Conservative MP refers himself to watchdog over adviser role
Former minister George Freeman submitted queries to Labour ministers about the sector the firm operates in, The Times reported.
The newspaper published what it said were leaked emails that showed exchanges in which Mr Freeman had asked the company's director what to ask about as he prepared written parliamentary questions related to space data and emissions tracking.
He reportedly tabled the questions, which are a way for MPs to ask for more information on the policies and activities of government departments, to the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology and the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero.
He became a paid adviser with GHGSat, a monitoring service for greenhouse gas emissions, in April last year.
The appointments watchdog Acoba advised him that in taking up the role, 'there are risks associated with your influence and network of contacts gained whilst in ministerial office'.
'In particular, this is a company that is interested in government policy and decisions relating to the civil space sector and emissions.
'You noted you have made it clear to the company that you will not lobby government on its behalf, and this will not form part of your role.'
Mr Freeman told the Times: 'As a longstanding advocate of important new technologies, companies and industries, working cross-party through APPGs (All-Party Parliamentary Groups) and the select committee, I regularly ask experts for clarification on technical points and terminology, and deeply respect and try to assiduously follow the code of conduct for MPs and the need to act always in the public interest.
'Throughout my 15 years in parliament (and government), I have always understood the need to be transparent in the work I have done for and with commercial clients and charities and am always willing to answer any criticism.
'I don't believe I have done anything wrong but I am immediately referring myself to the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards and will accept his judgment in due course.'
Mr Freeman and GHGSat have been contacted for comment.
A Conservative Party spokesperson said: 'George Freeman MP has referred himself to the Parliamentary Standards Commissioner.
'It would be inappropriate for the Conservative Party to comment further whilst the Commissioner's inquiries are ongoing.'
The Lib Dems and Labour called for Tory leader Kemi Badenoch to suspend him.
A Labour spokesperson said: 'Cash for questions was a hallmark of Tory sleaze in the 1990s, and three decades on the same issue has raised its head again.
'George Freeman has referred himself for investigation so now Kemi Badenoch must suspend him from the Tory whip.'
Liberal Democrat Deputy Leader Daisy Cooper MP said: 'This looks like the same old sleaze and scandal people have come to expect from the Conservative Party.
'Kemi Badenoch should immediately suspend the whip from George Freeman while this is investigated.
'Failure to act would confirm that even after being booted out of government, the Conservatives are still hopelessly out of touch.'
The MP for Mid Norfolk is currently on the science, innovation and technology committee and a trade envoy.
He was responsible for the UK space agency in his previous role as a minister in the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology under Rishi Sunak.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
South Wales Argus
an hour ago
- South Wales Argus
Monmouthshire council will lobby for Magor walkway station
The UK Government announced in its comprehensive spending review it would make £445 million available, with most of the money to be spent within the next three years, for rail upgrades in Wales. The Welsh Government intends pressing ahead with five new stops between Cardiff and Chepstow to ease congestion on the M4. Monmouthshire County Council agreed at its July meeting it would write to decision makers in the Cardiff and Westminster governments, and the rail industry, to 'ensure that Magor Station is recognised as a quick win and is delivered immediately and without delay' with the funding announced by Chancellor Rachel Reeves. Magor West independent councillor Frances Taylor, who put the motion asking for the council's to once again commit to the village 'walkway' station, intended to be accessed on foot rather than by car, said she was glad when plans for an M4 relief road were dropped. But she said Magor station could have been delivered at any time since the Burns report, that considered alternatives, was published in early 2021 and said she couldn't see any of its recommendations have been implemented. 'Critically Magor station does not need to wait for relief line enhancements it could be delivered tomorrow for circa £10m,' said Cllr Taylor who added two hourly trains, from Cardiff, to Taunton and Cheltenham could service it. READ MORE: 'Magor should be priority of five new stations near Newport' The councillor said the five stations require improvements to the relief line, which carries freight, and she said that work hasn't been included in the £445m announced in the spending review. Cllr Catrin Maby, the council's Labour cabinet member with responsibility for transport, said while the walkway station as first proposed by local campaigners, in 2013, isn't reliant on upgrading the relief line that would likely be required for it to be 'fully functional' with the others proposed and to accommodate freight, fast trains passing through and stopping trains. The Drybridge councillor said the relief line upgrade is 'on the radar' of Westminster's Department of Transport, which is providing the funding. Labour member for Magor East with Undy John Crook said the council should focus on working with MP Catherine Fookes to lobby the government in London. An amendment put forward by Cllr Maby, who said she 'didn't disagree with the motion', suggested 'clarifying' timing of the relief line, but that was rejected by Cllr Taylor who said: 'It is not about clarifying the timescale, there is no timescale to the relief line upgrade.' The amendment was rejected by one vote and Labour councillor Armand Watts said he couldn't vote due to a technical problem. Cllr Maby also said the council is committed to other recommendations to ease M4 congestion including a Rogiet relief road which could also make travel to the Severn Tunnel Junction station easier.
