Grant Shapps admits holding second job as 'multimillion-dollar web marketer' while also an MP

Grant Shapps held a second job as a “multimillion-dollar web marketer” under the pseudonym Michael Green while also an MP.

The Tory party chair had repeatedly denied that he had continued to run his online marketing firm after being elected as an MP in 2006.

But a recording emerged yesterday of the Welwyn Hatfield MP boasting about expanding the business throughout 2006.

Speaking under the pseudonym Michael Green, he says his products – including an advice book titled Stinking Rich 3 – would make listeners “a ton of cash by Christmas”, according to the audio obtained by the Guardian.

The company How To Corp, which he was fronting at the time under the alias, was listed in his parliamentary register of interests in 2006.

But he had repeatedly denied using it while working as an MP, even threatening legal action against a constituent who made the allegation.

A Tory party spokesman told the Guardian that Mr Shapps now concedes “his writing career [as Green]... ended shortly after [becoming an MP].”

The company was founded by Mr Shapps in 2000 and registered at Companies House in 2005. He transferred his share in the firm to his wife in 2008, and the company was dissolved last year.

Only last month, Mr Shapps told radio station LBC he had not used the penname whilst working as an MP.

He said: “To be absolutely clear: I don’t have a second job. And I have never had a second job whilst I being an MP. End of story.”

However, yesterday, a statement put out by the Conservative press office said: ““Like many authors and journalists, Grant wrote with a pen name. This was completely transparent: his full name and biographical details were permanently published on the company’s main website. Given that this was a decade ago, and was mentioned during the cut and thrust of an interview, he referenced that his writing career had ended when he became an MP: in fact it ended shortly afterwards.”