David Cameron is facing calls to disclose the businesses he was working for before being appointed as foreign secretary, after the Foreign Office refused to reveal which jobs and clients he was giving up to take on the role.
The former prime minister has had a series of jobs since he left No 10 in 2016, including lobbying the government on behalf of a controversial, now-collapsed, financial firm, Greensill, which led to a scandal over his influence.
He also worked for a gene-sequencing company, Illumina, which won a £123m government contract during the pandemic, and an AI firm, Afiniti, from which he resigned in 2021.
An e-commerce company called ChaChing appeared recently to have listed Cameron as a member of its advisory board, but the page in question is no longer available. The company also counts Philip Hammond, the former chancellor, as an adviser.
Cameron also appears to have been helping to drum up support for a controversial port project in Sri Lanka, which is part of the flagship belt and road initiative of the Chinese president, Xi Jinping.
However, the Foreign Office has refused to publish the jobs Cameron resigned from on Monday when he was offered the position of foreign secretary – or whether he has worked for any foreign governments or state entities since 2016.
Because he is entering the government without being an MP or an existing peer, there is no record of his current financial interests.
He will have to declare his interests as a member of the House of Lords, but will not have to reveal any former employment up to the point he entered parliament as a peer.
The foreign secretary will also have to declare relevant interests to the list of ministerial interests, but whether this is made public is at the discretion of Rishi Sunak’s ethics adviser, Laurie Magnus.
There is also a lack of transparency around Cameron’s financial dealings because his company, the Office of David Cameron, became an unlimited company several years ago, meaning it no longer has to file company accounts.
Little is known about the company, but it appears to own a small number of shares in Cefinn, the fashion business of his wife, Samantha. When taking office, ministers declare any such shareholdings and any other financial interests. The ethics adviser and the minister’s department give recommendations on how to avoid or mitigate any conflicts or perceived conflicts of interest.
Cameron confirmed on Monday that he was resigning from “all of the businesses I’ve been helping and all the other things I’ve been doing, including being a professor at NYU [New York University]”. However, he did not go into any details about the businesses he has been working for.
Layla Moran, the Liberal Democrats’ foreign affairs spokesperson, said Cameron “must be fully transparent in his declaration of interests, including about who he has recently lobbied for”.
She added: “Rishi Sunak must also ask his ethics adviser to properly scrutinise Cameron’s recent business dealings to avoid any potential conflicts of interest. The public deserve full transparency, not more Conservative cover-ups. Cameron needs to come clean, if he has nothing to hide he has nothing fear.”
Cameron is likely to face intense scrutiny over his former business interests because of the Greensill scandal. A parliamentary inquiry by the Treasury committee in 2021 found that it was inappropriate of the ex-prime minister to send 62 messages to former colleagues pleading for them to help Greensill, for which he worked and in which he owned stock options that could have been worth tens of millions of pounds. The inquiry found he had shown a “significant lack of judgment”.
Cameron swerved questions about his role at Greensill on Monday, telling reporters: “All those things were dealt with by the Treasury select committee and other inquiries at the time, and as far as I’m concerned they have been all dealt with and in the past.”
Cameron and the Foreign Office have been approached for comment.
