The flow of money in Westminster is tough to keep track of. Members of Parliament are entitled to a base salary of £84,144, but the average MP has received about £24,710 worth of donations, gifts and other payments and benefits on top of this.
While data on the donations received by MPs is publicly available, records are spread across platforms in assorted formats, creating what Tortoise Media have dubbed a “concealment by confusion”. Transparency is vital, as previous Governments have been accused of corruption in rewarding donors with public contracts, and some MPs receive donations to the tune of millions of pounds.
The same confusion applies to All Party Parliamentary Groups (APPG), informal cross party groups of MPs and peers organised around specific topics of interest, such as Britain’s relationship with China, Antimicrobial Resistance, Climate Change, and even Golf. Over seven hundred APPGs exist, and in total they received over £20 million in external funding since the 2019 election. These funds allow donors unprecedented access to MPs, and make the groups vulnerable to lobbying from business interests.
Furthermore, no data exists concerning the impact of APPGs on the policymaking process, or the impact of industry interests on APPG meetings. APPGs often publish the agenda or summaries of past meetings, but the minutes of these meetings are in many cases not publicly available.
To combat this confusion, Sky News and Tortoise Media created the Westminster Accounts, a tool that contains data on the donations, earnings and gifts received by every MP and major party (Conservative, Labour and Liberal Democrats). It also includes the source of these donations, APPG membership, and details of donations received by every APPG.
Nouse have used this database, alongside sources such as Companies House and the parliamentary Register of APPGs, to compile the following report on outside of salary earnings and business interests of Labour candidate Rachael Maskell and Conservative candidate Julian Sturdy. Until the dissolution of Parliament on 30 May, Maskell and Sturdy were the MPs for York Central and York Outer since 2010 and 2015, respectively. Separate polls by Survation and Electoral Calculus both indicate that Maskell and Sturdy are in with a chance of winning their seats in the upcoming general election, although it should be noted that Labour’s Luke Charters currently has a polling lead over Sturdy.
The value of Sturdy’s interests puts him in the top 50% per cent of all MPs.
Since 19 December 2019, Julian Sturdy has declared donations, earnings, gifts and other benefits of £26,160, all of which are earnings from G.E. Sturdy and Son, a farming partnership based in Wetherby, of which he is a partner. As G.E. Sturdy and Son is an unlimited partnership, public information on the business is scarce. As stated on Sturdy’s personal website: “I provide administrative support for the partnership, as well as doing some buying and selling at certain times”. He works for G.E. Sturdy and Son 4 hours a week, and earns roughly £500 a month. Sturdy employs his spouse, Victoria, as his part-time senior secretary, and pays her from parliamentary expenses.
Up until the dissolution of parliament, Sturdy was a member of 14 APPGs, three of which received no funding. The APPG for pharmacy, of which Sturdy was a member, received the most benefits of the 14, coming to £207,000, including £139,500 of benefits-in-kind from Tendo Consulting. Tendo Consulting is a lobbying firm that acts for organisations hoping to access MPs, and as such the benefits were funded by third party sources such as The Association of Independent Multiple Pharmacies, and the Company Chemists’ Association, – a trade association for large pharmacy providers. In-kind benefits are not direct financial donations, and instead include venue hire, transportation, and accommodation . The University of Bath’s Institute for Policy Research has stated that APPGs focused on health-related topics are particularly vulnerable to lobbying. For example, pharmaceutical companies who are “seeking to have a say in important early policy discussions regarding key areas of health policy such as drug pricing strategies and funding for cancer drugs.”
Sturdy was also a member of the APPG for China, which has declared benefits worth approximately £110,000 since 19 December 2019. According to their website, the APPG for China functions “to ensure parliamentarians are kept well informed on China and to act as a platform for discussions on all issues of importance to the bilateral relationship”. The group played a central role in an extremely controversial 2021 attempt to invite Chinese ambassador Zheng Zeguang to speak in Parliament, despite recent Chinese sanctions on nine British MPs who had highlighted alleged human right abuses in Xinjiang.
Politico also reports that firms with large Chinese interests have been “pouring” money into this APPG. Conservative MP Tim Loughton commented on the matter last year, remarking that “companies invest in APPGs because they believe their interests will be served”. HSBC has donated £35,500 in purely financial benefits to this APPG since 2019. Furthermore, Sturdy is no stranger to lucrative relationships with China – in 2015, when he was vice-chair for the APPG for China, he emphasised that York businesses ought to improve their links with China as he welcomed £200 million of Chinese investment to the city.
Sturdy was the most recent chair of the Antimicrobial Resistance, and the Science and Technology in Agriculture APPGs.
Here is the full list of the APPGs that Sturdy is a member of:
Antibiotics, Antimicrobial Resistance, China, Equipment for Disabled Children, Family Business, Osteoporosis and Bone Health, Pharmacy, Rural , Rural Business and the Rural Powerhouse, Rural Services, Science and Technology in Agriculture, Special Educational Needs and Disabilities, Sustainable Flood and Drought Management, Uplands and Hill Farming.