Daily Mirror
an hour ago
- Daily Mirror
'Keir Starmer is sowing the seeds of bigger political battles ahead'
Skyrocketing military spending is Keir Starmer's Achilles' heel when funding a dubious splurge will make the welfare crisis appear a picnic. Because thinking of a number, doubling it then adding some more without a clue where the cash comes from- fresh deep cuts, tax rises, higher borrowing? - is a £30billion ticking time bomb. Our under-fire Prime Minister could be forgiven should he go to bed cursing not Vladimir Putin but Donald Trump when the Kremlin's Oval Office bullies him and other European leaders into squandering precious extra resources on rearmament. Britain's near £60billion last year confirmed us in the world's half-dozen top spenders, according to the International Institute for Strategic Studies, and there's little confidence a wasteful, profligate Ministry of Defence would deploy the windfall wisely. Starmer's sowing the seeds of bigger political battles ahead even as he utters mea culpas for a battered first 12 months. Stick to the panicky Nato 3.5% or 5% target, both figures would be damaging when the UK's below 2.5% and the raided aid budget is shrivelled, and a 2028 or 2029 General Election will be a minefield for whoever is Labour leader or, for that matter, heading the Tories, Reform and Lib Dems. Enhancing living standards and transforming key public services such as education and justice, health enjoying deservedly reviving injections, would be nigh on impossible to promise realistically in a second term manifesto alongside tanks, destroyers and nuclear bombers. Distracted Starmer blaming international summits and the Middle East for taking his eye off the benefits ball, failing to appreciate Labour rebels put their country first, party second to champion the disabled, is a potential reset, a restart, a relaunch, ahead of Friday's anniversary of a Westminster landslide from a different age. The optimism's vanished, vanquished by own goals over winter fuel, free spectacles and, Tuesday's Commons vote will attest, welfare, yet all is far from lost for him and Labour. Deeply unhappy Labour MPs are heard contemplating life after Sir Keir, ears of deputy Angela Rayner and Health Secretary Wes Streeting likely to be buring. Up in the polls, Nigel Farage and Reform could repeat the shooting star crash of Roy Jenkins and the SDP back in the early 1980s. David Cameron and George Osborne were pronounced for the hot pot during the 2012 pasty tax furore before winnin a Tory majority in 2015. Starmer may have up to four years to put it all right but the PM needs a plan to avoid plummeting into that defence black hole he dug to appease Trump. Obscenity not glamour was paraded in Venice with Forbes calculating the Jeff Bezos-Lauren Sanchez grotesque nuptials may have cost upwards of £20million. As the only Socialist Senator in the USA, Bernie Sanders, reminded us, kids go hungry and 60% of Americans live paycheque to paycheque while a super-wealthy oligarchic class party at the expense of the impoverished many. Britain has its filthy rich and dirt poor too with relatively lightly taxed tycoons now threatening to up sticks and flee abroad should a wavering Treasury require this entitled bunch to pay a slightly fairer share, Eggheads Kate Pickett and Richard Wilkinson's groundbreaking 2009 study, The Spirit Level, demonstrated how equality is better for everyone and fairer societies are happier countries. So to put a smile on our faces I'm offering to drive to Heathrow in my nine-year-old Sunderland-built Nissan Qashqai any bloodsucking parasites doing us a favour by leaving. I Don't Want to Talk About It when I'm a big fan of his music but rock legend Rod Stewart can be a leg end over politics. Long viewed as a Tartan Tory despite a 2024 Labour flirtation courtesy of influential wife Penny Lancaster, there are two reasons why It's a Heartache that Rod's suddenly giving, as he puts it, Nigel Farage a chance. The first is ignorance, Rod falling hook, line and sinker for the lie Starmer sold out Scottish fishing when the PM in fact netted a big catch for the industry by persuading the EU to cut export red tape while rolling over Boris Johnson's trawler deal. And the second is fishy Farage is essentially the same slippery Putin fan boy criticised by Rod in 2024 for parroting the Kremlin line that the West provoked Russia into invading Ukraine. Music and politics are never plain Sailing. It's no wonder some asylum seekers work on the side when they receive not untold riches but £1.42 a day in accommodation with meals provided or £7.03 if they must buy their own grub, clothing and toiletries. The only folk who earn a fortune from a multi-billion broken system bequeathed to Labour by incompetent Tories are spiv bosses exploiting willing hands barred from employment and Fat Cat landlords and hoteliers milking taxpayers. Ending the ban on newcomers legally taking jobs while awaiting decisions on whether they stay or go would allow them to pay their own rent and bills as well as tax and save us a small fortune. It's a no-brainer. The Reform, Tory and Labour politicians opposed are the ones costing up a packet. With foreshortened limbs the Commons' only visibly physically disabled member, talk of Marie Tisdall's fraught call with Rachel Reeves emphasised the value of the Penistone MP's insights and why the Chancellor was dangerously marooned on the wrong side of benefit cuts. Tory ex-Minister George Freeman reporting himself for investigation despite insisting he broke no rules leaves us wondering when these money-grabbing second-jobber will learn after emails showed the MP asked a company paying him £5,000 a month for eight hours work to help draft Parliamentary questions. 'ALL life is sacred. And I find it pretty revolting we've got to a state in this conflict where you're supposed to sort of cheer on one side or the other like it's a football team.' I'm with Wes Streeting after Glastonbury rapper Bob Vylan nauseatingly led crowds chanting 'death, death to the IDF [Israel Defense Forces]' yet the bigger outrage at the mo is the actual relentless, ongoing wholesale slaughter of innocent Palestinians in Gaza and settler killings in the occupied since West Bank since that horrific Hamas pogrom.
