggest contributor, providing around a dozen members of staff to nine senior party figures: Rachel Reeves, Yvette Cooper, David Lammy, Angela Rayner, Darren Jones, Louise Haigh, Shabana Mahmood, Ian Murray and Nick Thomas-Symonds. Total value: more than £565,000.

As Labour Together is, notionally, a think-tank – albeit one that does policy work for Labour and has close links with the party’s leadership – there is a distinction to be made between those it seconds and those brought in from the private sector. That said, unlike the private sector secondees – who all appear to have gone back to their employers now – Dark Arts’ contacts have suggested that many of the Labour Together staffers may find their way into advisory roles in government. Unlike most of the firms approached by Dark Arts, Labour Together did not respond when asked whether any of their secondees would take up such roles. 

So who are these staffers? You will be shocked to learn that they include two individuals who joined Labour Together directly from lobbying firms: the former head of transport at Flint Global who worked in new transport secretary Louise Haigh’s office, and the former director of geopolitics at Global Counsel who worked with the new foreign secretary, David Lammy.

So, when thinking about whose interests that the Labour Party now represents, it is perhaps worth considering this: all in all, private companies sent more than 25 members of staff or provided pro-bono work to the party in the last couple of years — plus Labour Together’s dozen or so. By comparison, throughout this period Labour brought in one member of staff from TULO, the official bridging organisation between Labour and the trade union movement, who worked in Rayner’s office for three months on the workers’ rights package.

From TheCity to the Treasury: lobbyist MPs enter government 

A big welcome to Westminster to the 35 lobbyist MPs who won election last week. Two Liberal Democrats, two Tories and a whopping 31 Labour MPs come to Parliament straight from the public affairs industry. Regular Dark Arts readers may recognise some names: Anna Turley and Blair McDougall of Arden Strategies both won their seats for Labour, as did two of Hanbury’s five candidates, Chris Ward and Joe Morris.

All the MPs that Dark Arts revealed as having been involved in private client briefings with Labour frontbenchers – James Frith (Atticus Partners), Polly Billington (Hanover), Jack Abbott (PLMR) and Gregor Poynton (Headland) – also won seats at the election. Commiserations to Kevin Craig, Abbott’s boss at PLMR, who lost both Labour’s support (after betting against himself) and then the election. On the bright side, though, he goes back to work with even closer ties to the party and £100,000+ richer after it returned his donations. All in all, not a bad result, really.  

If you’d like to know whether your new MP is one of the lobbyists that made it, search their name or your constituency in our database, here.

As is to be expected, the vast majority of the new intake will be on the backbenches, with a couple of notable exceptions. Turley has been made a whip and Keir Mather, a former public affairs bod at business lobbying group CBI, an assistant whip. Ward will be a PPS (basically a parliamentary aide) for Starmer; a natural fit maybe – given his previous roles as an adviser to the new-PM – and a boon for any of his old colleagues or clients at Hanbury. Returning MP Mary Creagh, who worked for Lexington up until the election, was announced as a junior minister in the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.

The most interesting case, though, is that of Emma Reynolds, who represented Wolverhampton North East from 2010 to 2019 and held a handful of shadow ministerial roles across multiple departments during that time. Reynolds has returned to Parliament – this time as the MP for Wycombe – and waltzed straight into a ministerial job as pensions minister. The role has previously been based only out of the Department for Work and Pensions – clue’s in the name – but will this time be split across that department and the Treasury, indicating an increased focus on the major role of pension funds as institutional investors and providers of private capital. 

After losing in 2019, Reynolds moved into a lucrative role as the managing director of public affairs, policy and research at TheCityUK, a financial services industry representative organisation (see: lobbyist). The firm was set up in the wake of the financial crisis to try and shift the narrative away from how the big banks almost destroyed the global economy and back onto how important they are to the UK economy. 

In some ways, the decision to place Reynolds straight into a ministerial role shouldn’t be surprising, and even makes sense, given her experience both in and out of government. But given her proximity to the City and major financial institutions – whose interests she’s been representing in recent years – it’s worth considering the specific role she’s been given. 

Finance lobbyists have long pushed for further deregulation and a greater role for pensions to finance infrastructure and drive economic growth. Like any institutional investor, they would only want to do this in expectation that it will generate significant returns. These returns are what ultimately makes private financing arrangements more costly than public spending. As we Yorkshire folk are fond of saying: it’s only the profit that makes it expensive. 

Last week, the government announced Reynolds would chair a major review of pension policy, focusing on investment. In a press release sent out by the Treasury over the weekend, Reynolds is quoted as saying 

“Over the next few months the review will focus on identifying any further actions to drive investment that could be taken forward in the Pension Schemes Bill before then exploring long-term challenges to ensure our pensions system is fit for the future.  

“There is so much untapped potential in our pensions markets, with an industry worth around £2 trillion. The measures we have already set out in our Pension Schemes Bill will help drive higher investment and a better deal for our future pensioners.” 

