More than 40 members of the House of Lords may be in breach of transparency rules, for failing to declare details of private companies that they run. This would make it one of the most wide-scale breaches of transparency rules ever reported in Westminster.
The peers include Eric Pickles, the chair of Westminster’s lobbying watchdog, who owns a consultancy business with his wife.
Rules say that, if a lord is a company director, then they should “give a broad indication of the company’s business, where this is not self-evident from its name”. But apart from stating that his business, Oakworth Services Ltd, is a “consultancy”, Pickles has not disclosed what area of work the firm is involved with.