The National
2 hours ago
- The National
Welfare state is being treated not as a shared good, but as a burden
Supporters are told to welcome these as signs of pragmatism, but they reveal only a fake-it-till-you-make-it government clinging to the same austerity logic that's gutted public services for more than a decade. There's no strategy of principled adaptation, just damage control masquerading as radical policy-overhaul. READ MORE: Wes Streeting forced to admit Labour wants fewer people claiming PIP Like cynical venture capitalists who asset-strip football clubs, this government treats the welfare state not as a shared good but as a historical burden. Public support systems are remodelled with fewer seats, less atmosphere, and none of the legacy. Cuts are proposed, resisted, and delayed, but always within the logic of managed decline. First they tried to demolish the Kop end stand, now they promise only future fans will be excluded. Proclaiming progress, the luscious playing surface is narrowed and replaced with astroturf. Starmer and his front bench echo the language of 'toughness' while attacking the right to protest and doubling down on hostile-environment policies. Protesters are kettled, marches are banned, and dissent is criminalised by degrees. All this while far-right groups openly organise to infiltrate and co-opt Reform UK, talking of 'seizing control' and reshaping elections by 2030. READ MORE: Scottish Labour MP not 'proud' of Keir Starmer's first year in charge These are not fringe figures. They're part of a co-ordinated ecosystem of antisemitism, Islamophobia, authoritarianism and conspiracism – emboldened by silence and triangulation. Instead of calling it out, however, Labour's leadership seems content to play the same game: pinned in the six-yard box, offering managerial discipline while the far right runs rings around them and takes audacious pot-shots. Picture ex-Scotland manager Craig Levein's infamous 6-4-0 formation against the Czech Republic, but fielding only newly drafted players who might be loyal, but have no experience in big games. Those of us pushed to the margins – disabled people, migrants, Muslims, and working-class communities – know what happens when the centre tries to outflank the right. Rights are lost and protections evaporate. We vanish from the headlines, except when someone from a marginalised group sells their soul for a front-bench post to prop up the attack on their own team. More of us end up in poverty, detention, or despair. READ MORE: Home Office staff concerned over 'absurd ban on Palestine Action' Meanwhile, Number 10 parades like champions of Europe, running victory laps over a non-league economy. The fans are left with crumbling public services – akin to Manchester United fans getting drenched beneath Old Trafford's increasingly dilapidated roof. And though our elected manager and board point to victories of old, it's clear they're preparing to flog the stadium that is the UK to the highest bidder, while calling it progress. There's still time to fight this decline, but only if leaders stop hiding behind spreadsheets and rediscover the courage to name what we're up against: a political slide toward exclusion, authoritarianism, and resentment – selling the strongest players in the name of a squad rebuild. The public knows the difference between real change and stage-managed retreat. Delivering anything less than what's needed means not just losing the match, but the risk of relegation and surrendering the values on which the club's success was genuinely built. Ron Lumiere via email FOLLOWING Laura Webster's Saturday article on about Labour founding the welfare state, which has become a standard response by Labour hacks to every scenario: the Labour welfare state is a myth. The welfare state was agreed, with minor differences, by the wartime coalition. Bismarck had a welfare state in the 1870s and he was no socialist either; he wanted a race of supermen. The Brits had to acknowledge that the German soldier was fitter, taller and better educated, like the Channel Islands' children after German occupation. READ MORE: We investigate the state of the welfare state – read our new series England did not achieve public education till the 1870s, due to opposition by the controlling Church of England. The Church of Scotland had no wish to control public education in Scotland, which has been free since the reformation. Incidentally, Catholic education legislation was introduced at the turn of the last century by a Liberal government, not because they were sympathetic to Catholicism, but because the wanted to create divisions in Scotland. Incidentally, there are no 'Prodistent' schools in Scotland, merely non-denominational schools where Catholic and other-denomination pupils and teachers are more common than most people realise. It was a Liberal minister in World War One, Winston Churchill, who introduced free milk, because of the poorer state of the British working class compared to German wartime recruits. The architect of the welfare state was the Liberal Lord Beveridge. Lords Wilson and Callaghan introduced further austerity and pay freezes etc. Donald Anderson Glasgow IF Westminster taxed the rich cheats who threw money at Brexit so they could avoid the new EU laws on tax havens, they would bring in way more cash than they will get from hitting the poor and disabled. They could close the loopholes the government deliberately creates and make everyone pay their tax. Loopholes are actually government-created corruption. Labour could recover if they taxed the rich – as long as Israel doesn't mind, of course. Bill Robertson via email
