Senior politicians have called for Boris Johnson’s £115,000 taxpayer-funded annual allowance to be suspended after revelations in the Guardian suggested the former prime minister may have used his private office to profit from contacts he gained in office.
The government ethics watchdog, which monitors the activities of former ministers and senior civil servants, has also opened an investigation into Johnson’s newly revealed contacts and income since leaving office.
Johnson’s engagements, revealed in a major data leak from his private office, include lobbying senior Saudi officials for a firm he co-chairs and meeting with Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro, after which he received more than £200,000 from a hedge fund.
The disclosures shine a spotlight on how Johnson appears to have used his private office since resigning as prime minister and the scheme that allows former UK prime ministers to claim government money to pay for expenses “arising from their special position in public life”.
The Labour peer Margaret Hodge, a former chair of the public accounts committee, who has been a longtime transparency activist, called for a full investigation.
Hodge said the Guardian’s investigation suggested that “Boris Johnson is prepared to break the ethical standards of behaviour we all sign up to as public servants”.
She said Johnson appeared to have acted “with complete impunity”, ignoring the rules that all government ministers were expected to uphold when they left office.