As of the date of publication, Nouse has received no response from Mr Sturdy to our request for comment.
The value of Maskell’s interests puts her in the bottom 31 per cent of all MPs.
Since 19 December 2019, Rachael Maskell has declared £11,000 in earnings, gifts and other benefits. This includes £4,000 in donations from Owen Trotter, a University of York alumnus who founded and runs Key Capital Partners, a private equity and investment firm which claims to be the UK’s leading investor in small and medium sized enterprises. Trotter has donated roughly £28,000 to the Labour party since 2019.
Richard Hewison, a candidate for the Rejoin EU party, has donated £2000 to Maskell. He also donated £2,000 to Clive Lewis, another Labour MP. Hewison is clearly quite selective in his support for Labour MPs - last year on X (formerly Twitter), he replied that “this is what a Labour MP SHOULD look like [...] they seem a rare breed to me these days” to a photo of Clive Lewis standing next to a poster that read “DEFEND THE RIGHT TO STRIKE”.
Maskell also received £3,000 from the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers, and £2,000 in donations from GMB Union, which has donated £6 million to Labour since 2019.
When contacted by Nouse for a statement on the donations she has received, Maskell did not mention the donations from Trotter and Hewison, instead focusing on her relationship with Unions: “As an MP, I will not accept funding from businesses, as I do not believe that a business would offer funding without expecting a return. The only money I have accepted is from trade unions, which are comprised of hundreds of donations from working people who opt to make a small contribution to the Labour Party, supporting its ambition to be the voice of working people and to ensure that workers rights are advanced and protected. Trade union funding is the cleanest and most transparent funding in politics.”
She also remarked that “these donations are made to my local Labour Party instead to support campaigning work, not just at election time, but throughout the year.”
Maskell has been a member of 35 APPGs, nine of which received no outside funding. Maskell has previously been a member of the Adult Social Care APPG, which has declared benefits worth £361,500 since 2019, entirely through benefits-in-kind from Healthcomms Consulting, part of the PLMR group, on behalf of groups like the National Care Forum, Care Tech, Anchor Hanover and Skills for Care. The PLMR group (Political Lobbying and Media Relations) is a PR and lobbying company founded and directed by Kevin Craig, a member of the Labour party for 30 years who was, up until June 25th, a candidate for the Central Suffolk and North Ipswich constituency. Craig was recently suspended after betting against himself in the upcoming election.
The Dying Well APPG, of which Maskell was a member before the dissolution of Parliament, received £50,800 in benefits, exclusively from religiously-affiliated groups like Care Not Killings, Christian Action Research and Education, and the Jersey Evangelical Alliance (JEA). The JEA holds extreme Christian beliefs, commenting in 2019 that the “view of evangelical Christians on marriage” was that “hell awaits” for “homosexuals”. Dying Well’s website states that they promote “access to excellent care at the end of life and stands against the legalisation of assisted suicide”, which they argue will expose vulnerable people to “pressure [...] to end their lives so they are not a ‘burden’ on others”. Despite the fact that this cause is exclusively financially backed by Christian organisations, their website contains no mention of religious influence.
Maskell highlighted to Nouse how “some APPGs act as a lobbying vehicle for private business. I do not believe that this is right. I therefore believe that the reporting systems need to be robust and transparency is essential.”
Maskell also explained to Nouse that APPGs “enable MPs to work cross-party on issues which advance the policy agenda in the interests of people across the country. They are a way of undertaking inquiries, gathering evidence and presenting the conclusions to Ministers. As a result of the work of APPGs, laws have been changed, policies have been enhanced and outcomes highlight how MPs can work together for the good of their communities and not for political interests.”
Here is the full list of APPGs Maskell is a member of:
Adoption and Permanence, Adult Social Care, Adverse Childhood Experiences, Ageing and Older People, Archaeology, Care-Experienced Children and Young People, Child of the North, Childhood Trauma, Climate Change, Closing the Guantanamo Bay Detention Facility, Cycling and Walking, Deliberative Democracy, Drug Policy Reform, Drugs, Alcohol and Justice, Dying Well, Eggs, Pigs and Poultry, Flood Prevention, Hazaras, Homelessness, Human-Relevant Science, Intensive Care, Learning Disability, Medomsley Detention Centre, Mental Health, Parkinson's, Prepayment Meters, Prevention of Childhood Trauma, Respiratory Health, Showing Racism the Red Card, Stroke, Suicide and Self-Harm Prevention, Tackling Loneliness and Connected Communities, Vulnerable Groups to Pandemics, Women and Work, Yorkshire and Northern Lincolnshire.
Maskell was the most recent chair for the Adoption and Permanence, Ageing and Older People and Mental Health APPGs, co-chair for Intensive Care, and vice-chair for Childhood Trauma.