Lord Cameron, the foreign secretary, stands accused of a “cover up” over his business interests which were disclosed yesterday.
Transparency documents showed that the cabinet minister holds his financial interests in a so-called blind trust, which separates Lord Cameron from key financial knowledge of their assets.
He is listed as in a “Blind trust / blind management arrangement” as well as the “prospective beneficiary of a family trust with no oversight”.
Following the release of the documents, Lord Cameron has been urged to share more details “if he has nothing to hide”.
It is stated that “On appointment [to the Foreign Office on 13 November, Lord Cameron] resigned from all previous remunerated roles and a number of unremunerated roles”.
In total there were five paid and unpaid roles judged “relevant” for publication by independent adviser Sir Laurie Magnus.
In full, these were:
- Speaker, Washington Speakers Bureau
- Visiting Professor, New York University, Abu Dhabi
- Co-Chairman, Council on State Fragility; previously Chairman, LSE-Oxford Commission on State Fragility, Growth and Development
- Board Member, ONE Campaign
- Co-Chairman, Pew Bertarelli Ocean Ambassadors
Reacting to the transparency release, Wendy Chamberlain, chief whip for the Lib Dems, said: “This is yet another Conservative cover-up. The public deserves to know the full list of Cameron’s clients and any potential conflict of interest.”
She added: “The full list of David Cameron’s financial interests when he took the role needs to be published immediately. If he has nothing to hide, he has nothing to fear.”
Steve Goodrich of Transparency International UK said the latest declaration was supposed to show there were no conflicts of interests. “Yet how are we to know whether this is the case when it’s hidden in a trust arrangement?”
Luke de Pulford, the executive director of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, said Lord Cameron should “come clean”.
The campaigner added that the latest data release “falls way short of the minimum standards of transparency the people of Britain are entitled to expect”.
“If Cameron has received money to lobby on behalf of foreign states, he must be open about it. This is starting to look like a cover-up, and I’d be surprised if we didn’t see formal complaints to the authorities.”
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