This article is more than 11 months old

This article is more than 11 months old

A former cabinet minister is facing questions over his conduct after documents revealed he helped lobby for two firms he was paid to advise.

Owen Paterson, a former Conservative environment secretary and prominent Brexit supporter, took part in lobbying campaigns for the firms to promote their products.

Documents obtained by the Guardian reveal he had several meetings with officials and another with a minister. He also wrote asking them to take steps that would benefit the food manufacturer Lynn’s Country Foods and the healthcare firm Randox.

The documents raise questions over whether the North Shropshire MP has broken parliamentary rules that permit MPs to lobby on behalf of a paying client, but with restrictions: the lobbying must not help to give an exclusive financial benefit to the client, and the client must not have initiated the lobbying.

Paterson has also twice used House of Commons stationery to write to ministers on behalf of Randox. According to the rules, House of Commons stationery cannot be used for “business purposes”.

MPs are permitted to have consultancies under the parliamentary rules and are required to declare them in the parliamentary register of financial interests.

Paterson declares that he receives a total of £112,000 a year from the two firms, on top of his parliamentary salary of £79,000. He charges them £500 an hour.

Jon Trickett, Labour’s shadow Cabinet Office minister, said: “It is simply not right that an elected representative can use their influence to lobby on behalf of big business, and get paid handsomely doing it.

“He has serious questions to answer, but the real scandal here is just how weak the rules concerning lobbying by MPs are.”

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Asked to comment, Paterson said: “My financial interests have been correctly declared according to the rules of the House of Commons.”

Since 2016, Paterson has been paid £12,000 a year by Lynn’s Country Foods, a Northern Irish food manufacturer, to be a consultant.

He assisted the firm in a sustained lobbying campaign that lasted more than a year. He attended five meetings with the Food Standards Agency (FSA), which is responsible for food safety. Three of the meetings were with Heather Hancock, the FSA’s chair.

The firm sells Finnebrogue Naked bacon, which it markets as a healthy alternative to traditional bacon. Its product is processed without the nitrite preservatives in most bacon that have been linked to cancer.

Instead, the firm uses another additive mix derived from fruits, spices and ascorbic acid. Its original labels said the bacon was made without E numbers, but the FSA said the ascorbic acid needed to be declared as an E number and the claim removed. Over many months, Lynn’s and Paterson sought to persuade the FSA that it did not.

In January last year, Paterson wrote to Hancock outlining what he said the FSA had agreed to do at a meeting with him and Lynn’s employees. According to the documents, the FSA complained internally that Paterson and Lynn’s were making “inaccurate assertions” about the outcome of the meeting.

Six months later, an FSA official noted in a memo to Hancock that the FSA had devoted “considerable resources” to explaining the EU legal requirements to the firm and had “regularly engaged with the parties and Mr Paterson” since the firm first raised the issue in November 2017.

Documents released under freedom of information legislation show how Hancock emailed a colleague in July last year describing “a key theme of the pressure from Mr Paterson and [Lynn’s] to agree to their position”.

In a subsequent letter to Paterson, Hancock said she had been assured by Lynn’s that the additive mix “had been authorised by several European Union member states and that the FSA should therefore rely on this and cease any further requests for information either by us or by the local authority”.

However, the FSA contacted their counterparts in other countries, who replied that they had not given any such approval. Hancock told Paterson this discovery did not bear out Lynn’s claim and “definitely cannot be used by the FSA to bypass our usual authorisations and processes”.

The dispute appears to have ended in December 2018, when Lynn’s agreed to declare on the label of Finnebrogue Naked bacon that its product contained an additive.

Paterson also lobbied the FSA on behalf of Randox, which has paid him since 2015.

In 2016, he and Randox met Hancock, and the company suggested that antibiotic residues had been found in milk sold in supermarkets. Randox said it had developed a technique that could detect antibiotic residues in milk, and suggested the FSA adopt it for widespread testing.

At a meeting with Paterson last December, Hancock “explained yet again” to him that her agency did not have official responsibility for deciding how milk should be monitored.

An FSA memo said that in response to Randox’s suggestion the agency had collected samples of milk, but found little of concern.

The Guardian has previously reported Paterson helped Randox as it sought contracts from the Department for International Development. In 2016, he wrote on House of Commons stationery to Priti Patel, then international development secretary, asking her to meet representatives of Randox.

In January 2017, Paterson and a Randox employee met Rory Stewart, then a junior DfID minister, and discussed, among other issues, “potential commercial opportunities Randox may wish to explore”.

Four days later, Paterson wrote to Stewart promoting Randox’s “reliable blood tests”, which, he said, “would appear to be an excellent use of UK aid resources”. Paterson listed a number of ways that DfID could assist Randox win contracts.

In 2017, Randox doubled its fee to Paterson to nearly £100,000 a year. Randox said: “It is a matter of public record that Owen Paterson has worked for Randox Laboratories Ltd since August 2015.”

Lynn’s Country Foods said: “Owen Paterson’s consultancy for Lynn’s Country Foods is a matter for the public record. We do not propose to comment further at this time.”