The Parliamentary Funding Loophole Allowing Murdoch To Dodge Scrutiny

A new tool collating data on the funding of All Party Parliamentary Groups (APPGs) over the last three years highlights transparency loopholes in the rules surrounding their funding.  

The tool, from the consultancy Cast From Clay, alerted Byline Times to two loopholes in the transparency rules of APPG funding.

Companies such as Murdoch’s News Corp and defence contractors like Lockheed Martin are able to conceal how much funding they are giving to APPGs by funding the secretariat, but not the APPG itself.  Byline also found that the number of Policy Liaison Groups (PLGs) which act as APPGs without having to obey transparency rules has doubled since they were first established last year.

 APPGs, informal groups in Parliament which conduct research and make policy recommendations, have come under fire in recent years for acting as a form of lobbying integrated into the Westminster system.

APPGs are made up of MPs and peers, but can have secretariats staffed or funded by third parties meaning various special interests such as think tanks, companies, or campaign groups can gain regular access to MPs.

In 2023, new rules were introduced to improve transparency, including increasing the minimum numbers of members an APPG must have, mandatory yearly declarations of funding above £1500, and a ban on funding from foreign governments. Despite these attempts, ways remain to skirt the rules and avoid scrutiny.

Currently it is impossible to know how much a company is giving to an APPG when they are funding the secretariat, but not the APPG directly.

This means that there is no way of knowing how much money defence firms and News UK are donating to parliamentary research.

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What the Tool Revealed

The APPG on Defence Technology received £61,000 from APPG Secretariat Services Ltd.

The public record states who the secretariat is funded by, but does not reveal the proportions of the funding.

Consequently, there is no way of knowing if the bulk of the funding came from the data services firm Capita, the engineering firm Ultra Electronics, the Story Homes construction company, or the arms manufacturers Leonardo and Lockheed Martin who also fund the APPG secretariat, or if all firms donated similar amounts.  

Similarly News UK, which owns The Times and The Sun, funds Whitehouse Communications which acts as the secretariat for the Media APPG but it is unclear if the bulk of the £112,000 the APPG has received over the last three years comes from Murdoch, or from Bauer and the creative agencies that also fund the secretariat.

Tom Hashemi of Cast From Clay explained: “This masks who wields real influence: one company might provide £20,000 while another gives £1,000, but they appear identical on the register. The implications of this could be serious.

MPs engaging with these groups may have no idea whose interests dominate the funding, potentially championing policies that favour specific market players without realising it, or allowing wealthy interests to quietly steer the policy conversation while smaller contributors create an illusion of broad support

Tom Hashemi of Cast From Clay

Hashemi added: “The 2023 rule changes intended to make APPGs transparent. This loophole seems an oversight”.

A second loophole is the rebranding of certain APPGs as Policy Liaison Groups (PLGs), a term with no official status, but which is not covered by the rules.

In 2024, Peter Geoghegan reported for The Times that three APPGs had been repackaged as PLGs by College Green Group, a political consultancy run by Thomas Borwick, formerly the chief technology officer for the Vote Leave campaign.

The number of PLGs operating since Geoghegan’s report has doubled. College Green Group now claims to operate at least six PLGs on Housing, Regeneration, Future Homes, Workplace Wellbeing, and Environmental Social and Governance, though its website states that it provides the Secretariat for a series of PLGs on major issues “including” the aforementioned groups, suggesting it may operate more than just those six.

The APPG on Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) – the acronym referring to ethical business practices – was funded by companies that collectively have been fined billions for regulatory breaches including Bayer, the pharmaceuticals company which paid $9.6 billion in 2020 to settle tens of thousands of claims that a weedkiller produced by Monsanto, of which it is the parent company, caused non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.

Now that the ESG group is a PLG, who funds it and how much funding it receives from them remains unclear.

Although some of the PLGs run by College Green Group declare their funding (though not the specific amounts contributed by each funder), the PLGs on ESG, housing and Regeneration and Growth do not appear to declare any funding they receive.

Rose Whiffen, Senior Research Officer at Transparency International told Byline Times that the “operation of unregulated groups such as these further illustrates how much the professional lobbying of MPs is able to avoid scrutiny and remain in the shadows”.

She added: “The public has a right to know who has the ears of their elected representatives, so Parliament should introduce a comprehensive statutory lobbying register  to shine a light on lobbying whatever name it goes by.”

College Green Group did not respond to Byline Times’ questions.