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The £147,000 question for Liam Fox’s ‘adviser’ Werrity
£147,000 is about double what Adam Werritty would have been paid in an official capacity
THE MONEY trail in the extraordinary case of Defence Secretary Liam Fox and his former flatmate Adam Werritty has led to the allegation that Werritty was funded to the tune of more than £147,000 last year through a not-for-profit company he set up for the purpose, Pargav Ltd.
It adds another huge question to the list that Sir Gus O'Donnell must put to Werritty later today as part of the Cabinet Secretary's investigation into whether Werritty profited from his access to Fox.
Why did Werritty choose to act as an informal adviser to Fox and not a formal one?
Was it simply that the informal approach allowed him to earn £140,000 in a year, about double what he might expect to earn if he had become an official adviser to Fox?
Or was it also that the informal approach allowed him - and Fox - to pursue 'ideological' paths that would not have been seen as appropriate had he held a formal position at the MoD?
There have been claims that Werritty chose not to take on a special adviser's role because they were friends and there would be a conflict of interests. Yet that didn't stop Cameron packing Number Ten with his friends or Tony Blair hiring Alastair Campbell.
Nick Robinson, the BBC political editor, suggested on the Today programme that Werritty and by extension Fox's business connections were all 'ideological'. Sir Gus ought to brush that aside. One of the business investors in Pargav was a hedge fund which inevitably must have defence investments.
The recent revelations about Fox and Werritty also raise a wider question about lobbying.
The Spectator is reporting the widely shared view that the party conference season has been taken over by lobbyists. The Werritty web showed that colossal sums are being paid for contact and information - Harvey Boulter, a businessman involved in a meeting with Fox and Werritty, is paying £10,000 a month to another lobby firm not connected to Werritty.
Werritty claims not to be a lobbyist, but even his ex-girlfriend thought otherwise.
Cameron once predicted that lobbying would be the next big scandal. The Speccy has joined the call for Cameron to deal with it once and for all. That is what Sir Gus could do with his report to Cameron next week.
There is one other question in the Mole's inquisitive mind. Cameron was accused of delaying the inquiry. Was that because the PM wanted to give Fleet Street's finest the time to dig for the dirt? He surely now has the ammunition to shoot his awkward little Fox. ·