Also quoted in the press release are the heads of several major financial institutions, the British Private Equity and Venture Capital Association and Reynolds’ old boss, the head of TheCityUK, Miles Celic. 

There’s clear evidence this was one of the issues Reynolds lobbied on while she was working at TheCityUK. Last June she was involved in what we might call a ‘two-hat meeting’ – that is, a meeting in which both her role as lobbyist and Labour candidate were relevant. Alongside Celic, her CityUK boss, Reynolds met with Reeves, Jonathan Reynolds (no relation) and Jon Ashworth – the then shadow DWP secretary – for a roundtable with City firms. What was the topic? “Unlocking investment to drive growth and pension savings.”

Just to spell that out for those at the back: the new pensions minister was actively involved in lobbying the Labour Party about pensions on behalf of the financial sector just over a year ago. 

Quick Hits: 

Hakking the system: Dark Arts has previously highlighted the growing relationship between Labour and Hakluyt, the well-connected consultancy with historic ties to the intelligence community and a client list including some of the world’s most valuable companies. That relationship continues to go from strength to strength, it seems, as the FT reports Starmer has hired the firm’s managing partner, former investment banker Varun Chandra, to the Downing Street operation. Chandra’s role will see him at the heart of Labour’s plans for buddying up with big financial institutions and harnessing expensive private investment to fund new infrastructure. Chandra has stepped down from his role with Hakluyt to take up the job. Worth watching out for Labour’s already watered-down plans to close a £600 million tax loophole which applies to private equity firms – the industry made up a significant chunk of Hakluyt’s client base, with the consultancy claiming to advise 15 of the top 20 firms in the sector.

Two out, one in: Things are on the up for Arden Strategies, the political consultancy founded by former Labour minister Jim Murphy. Accounts the firm filed this month show its net assets rose by £1.2m to reach £2.8m in the year ending October 2023, while its average number of employees doubled, from six to 12. 

That said, the firm lost two staffers this month when both its lobbyist-cum-candidates, Anna Turley and Blair McDougall, won their seats at the election. Murphy has wasted no time in replacing one ex-Labour MP (Turley) with another; this week Arden announced that former Halifax MP and shadow security minister Holly Lynch has joined the firm. 

Passing up a pass: Kudos to Mark Glover, the executive chairman of Westminster lobbying outfit SEC Newgate, who turned down a parliamentary pass after being offered one as the spouse of newly elected Labour MP for Paisley and Renfrewshire South, Johanna Baxter. Glover said he believes “lobbyists should only be on the parliamentary estate by invitation or as event guests”. Can’t say fairer than that. 

MPs must declare any close family members working in the lobbying industry in the register of interests, and the Public Relations and Communications Association’s (PRCA) Public Affairs Code prohibits members from obtaining a parliamentary pass. But as Dark Arts has previously reported, the industry body is not always the most strident when it comes to enforcing its own rules, and on this rule in particular Dark Arts is aware of one noteworthy breach…

… I have previously highlighted a number of former MPs who, like Emma Reynolds, have been re-elected – retreads, as they’re known in Westminster parlance – after taking up work as lobbyists in the intervening years. Former MPs are entitled to keep their passes unless they go on to work for a public affairs agency, in which case they should turn them in. 

Parliamentary records show Reynolds held on to hers while at TheCityUK – but as the company is an industry representative body, not an agency, she was not a member of the PRCA and therefore couldn’t breach its rules. This is not the case, however, for Melanie Onn, the returning Labour MP for Great Grimsby. Up until her relection, Onn worked for lobbying firm Blakeney, was registered as a public affairs practitioner with the PRCA and, according to parliamentary records, had an active parliamentary pass as recently as this month.

Can’t keep a good man down: The loss of Jonathan Ashworth’s seat to an independent candidate in the election was one of a handful of sore points for Labour in a night of overwhelming success. As a shadow frontbencher, Ashworth had been widely expected to get a promotion in government but instead found himself unemployed after the votes were counted. But not for long! 

Taking over from where Josh Simons, the new MP for Makersfield, left off, Ashworth is now the new chief executive for Dark Arts’ favourite think tank/Super-PAC, Labour Together. Shortly before the election was called, Dark Arts noticed Simons had acquired a parliamentary pass through his work for Lord Drayson, a director of Labour Together. As an MP he’ll no longer need it, though nor will Ashworth as a former MP. Perhaps Drayson will pick some other lucky Labour Together staffer to enjoy Parliament’s heavily subsidised lager and lunches instead.

Now this:

Read: This piece in Tribune magazine on Labour’s plans to deregulate the planning system – and what that may mean for the housing crisis. Also check out this on-the-ground report from Novara Media’s Craig Gent, about what really happened in Harehills, Leeds last week 

Listen: I loved this Guardian longread on libraries and their ever-expanding role as a provider of frontline services way beyond just lending out books, and it is now available in podcast form. Caution: may result in mild weeping. 

Watch: Slightly late to it, but I really enjoyed this PoliticsJOE interview with Matt Kennard, head of investigations at Declassified UK and author of The Racket: A Rogue Reporter vs The American Empire.