Shadow home secretary, shadowy finances: Chris Philp has been an MP since 2015
There is a parliamentary by-election in Clacton tomorrow that was brought about by an MP – Nigel Farage – who wanted to avoid a Commons investigation into his failure to declare millions of pounds in political donations. At Inside Croydon, we thought it was long overdue that we had a delve to check our MPs’ declarations.
To start, we looked at Croydon South’s Conservative MP, the shadow home secretary, Chris Philp.
Even before he was first elected 11 years ago, Philp has always been very secretive about his financial affairs. Unlike some other senior Conservative MPs of the past decade, Chris Philp has never published his tax returns, nor come clean about his income.
We are left with the details he does publish on Parliament’s register of members’ interests. As Clacton demonstrates, we can’t always rely on MPs to provide all the details required.
What Philp has provided leaves more questions than answers.
As well as being an MP and, until the 2024 General Election, a government minister in various roles – some more successfully than others – Philp is thought to be a millionaire, with interests in property development.
As Inside Croydon has reported before, Philp is still a partner in the property finance and investment company Pluto Capital Management LLP and a major shareholder in many of its subsidiaries.
Financial row: Nigel Farage (left) and ‘Posh George’ Cottrell, who now lives in Montenegro
Pluto still has an overseas outpost in Montenegro, a country with low tax rates on both global and local income, making it “an attractive destination for entrepreneurs and investors”. Entrepreneurs like George Cottrell, known as “Posh George”, the aristocrat and convicted fraudster who has funded Farage and Reform Ltd, and who now lives in Montenegro.
This may all be coincidental. But it would be nice if Right Honourable Member for Croydon South, as someone so determined to claim he is protecting British interests, would come clean about how much of his company’s money is declared in Britain to pay UK taxes, and how much goes through offshore offices to pay a much lower tax rate to a foreign government.
One of Philp’s other longstanding interests is as the sole director of Millgap Ltd.
From the micro-accounts filed at Companies House, Millgap appears to be a mostly dormant company, but with around £250,000 in assets.
Millgap Ltd was one of more than 20,000 businesses set up in the name of a pensioner called Barbara Kahan. Kahan was 80 years old when Millgap was set up; she resigned within a week and Philp took over.
As reported by the Ham and High, this was all part of an operation run out of a derelict Finchley Road office. The Ham and High’s bold headline on its report was: “How derelict Finchley Road office was home to tens of thousands of firms – and unwittingly linked to Mafia, dictators and fraud”.
Inside Croydon has no evidence to connect Philp to corrupt dictators and the Mafia, but it would be interesting to know why a sitting MP is maintaining Millgap Ltd, what it does and where did the money in its accounts come from. But under parliament’s declarations system, as long as MPs like Philp declare their financial interests, they don’t have to offer any explanation for them.
Taking the shish: Chris Philp may not get invited back to the British Kebab Awards
When it comes to declaring the gifts that he has received, Philp has an interesting mixture.
He received two free tickets from Crystal Palace to go to the 2025 FA Cup final. He then got two free tickets from the FA for the Community Shield at Wembley, too. Philp was not the only MP feted in this manner. For all of those committed football fans who can’t get a ticket to the showpiece games, the answer is clearly to get themselves elected as an MP. Who knows, freebies to Wimbledon or the Derby might follow…
In 2025, Philp declared that he had accepted a free ticket to the British Kebab Awards. But he wasn’t invited back in 2026. More recently, Philp has been attacking kebab shops for hiring overseas workers.
“It is a disgrace!” Philp told The S*n, which reported on the licensing system for skilled migrant workers under the heading: “Taking the shish!”
Was there a falling out at the awards? Will we ever find out the sauce of this pitta dispute?
Philp also declared a free trip to Germany to meet with members of the German government. This trip was paid for by the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, which has as one of its aims “furthering European unification”. So, is Philp exploring rejoining the EU? Or, given that he has also received a donation from Vote Leave supporter Alan Morgan, is he still just saying whatever he thinks people might want to hear?
