Labour donor named in alleged cronyism row advises Chancellor on Treasury summit

A Labour donor who was named in an alleged cronyism row will advise Rachel Reeves on the UK Government’s International Investment Summit.

Ian Corfield was previously given a temporary Treasury job as its director of investment, but it emerged he would now be working as an unpaid adviser rather than a salaried civil servant.

According to the Electoral Commission, the former credit card company executive has donated more than £20,000 to Labour since 2015, including a £5,000 payment to the now-Chancellor dated August last year.

Conservative shadow Treasury minister Laura Trott previously urged Ms Reeves to clarify whether she declared an interest before Mr Corfield’s appointment into a senior Government role.

Advise

According to the Treasury “Ian Corfield will work with the Chancellor, her political advisers and officials in the Treasury, as well as relevant teams across Government, to advise and help on delivering the International Investment Summit on October 14 2024”.

The department, together with the Department for Business and Trade, has vowed to bring together up to 300 industry leaders at the autumn meeting to “catalyse investment” in the UK.

The Treasury confirmed Mr Corfield will advise on delivering the summit’s objectives, to “make clear that the UK is open for business to trading partners around the globe, create a pro-business environment that supports innovation and high-quality jobs in the UK, create a pro-business environment that supports innovation and high-quality jobs in the UK”.

He would remain in post until October 31 this year and “declarations of interest have been made in the usual way”, according to a statement.

Ms Reeves earlier this month described the summit as a chance to “showcase Britain is back as a stable place to do business, helping to secure the private investment needed to make every part of our country better off”.

She added: “We are not resting on our laurels as work continues to rebuild Britain.”

‘Scandal’

Ms Trott said the decision for Mr Corfield to take up an adviser role instead of a Civil Service one “only seeks to underline how serious this scandal is”.

She added: “The Chancellor must urgently and publicly answer the question: did she declare that Mr Corfield was a donor to the Treasury prior to his appointment to the senior civil service.”

Mr Corfield was named in an alleged cronyism row alongside Lord Alli, a Labour peer since 1998 who was given a pass to Number 10 Downing Street, despite not having an official Government job.

“We are going to fix the foundations, we’ve got to do it at speed and I’m determined to have the right people in the right places to allow us to get on with that job,” Sir Keir Starmer told the press on Tuesday.

“I’m enormously aware of how big a task this is and how we have to move at pace, and that’s why we’re getting the best people into the best jobs.

“But I’m not really going to take lectures on this from the people who dragged our country so far down in the last few years.”

The Prime Minister declined to “publicly discuss individual appointments”, but added: “Look, if you take Lord Alli, he’s a long-term donor and contributor to the Labour Party.

“He was doing some transition work with us, he had a pass for a short-term time to do that work, and the work finished, and he hasn’t got a pass.

“That’s the state of affairs.”