I assumed that the companies which Owen Paterson lobbied for had a previous connection with the former MP for North Shropshire. Not so. It turns out that they did not even recruit him. He actually touted his services around. The Open Democracy web site says:
Owen Paterson, the disgraced former Tory minister, did a “ring round” weeks after leaving government in an attempt to get a second job as a consultant [...] He was paid for consultancy work by a health diagnostic firm, Randox Laboratories, and a meat processing firm, Lynn’s Country Foods, both of which are based in Northern Ireland.
Randox Laboratories, which went on to win £479m in COVID-testing contracts, paid Paterson £120 an hour to act as a consultant. The firm told The Times the contracts, which were awarded without competition, were won ‘on merit’. But it has now emerged that Paterson also tried to get a consultancy job at CIGA Healthcare Ltd, another health diagnostics firm based in Northern Ireland.
The company’s owner, Irwin Armstrong, told openDemocracy he was “quite friendly” with Paterson after getting to know him when he was secretary of state for Northern Ireland.
“He did ring me up asking if there was anything available,” Armstrong said. “I said we’re a small company and we can’t really afford to be employing people as PR people or whatever.”
He said the conversation took place in 2014, “a few weeks” after Paterson left his final position in government.
OpnnDemocracy draws the conclusion that the practice is common among MPs. To my mind, they have not yet made that case, but no doubt their research continues.
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