Tory Liam Fox has pocketed £30k from controversial PR firm for doing 'no work'

26 August 2023 , 19:00

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He gets paid £10,000 every six months as a "retainer" (Image: AFP/Getty Images)

Top Tory Liam Fox has pocketed £30,000 from a controversial PR firm in return for doing "no work" - despite his lobbying of Rishi Sunak leading to a fine for broken lobbying rules.

Dr Fox has declared £10,000 every six months as a “retainer” payment from WorldPR, a lobbying firm that has represented dictators and oppressive regimes. Official records say Dr Fox will “if required” provide advice on “Business and International Politics” - but that his hours of work have been “none to date.”

The firm, registered in Panama, has worked with the family of the former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet and Morgan Tsvangirai, the late Zimbabwean opposition leader. They worked with the former Libyan government under Colonel Gaddafi to campaign against the the prosecution of Lockerbie Bomber Abdelbaset al-Megrahi

And they undertook a project to help rebuild Kazakhstan’s reputation, counteracting the “false and misleading impression” of the nation created by the movie Borat. These projects were all undertaken before 2021, when Dr Fox joined the firm.

But they refuse to reveal who they work for now, saying their “long-standing policy is not to comment on clients.”

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The most recent payment of £10,000, registered in late July and published last week, came just months after another firm Dr Fox works for was rapped for breaking lobbying rules. In February it was revealed that Dr Fox had lobbied Rishi Sunak, writing to him on behalf of an advisory firm calling for a tax break for exporters.

Bradshaw Advisory, paid Dr Fox £16,000 for 21 hours work as chair of a pressure group, the Global Britain Commission. The Office of the Registrar of Consultant Lobbyists launched an investigation into the affair, concluding in May that Bradshaw Advisory had broken lobbying rules by failing to register as consultant lobbyists.

They cleared Dr Fox of breaking the rules, because a loophole in the law means lobbyists don’t have to be on the official record if their fee is not paid to a VAT registered company.

A spokesperson for Bradshaw said in May: “We accidentally lapsed from the Register of Consultant Lobbyists due to a missed invoice payment which – as an SME – was simply an administrative oversight. Once it was brought to our attention we immediately re-registered and declared any registrable contact we had in the usual way.

“We fully co-operate with the registrar and paid a small penalty of £763.46 to account for the 40 working days that had been missed from our registration”.

Mikey Smith