Mark Fullbrook, the corporate lobbyist and former chief of staff to Liz Truss, holds a parliamentary pass giving him access to ministers, MPs and peers, the Guardian can disclose.
The pass is sponsored by his wife, Lorraine Fullbrook, a Conservative MP from 2010 to 2015, who was made a life peer by Boris Johnson in July 2020, a year after Mark Fullbrook ran Johnson’s leadership election campaign.
The pass gives Mark Fullbrook, a statutorily registered consultant lobbyist, access to the parliamentary estate, making it easier to contact ministers, MPs, peers and bag carriers on behalf of his clients.
Spouses are given the status of full passholders, granting them privileged access to a number of restaurants and bars that other passholders such as parliamentary staff cannot go to. They can also bring up to six guests on to the parliamentary estate, and have special access to parts of the House of Lords chamber.
Sponsoring peers and their spouses must both confirm when applying for the pass that it is only to be used for “social purposes” and not for work.
Fullbrook’s spousal pass was disclosed after a freedom of information request made by the Guardian to the House of Lords, one of 359 such passes held as of 1 November. The House of Lords did not disclose how long Fullbrook has had his pass.
In a lobbying register, Fullbrook declared contacting ministers and senior civil servants between April and September, on behalf of clients including a controversial Libyan politician and a firm that had previously won £680m of PPE contracts. It is not known if Fullbrook had the pass at this point and there is no suggestion of wrongdoing.
Unlike MPs, peers are not explicitly required to declare if their family members are involved in lobbying. The House of Lords code of conduct does, however, say that registration of a spouse’s interests “is required in certain cases”.
In October, a Downing Street adviser claimed Fullbrook had been seeking a peerage for himself in Truss’s resignation honours along with other advisers to the former PM, an allegation that sources close to Fullbrook described as “incorrect”.
There are no explicit rules on how members’ spouses or partners can use their passes. But leading lobbying bodies such as the Public Relations and Communications Association (PRCA) state their members should not hold parliamentary passes unless there are “exceptional circumstances”, such as needing to pick up their children from the House of Commons nursery.
Fullbrook, however, has made no commitment to comply with the PRCA’s code of conduct.
A House of Lords spokesperson said: “A member of the House of Lords may sponsor a pass for a spouse or partner. Spouses or partners who have been issued passes may invite up to six guests on to the estate and have access [to] a limited number of catering facilities on the parliamentary estate. Processes are in place to ensure that security pass applications can be made only by those with an approved requirement.”
Mark Fullbrook and Lorraine Fullbrook did not respond to the Guardian’s request for comment.
