Revealed: Ex-Vote Leave lobbyist tries a rebrand - evading new transparency rules

Thomas Borwick's ‘political consultancy’ College Green Group has rebadged its APPGs in what an MP says is an ‘explicit’ attempt to avoid transparency regulations

Westminster can feel almost purpose-built for lobbyists. Easy access. Lots of quiet corners to ‘bump’ into ministers.

One thing lobbyists particularly love about Westminster are its All-Party Parliamentary Groups (APPGs).

There’s more APPGs than there are MPs, funded by everyone from arms manufacturers and big tech to despotic regimes offering jollies to far flung places. When I investigated APPGs a couple of years ago I found one MP sat on no fewer than 81 cross-party groups.

As a lobbyist told me once, “if you don’t have an APPG you’re not doing it right.”

Now, this is supposed to be changing. New rules coming into force at the end of this month are designed to bring tighter regulation and more transparency to this opaque world. APPGs will have to disclose more financial information and there’ll be limits on how many groups an MP can sit on.

But there are signs of loopholes in the new regime before it has even commenced.

An investigation by this newsletter has found that in recent weeks, a Conservative-linked political consultancy has rebadged the three APPGs it administers in what critics claim is an “explicit” attempt to evade scrutiny. 

College Green Group has been paid more than £1 million to run the secretariats for cross-party groups over the past four years. The company is owned and run by Thomas Borwick, who was chief technology officer on the Vote Leave campaign. 

Earlier this month, the names of the three APPGs which College Green currently administers - on environmental, social and governance (ESG); the housing market; and regeneration and levelling up - were changed on social media to ‘parliamentary liaison groups’. Parliament’s portcullis logo was also removed.

The term ‘parliamentary liaison groups’ has no official definition and is not commonly used in Westminster. Unlike APPGs, these groups will not have to register with the parliamentary commissioner for standards.

One listed member of the ESG group, Labour peer Prim Sikka, said he had “no idea what’s going on” and distanced himself from the group.

“I never attended any of [the APPG on ESG] meetings other than the inaugural one,” Sikka told this newsletter. “I became aware of something I didn’t like so I never went again.”

Transparency campaigners and MPs have raised concerns that College Green’s new cross-party groups will skirt new rules that include limiting APPGs to four officers to improve accountability, and, from the next parliament, allow MPs to sit on a maximum of six groups.

College Green’s ‘liaison groups’ are already active. In mid-March, the newly minted parliamentary liaison group on ESG held its ‘inaugural roundtable’ in Westminster. 

The group is chaired by Alexander Stafford, Conservative MP for Rother Valley, who also led the now defunct APPG of the same name.

Last year, this newsletter revealed that College Green’s ESG APPG had received hundreds of thousands of pounds from funders that had been fined for fraud, tax and environmental failings. 

College Green is advertising for a ‘parliamentary liaison group account manager’. For a salary of up to £50,000 the successful candidate’s responsibilities will include running the “secretariat for several new parliamentary liaison groups” and “monitoring parliamentary proceedings to identify opportunities for legislative and spoken interventions.”

College Green had previously made much of its work with all-party parliamentary groups. Its website had boasted of services such as achieving “the cross-party Commons and Lords membership that an effective APPG needs.” This page now appears to have been taken down from College Green’s website. (But it’s still here, on the Wayback Machine.)

Tommy Sheppard, a Scottish National Party MP who sat on Westminster’s committee on standards for two years, said the rebranding of APPGs as ‘liaison groups’ was “explicitly for the purposes of creating a faux legitimacy, using the language of parliamentary and parliamentary groups to suggest these groups are something that they’re not.”

“Why would you do this?” Sheppard added. “You would only do this if you were unable or unwilling to comply with the new regulations that are designed to improve transparency.” 

Rose Whiffen, senior research officer at Transparency International said that this newsletter’s investigation showed “that those determined to avoid scrutiny can circumvent regulations placed on APPGs and operate outside parliamentary oversight altogether.”

“Parliament should introduce a comprehensive statutory lobbying register to avoid leaving loopholes for opaque outside interests to influence our decision makers behind closed doors," she added.

College Green, which provides services including political research, public relations and help with “election strategy” for councillors and MPs, did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Thomas Borwick, 36, College Green’s owner, is the son of Baroness Victoria Borwick, a former Conservative MP, and Lord Jamie Borwick, who has donated more than £270,000 to the Tories.

Borwick was heavily criticised during the 2019 general election campaign when he spent more than £53,000 on ‘third party’ Facebook adverts that masqueraded as the Green party and were designed to split the anti-Tory vote. Who paid for the ads was never disclosed.

As well as running cross-party groups, College Green also offers to help prospective Conservative parliamentary candidates on their “journey” to Westminster - for fees reportedly around £10,000.

College Green boasts of having helped over 120 people get on approved lists of Conservative candidates, including in the Cities of London and Westminster constituency, where Borwick chairs the local Tory association and his mother was formerly the MP. 

Local Tories have raised concerns about the selection process in the Cities of London and Westminster after it emerged that Borwick had sat on the sifting committee that longlisted candidates. Borwick’s mother, Victoria, reportedly applied for the seat, but was not selected.

Three of the eight candidates longlisted for the seat are College Green clients, according to local media media reports.

Edward Lucas, Liberal Democrat candidate for Cities of London and Westminster, said the arrangement “stinks”.

“It gives the completely wrong impression about how politics works. You have people that have been paying for [candidate training] and then going to their former supplier, who is likely chairing the selection process. It’s like something from The Thick of It.”