Parliamentarians on the trip also included Conservative MPs Mark Garnier, James Heappey, Stephen Metcalfe and Andrew Mitchell, and the Tory peer Lord Northbrook.
Maude’s company FMAP Ltd has a number of former Tory ministers as senior advisers, including Nicholas Soames, Nick Boles and Nick Hurd, as well as the former chair of the Office of Budget Responsibility, Robert Chote. Past senior advisers have included the former chancellor Philip Hammond.
The firm boasts of work “with the federal governments in Canada and Australia, the government of NSW [New South Wales] and a number of governments in Asia and the Middle East”. Reports say the governments of Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Kazakhstan are also clients.
Two months ago, Maude and Nick Hurd flew to Paraguay to meet local officials – where, Maude said, the FMAP team “look[s] forward to supporting the crucial next stages in Paraguay’s journey of reform”.
On its website, the company says: “Our focus is on the implementation of fiscal, economic and public sector reform.”
Daniel Beizsley, from the campaign group Spotlight on Corruption, said: “Any blurring of the line between parliamentary business and Lords’ personal interests [needs to] come under proper scrutiny.
“This is especially sensitive when Lords are establishing commercial relationships with foreign heads of state that could be open to exploitation.
“It's been nearly two years since the Intelligence and Security Committee 'Russia report' recommended more transparency and better enforcement of the House of Lords' Code of Conduct, yet we're still waiting for real reform.”
Civil service review
Although FMAP Ltd claims it “does not undertake work for the UK government or seek to do so,” senior figures at the company have worked at the heart of government in a personal capacity, prompting concerns about a “revolving door”.
This includes Maude’s former business partner at the company, the Conservative peer Simone Finn, who has been a non-executive board member for the Cabinet Office since 2020. In February 2021, she was appointed as Boris Johnson’s deputy chief of staff, at the heart of Number 10.
Finn stepped down as a director of FMAP Ltd when she got the job last year. A spokesperson for the company said she is not involved with the firm “in any way”.
Maude’s review of the civil service could see 91,000 jobs cut, and non-civil servants heading up departments. He has already cut 90,000 civil service jobs, as a Cabinet Office minister under David Cameron a decade ago.
Last year, he conducted a Cabinet Office review into spending controls, which sparked questions from Labour about potential conflicts of interest. A Cabinet Office minister declined to answer a question on what tender processes had been followed, pointing to “corporate memory and experience.”
A spokesperson for FMAP Ltd told openDemocracy: “Any work undertaken by Lord Maude or FMAP Limited’s employees for the UK government has been undertaken without remuneration on a pro bono basis.”