INSIDE CROYDON INVESTIGATES:
Is there something that the MP for Croydon West might learn from the newbie MP for Croydon East?
In our latest probe into Croydon MPs’ outside interests and earnings, we scour the official declarations
Natasha Irons is Croydon’s newest MP, having been elected for the new constituency of Croydon East at the July 2024 General Election. Maybe that’s why she has the fewest declarations of any of the borough’s four MPs.
Clean slate: Natasha Irons’ only declaration at Westminster is her previous job at Channel 4
It’s all a bit of a blank slate, and nothing like the somewhat involved nexus of outside interests shown by Croydon South’s secretive Chris Philp, as we reported earlier this month.
Irons was a Labour councillor in Merton before becoming MP. The only thing that she has declared in the official Register of Members’ Financial Interests (maintained by the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards), relates to her job at Channel 4 before she became an MP. Unless Irons has “forgotten” to declare other things, her record of no second jobs, no massive shareholdings, no freebies from big business and lobbyists and no donors, dodgy or otherwise, is exactly what you would hope to see from an MP.
Natasha Irons should be applauded for that.
Sadly, the same cannot be said of our other MPs.
Much like Chris Philp, Sarah Jones has accepted free tickets to watch Crystal Palace play football. It’s not just football, either. Labour MP Jones also accepted four free tickets to the Capital Summertime Ball at Wembley Stadium in 2023.
As with any other “donation” or “gift”, the question has to be: “why was it given?”
Sue Hawley, the director of Spotlight on Corruption, has said, “There is no good reason why elected officials should be accepting jaunts and tickets to events that have nothing to do with their parliamentary or constituency business.” It would be interesting to hear from our elected politicians how they think that watching football or attending balls, all together with the associated, no doubt generous, hospitality, improves their performance as our representatives.
Ten-year stint: Croydon’s first woman MP, Sarah Jones, was elected in 2017
Jones, the first woman to be an MP for a Croydon constituency, was elected in 2017 for what was then Croydon Central. In 2024, she stood in Croydon West, following the boundary changes that gave the borough three-and-a-half MPs.
In almost a decade as an MP, Jones has a near-unblemished public record, apart from, perhaps, a slightly shaky debut appearance on BBC’s Question Time (she wasn’t asked back, or allowed to appear, for more than three years).
And, of course, there is the way Jones stayed schtum throughout the financial collapse of Croydon Council under her party colleagues Tony Newman, Alison Butler and Paul Scott, which earned her the tag of “Silent Sarah”, something which she has failed to shake off some six years later…
Elsewhere in her declarations, Jones has listed a few small payments earned through completing surveys for opinion polling companies (a common little financial sideline for many MPs), but she has declared no other active employment.
Prior to her election in 2017, Jones had worked in a number of roles, including for the Gatwick Airport expansion campaign. Jones also had her own consultancy company but, unlike Philp, she did the right thing and closed this down shortly after she became an MP.
The only other employment declared on Jones’s parliamentary record is for her son. Joe Jones is a partner with the consultancy company Flint Global. Joe Jones’s former boss at Flint, James Purnell, has just been appointed by Andy Burnham as his Downing Street Chief of Staff.
This is where things start to get a little troublesome…
Purnell is a former BBC executive who became an MP and was a Cabinet minister under Gordon Brown. Purnell held shares in Flint Global, which is owned through a holding company based in Jersey, “making its structure opaque”, according to a Guardian report. Purnell sold his Flint shares before taking the No10 position.
In like Flint: James Purnell, No10 Chief of Staff, until recently worked for lobbyists for Apple, BP and Thames Water
Flint Global doesn’t like to reveal who it works for but it is registered as a lobbyist, as is required by law. Two entries in the past five years show it had contact with government ministers or officials on behalf of its clients.
Reports say that Flint Global describes its activities as advising “international businesses and investors on policy, politics, regulation and competition”.
According to transparency records maintained by the EU, Flint Global’s clients have included such major firms as BP, Amazon, Jaguar Land Rover and Uber. In Britain, Flint Global is known to have advised Thames Water, but many other clients and meetings remain secret.
Apple appeared to be Flint Global’s biggest client in Europe, paying the company more than €1million in the last year for which figures are available.
Croydon West MP Sarah Jones is the junior policing minister in Andy Burnham’s government, where it appears that the long-standing issue of all-too-cosy relationships between lobbying firms and MPs remains a matter of legitimate public concern.
After decades of Tory cronyism, will we ever see Croydon MPs such as Jones support better transparency rules, so we can all see what’s currently being done behind closed doors?
Just for clarity, it ought to be re-stated that our MPs each receive a basic salary of £98,599, plus allowances to pay all the wages of their staff and assistants at Westminster and in the constituency, as well as money to pay for an office in the constituency they represent (Jones rents an office space in the Whitgift Centre which is ridiculously difficult to access for the public).
In addition, junior ministers, such as Jones, are paid up to £31,000 per year extra, depending on the exact rank and whether they choose to claim the full amount.
Perhaps it is tough to make ends meet on £130,000 per year when all your staff and office costs are paid, but some MPs and ministers still accept donations from organisations and wealthy individuals. Sarah Jones has received money from several different unions. Jones has also received money from Lord Oakeshott who has donated to a wide range of Labour politicians, and other parties as well.
Jones has also received money from Lord Sainsbury.
Supermarket sweep: Lord Sainsbury has donated to Sarah Jones. No one is saying why
David Sainsbury, part of the family that founded the supermarket chain, has a reputation for funding those on the right of the Labour Party. When Jeremy Corbyn was Labour leader, Sainsbury funded the LibDems. When Keir Starmer became leader, Lord Sainsbury returned to funding Labour, and he was by far the biggest donor to Andy Burnham in the figures that have just been released.
Sainsbury was one of the funders of Labour Together, another shady organisation (now called Think Labour) who have featured in Inside Croydon many times, and may well do again. iC’s loyal reader will doubtless make up their own mind about what receiving money from Lord Sainsbury may say about Sarah Jones, and Andy Burnham.
In other donations, Jones received £2,500 from a gas lobbying firm, Beyond2050, and another £2,500 from the Grand Sapphire Hotel on Purley Way. The hotel has hosted, or failed to host, fundraisers for Reform Ltd as well as Labour MP Steve Reed, and even Conservative Party gatherings. It was also where the very dodgy and cult-like “Church of Bling” – SPAC Nation – held weekly, cash-raising services.
All of which can be found on the official record, and on some other websites, such as TheyWorkForYou, which undertake the thankless task of logging such donations. Pity they never have to record the reason for such donations being made, or received.
Of course, there may be the Rumsfeldian “unknown unknowns”: those gifts, football tickets, secret meetings or generous donations made to our already well-paid elected politicians which, for whatever reason, were not entered in the Register of Interests.
Do let us know if you happen to know of anything that has not appeared on the register, and we will look into it.
Read more: Secretive MP Philp’s shares in wife’s company raise questions
Read more: Google and Gatwick among employers attending MPs’ jobs fair
Read more: Keir Starmer’s niece is council election candidate in safe ward
Read more: ‘The Nose in Search of a Bum’ sniffs out new government job
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