Former UK PM David Cameron asked second minister for state cash

Scandal deepens for ex-PM amid fresh revelations over government loans for Lex Greensill.

David Cameron with then London Mayor Boris Johnson in 2015. Picture: AFP.

David Cameron lobbied a second Conservative Treasury minister for access to government coronavirus support loans for the finance firm Greensill, The Times has learnt.

The former prime minister contacted Jesse Norman, financial secretary to the Treasury, at the same time as he was trying to get access to Rishi Sunak, the chancellor of the exchequer.

The emergence of Cameron’s contact with Norman raises further questions about the extent of the lobbying operation across government that he pursued in Greensill’s interests. At the time he was working as a senior adviser to the firm and was believed to have share options worth $60 million.

Norman was better known to Cameron than Sunak, who became an MP a year before he stood down. Norman had served as a policy adviser in Downing Street from 2013 and had been in the Commons since the start of the coalition government in 2010.

One, Southampton Street (L), the home of Greensill Capital in London. Picture: Getty Images.

As financial secretary he was not responsible for the Covid support schemes set up to help businesses during the pandemic. However, he had an important role in the overall Treasury response to the crisis as the minister responsible for the tax system and HM Revenue & Customs. Sunak has said he was contacted by Cameron, who also contacted the Bank of England and senior officials in the Treasury.

Greensill representatives are understood to have held ten calls between March and June last year with senior Treasury officials as they sought access to a Bank of England loan scheme. The officials were reluctant to include Greensill in the Bank’s Covid Corporate Financing Facility, which was set up to support blue-chip UK companies, because it did not fall within the remit of the scheme. Greensill wanted access so that it could lend more money to its borrowers, who included Sanjeev Gupta, the owner of Liberty Steel.

Lex Greensill of Greensill Capital. Picture: Annabel Moeller.

Sources said that when officials told Greensill it was not eligible Cameron contacted Sunak and Norman directly to lobby them to make the rules more flexible. Both men are understood to have referred the matter back to officials and the decision was not changed.

Greensill was accredited in June as a lender for the second-largest Covid support scheme, the coronavirus large business interruption loan scheme, which came with an 80 per cent government guarantee. It used this fund to underwrite millions of pounds in loans to companies linked with Gupta’s group for which the taxpayer could now be liable. It is unclear whether Cameron and Greensill also lobbied the Treasury for access to this scheme. Last night Labour said that the latest revelation underlined the need for the Treasury to declare all contacts with Cameron.

A spokesman for Cameron did not respond to a request to comment.

More than 60 ministers and special advisers who worked in Cameron’s government have moved into private sector jobs linked to their previous portfolio, an analysis has revealed. Sixty-six aides and politicians received approval from the Advisory Committee on Business Appointments to take up roles with potential links to areas in which they had played a role in determining government policy. There is no suggestion that any have broken any rules.

The Times