Finance lab: Chris Philp has held more than 7,000 shares in his wife, Elizabeth Philp’s, company since 2019. He only declared them recently
Morgan along with Jonathan Lourie and Anthony Todd are recorded as each making donations of £10,000 to Philp to support his work as shadow home secretary.
Morgan is a well-known supporter of Brexit and the Conservative Party and Lourie, along with his business Cheyne Capital Management Ltd, has also previously donated to the Conservatives.
Todd is far more limited in his donations, having only previously been recorded as donating to the Hampstead and Highgate Conservative Party in 2015. Philp was a councillor in Camden and first stood to be an MP in the Hampstead and Kilburn constituency before he was parachuted into Croydon South. He is thought to still have a home in Hampstead.
So maybe Todd is just a generous or admiring neighbour?
With any large donation there is always a question of why that donation is made. What might the donor expect in return?
This is the reason why we have the register of member’ interests. That way we can see the financial interests of our politicians and keep a check on whether they are representing us or just doing what benefits themselves.
Philp has declared one other significant shareholding in Galenic Laboratories Ltd. He holds more than £70,000-worth of shares in the company, which is run by his wife, Elizabeth Philp.
As Inside Croydon reported just before the 2024 General Election, Elizabeth Philp was the subject of a complaint to the Crown Prosecution Service and was embroiled in a High Court corporate espionage case, where she has been accused of stealing “trade secrets”.
Chris Philp was questioned about this at one of the election hustings in 2024, when he refused to confirm or deny if he had any financial interests in his wife’s business. A few months after the election, he made a declaration that he does, indeed, own shares.
The declarations entry in November 2024 appears to be the first time that Chris Philp has declared his shares in Galenic Laboratories Ltd. Public records at Companies House tell a different story. Philp’s name appears on the company’s register of shareholders right back to 2019, when he was listed as holding 7,267 ordinary shares not long after the company was set up.
That’s the same number of shares that Chris Philp declares as owning today.
MPs are required to update their register of interests within 28 days.
For much of the time between 2019 and 2024, Chris Philp was a minister in Conservative governments.
Undeclared: Chris Philp has held the shares in his wife’s business, Galenic, since 2019. The MP did not declare them until late 2024
If those 7,267 ordinary shares in his missus’s company are declarable now, why were they not declared by MP Philp for five years?
Chris Philp told Inside Croydon this: “There is a requirement to register an interest (that is a shareholding) in a company if the value of the shareholding exceeds a certain value or exceeds a certain percentage of the company.”
The thresholds for such declarations are when the MP’s shareholding in a company is greater than 15% of issued share capital, or valued at more than £70,000 (if the holding is 15% or less).
Philp said: “I have complied with that obligation.”
According to Companies House records, Philp’s shareholdings in Galenic Laboratories Ltd have over time varied around 5%, so well below the declaration threshold in that respect.
But according to Inside Croydon’s calculations, based on the company’s accounts for 2023, a year before the 2024 General Election, the total shareholdings in Galenic Laboratories were worth £1,633,369.
At that time, there were 139,467 shares issued.
Which would make Chris Philp’s 7,267 shares worth around £85,000. Well in excess of the declaration threshold.
All providing yet another reason why Chris Philp, who was Chief Secretary to the Treasury when Trussonomics crashed the economy, ought never again to be allowed to work on the nation’s finances. And it also suggests that the MP for Croydon South may have been in breach of parliamentary rules over his financial declarations.
Read more: Croydon MP refutes Sky’s claims over financial interests
Read more: ‘Rabbit hutch’ flats and the Chief Secretary: Philp’s conflicts
Read more: ‘The Nose in Search of a Bum’ sniffs out new government job
Read more: Philp all at sea as he claims French shot at him in the Channel
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