Role of ministers' political advisers under question

Lord Nolan has been asked to widen his inquiry into standards in public life to ministers' personal political advisers.

The request, made separately by two Labour MPs, follows mounting concern at Westminster about the ease with which advisers have been able to leave their ministers' sides and join political lobbying firms.

A third MP, the Liberal Democrat Matthew Taylor, yesterday asked John Major to investigate claims in a lobby firm's brochure that the Prime Minister's speech writer and special adviser, Nicholas True, was one of its workers "on secondment" to 10 Downing Street when he was actually being paid from government funds.

In recent years, at least six advisers have gone straight from ministers' private offices, where they had access to sensitive Cabinet papers and obtained intimate knowledge of government thinking, to lobbying companies. Others have moved to banks and into industry, but MPs' current concerns are over the potential abuse of knowledge lobbyists could exercise.

Even though political advisers are treated as civil servants and have to undergo vetting for security purposes, they are not subject to the same rules on leaving office as senior civil servants.

A series of questions tabled by Alan Milburn, MP for Darlington, has established that no checks are made on the details of advisers' new jobs and that they are subject to no controls. Senior civil servants face a two-year bar on joining firms related to the departments in which they used to work, unless cleared by the Business Appointments Committee.

John Hutton, MP for Barrow and Furness, has compiled a list of the advisers now working for lobbying firms.

Only one, Perry Miller, formerly with Malcolm Rifkind at the Ministry of Defence and now at Ian Greer Associates, is known to have been restricted in the work he did. When he left the MoD in 1993, he was asked to avoid working for Ian Greer's defence clients for six months.

Mr Hutton has called on Lord Nolan to bring the advisers within the remit of the Business Appointments Committee because of "the sensitivity of their posts and the potential for abuse".

Mr Milburn, who is also approaching Lord Nolan, said: "While ministers deem it necessary to give their advisers security clearance, they do not impose any controls on the information advisers can take with them."

And he added: "Obviously, the lobbying firms are getting something for their money."

Mr Taylor has written to Mr Major to tell him that the Public Policy Unit, a firm of lobbyists, had circulated a brochure describing Nicholas True, the deputy head of the policy unit at Number 10, as being an employee "on secondment".

Although Mr True used to work for PPU, he is now a full-time adviser paid from public funds. Mr Taylor said he was anxious that PPU was not benefiting from its relationship with Mr True, and wrote: "Is not a continuing link or a fast return to the PPU after leaving your office likely to create a suspicion of... impropriety?" Last year, a parliamentary answer given by Tony Newton on Mr Major's behalf said only two people since 1990 had been on secondment to his office - and Mr True was not one of them.

Secret crisis guide, page 6