This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

The home secretary, Priti Patel, has been urged to withdraw from cabinet discussions about a lucrative £6bn defence contract, after it emerged that the US company that paid her £1,000 an hour to advise it plans to bid for the work.

Christine Jardine, the Liberal Democrats’ home affairs spokesperson, said the fact that Patel had worked for Viasat in the period running up to her appointment as home secretary created the risk of a conflict of interest now she was in government.

Priti Patel accused of breaching ministerial code for second time Read more

The Californian company has declared it wants to bid on the contract to supply next-generation military satellite communication systems, called Skynet 6, in a bidding process run by the Ministry of Defence that is expected to start next year.

Jardine called on Patel to clarify whether she “has had any conversations about the [Ministry of Defence] contract with anyone there” and demanded the home secretary “recuse herself from any cabinet or national security council discussions concerning the firm”.

Viasat spelled out its interest in bidding for Skynet 6 in a corporate blog from February which quotes a company executive saying that the UK has “an enormous opportunity” to deploy expertise from “private sector … providers, including Viasat”.

Patel originally declared on 3 June, when she was a backbencher, that she worked as a “strategic adviser” to Viasat from 1 May to 31 July, earning £5,000 a month for “an expected commitment” of about five hours a month.

That prompted the Lib Dems to ask her to “immediately confirm when her work with Viasat ended”, because that appeared to overlap with the Brexiter’s appointment as home secretary on 24 July.

A subsequent declaration, made on 31 July, once she had become a minister, shortened the time she was under contract to the communications company to the end of June, suggesting that she had not worked for Viasat during July.

Although the Skynet contract falls under the Ministry of Defence, opposition politicians believe that such a strategically significant procurement could be discussed across government with other ministers responsible for national security.

Jardine said: “The British public cannot have confidence that this multibillion-pound defence contract will be decided in the national interest while one of the cabinet ministers in the discussions was until very recently a paid adviser to one of the companies bidding for it.”

Home Office sources said Patel had been “through a full process” of examination by the advisory committee on business appointments (Acoba), the body that monitors private sector employment by ministers and ex-ministers, and that “no issues were raised”.