ANNA MIKHAILOVA: No 10 adviser Eddie Lister owns shares in a firm awarded £1m in government and NHS contracts
Eddie Lister, one of the Prime Minister’s most senior advisers, owns shares in a company that has won nearly £1 million in Government and NHS contracts, I can reveal.
The Tory peer has more than £50,000 worth of shares in Johnson Controls, a US-based engineering firm whose UK branch has secured six public contracts since Lister joined the No 10 team as Chief Strategic Adviser.
Four years ago, Johnson Controls (no relation to Boris) merged with Tyco, where Lister worked for more than a decade as, wait for it, ‘director of government relations’ before Mayor Boris brought him to City Hall and then Downing Street.
A total of £998,000 worth of contracts have gone to the company in the almost two years since Lister became the PM’s adviser – the latest was awarded this month.
Eddie Lister, one of the Prime Minister’s most senior advisers, owns shares in a company that has won nearly £1 million in Government and NHS contracts. Pictured: Eddie Lister (left) with Carrie Symonds
They include work for a Birmingham Children’s NHS hospital, the NHS-owned North of England Commercial Procurement Collaborative, HM Land Registry and South Tees Site Company Limited.
The biggest contract (£521,000), for fire alarm systems, was awarded in January 2020 to Johnson Controls through an arrangement with the Cabinet Office.
Last night, a Government spokesman insisted Lister, pictured above with the PM’s fiancee Carrie Symonds, had ‘no involvement’ in awarding the contracts – but, of course, that’s not how lobbying works. The spokesman added that Lister’s shareholding in Johnson Controls was ‘declared to Cabinet Office in the usual way’, which presumably means Lex Greensill signed it off. I joke, of course.
But here’s the more serious point. The spokesman refused to say whether any of Lister’s shareholding had been acquired while he was in Government and why he didn’t put them in a blind trust upon becoming the PM’s adviser, as other fellow minted politicians have done to avoid any hint of conflict.
Boris recently appointed Lister personal envoy for the Gulf states and ‘special projects’ after last year elevating his 71-year-old chum to Baron Udny-Lister.
That’s how Johnson Controls.
When the ban on socialising was lifted, Matt Hancock wrote that he had ‘seen friends – in the garden’. Which friends?
Was it pub landlord Alex Bourne, his former neighbour who won a Covid contract reportedly after text exchanges with the Health Secretary?
Or ‘Call Me!’ Dave Cameron and Lex Greensill. A catch-up was surely overdue since the trio’s ‘private drink’ in 2019.
Or perhaps Hancock chose to shoot the garden breeze with his sister, Emily, a director of Topwood Ltd, which won contracts from NHS Wales and a firm in which the Health Secretary owns shares.
Whoever was with Alfresco Matt, the drinks were unlikely to be on him.
Even the Maybot had a soft spot for Greensill
David Cameron isn’t the only ex-PM to take a shine to Australian-owned Greensill.
In one of her final speeches in the job, Theresa May lavished praise on the company while, er, promoting UK-Indian financial co-operation.
David Cameron (pictured) isn’t the only ex-PM to take a shine to Australian-owned Greensill
In between the Maybot’s jokes about cricket, Greensill was one of only two British-based companies she mentioned as ‘incredible success’ stories.
Last night, May was asked to explain her curious puff for the now collapsed company at the centre of another Tory sleaze scandal.
Did she know about its links to the Civil Service – most notably to the late top mandarin Jeremy Heywood, who May once described as the ‘greatest public servant of all time’ and who the company’s founder Lex Greensill called a friend?
The former PM’s spinner claimed the mention of Greensill was a ‘coincidence’ inserted in May’s speech by naughty officials, adding: ‘Greensill was not included in the speech at Theresa May’s behest but nor did she object to its inclusion’.
Right.
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