Double life of Johnson’s ally raises awkward conflict of interest questions

Boris Johnson was said to have been astonished that Bill Crothers, a former senior civil servant, had simultaneously worked for two months for the government and the collapsed finance company Greensill Capital.

But with “double hatting” in Whitehall under intense scrutiny, awkward questions are now being directed at one of the prime minister’s closest and longest-serving allies.

Lord Eddie Lister, whose departure from Downing Street was quietly announced by Number 10 last weekend, had worked for Johnson since his time as mayor of London and been at his side during his rise through the highest offices in British politics.

But throughout, the man dubbed “steady Eddie” has combined his shifting roles in government with several private — and in some cases controversial — interests.

Such is the concern over Lister’s “double hatting” that Rachel Reeves, Labour’s shadow Cabinet Office minister, has written to Simon Case, the cabinet secretary, to ask him to look into the matter.

Normally business people who enter government drop their commercial interests — or put them in a blind trust. Lord Gerry Grimstone, for example, the current investment minister, told the FT recently he gave up eight jobs to take on that role.

Since Johnson became prime minister in 2019, Lister has been a senior adviser, business liaison chief, then earlier this year de facto chief of staff after the resignation of Dominic Cummings. In February he took on a new role as special envoy to the Gulf. 

Yet he continued as director of an advisory business called Edward Lister Consultants, as an adviser to property group Delancey and as a non-executive director to Stanhope Holdings.

In April Lister held talks about a six-figure contract with Finsbury Glover Hering, a PR and lobbying firm, which he hoped to combine with his job as Gulf envoy, according to people familiar with the discussions. He subsequently broke off the negotiations.

A spokesperson for the government insisted Lister’s departure had not been substantially brought forward. The 71-year-old had been due to leave at the end of April, they insisted.

But this does not tally with other officials’ understanding of why Lister left just eight weeks after his role was announced. 

“He had only been appointed in February, no one gets given a job like that with the intention of only doing two months,” said one official. Another person close to the situation said: “You’d have to be quite naive to believe that explanation.”

Lister told the Politico website this week it was “the right time for me to go” after realising it was impossible to do the Gulf job part-time. “You’ve either got to be in government 100 per cent or out of government: there isn’t any halfway house,” he said. 

The peer also told Politico he had no conflicts and that his private sector roles for Delancey and Stanhope were merely “a couple of other bits and pieces” with “very light” responsibilities.

But colleagues in Downing Street said they never understood how he could maintain the “unique” arrangement which allowed him to keep those two interests.

One former Tory minister alleged it was an obvious conflict of interest to have a Gulf adviser trying to drum up investment in the UK while also receiving income from property companies. 

“Nice and benign though Eddie is, it’s absolutely abysmal,” said the former minister. “It makes the civil servant who went to Greensill [Crothers] look like a saint.”

Many of the questions being aimed at Lister focus on his roles in the property sector.

Johnson was mayor of London when he first hired Lister in 2011 — the Thatcherite former leader of Wandsworth council — as his chief of staff and deputy mayor of planning.

During that period Lister had several meetings with Delancey, which was given approval by planning authorities to redevelop the Olympic media centre in east London in 2014. Two years later he joined Delancey’s strategic advisory board. The board plays no role in approving individual deals, the company told the FT. 

In 2018 the Chinese government bought the Royal Mint site in central London from Delancey. 

At that time Lister was simultaneously a non-executive director of the Foreign Office (when Johnson was foreign secretary) as well as an adviser to Delancey and a consultant to CBRE, the agency advising China. Delancey said he had no involvement in the deal. CBRE has said: “Sir Edward Lister did not have any involvement with CBRE on the Royal Mint Court transaction.”

One former Downing Street aide said Lister was seen at the time as a strong Sinophile voice in Johnson’s ear.

While non-executive director at the Foreign Office, Lister was also a director of a company that was seeking to build a new city in Libya, joining Eribi Holdings in October 2018.

The government said he declared “any relevant interests” to the FCO at the time. A spokesperson added: “He had no involvement in Libyan issues while he was a board member of the Foreign Office.” Meanwhile, Lister has said he “never ever had any discussions with anybody in government about Libya at any time”.

From 2016 to 2019, Lister was chair of Homes England, a government body that funds affordable housing projects — during which time he also received £487,000 from EcoWorld, a luxury property developer. 

Although the directorship was recorded in the Homes England register of interests it was described by Sir Alistair Graham, former chair of the Committee on Standards in Public Life, as a “major conflict of interest”. 

Last year Lister, while already working in Downing Street, joined the board of a Jersey-based holding company for a housing start-up — without any public disclosure. That unpaid directorship at TopHat in Derbyshire — revealed in the FT — was not announced by the government or the company and did not have to be disclosed in Jersey. 

Lister did not respond to detailed questions from the FT. But the government said: “Lord Lister fully complied with the declaration of interests requirements set out by the Cabinet Office and has transparently published his interests in the House of Lords Register.”

One official said Lister had declared his interests in line with the special adviser declaration of interests. All rules for declaring interests were followed to ensure no conflict of interest, including “recusing himself where necessary”, the official said.

In her letter to cabinet secretary Case, Reeves asked a series of questions about “potential conflicts of interest” involving Lister, saying it was “hard to believe” that Johnson had not known about his long-serving aide’s negotiations with Finsbury.

She asked what due diligence was carried out on Lister’s potential conflicts, whether he still holds a security pass and whether a review by the lawyer Nigel Boardman into the Greensill lobbying affair will examine special advisers: “The fact that Lord Lister has now departed Downing Street does not mean these issues should not be fully investigated,” Reeves wrote.