Priti Patel is Minister of State at the Home Office. It is suggested she should withdraw from any Cabinet discussions on an advanced military satellite system contract that the MOD is considering next year to avoid a conflict of interest. It is amazing this is not already seen as an unacceptable conflict of interest for her as an MP. We read in the Parliamentary Register of Members Interests:- “From 1 May 2019 to 30 June 2019, Strategic Adviser, Viasat Inc, of 6155 El Camino Real, Carlsbad, California 92009, a global communications company. Expected remuneration of £5,000 a month for a commitment of approx. 5 hrs per month. (Registered 3 June 2019; updated 31 July 2019)”  Viasat will be bidding for that contract.

Priti Patel is paid £79,000 for her work as MP and another £71,000 as Secretary of State. As an MP and Minister of State she should be working sixty or more hours a week in those two jobs, above the European directive of 48 hours a week maximum for what is good for you. She also receives £161,000 from Accloud, a web communications company. She gives approximately 20 hours a month to them as a non-executive director, one of four. The Viasat Contract  brings in another £60,000 a year bringing her annual income from these four jobs to £380,000 or so, aside any other income. On the assumption that she actually works 60 hours a week with four weeks holiday, she is receiving £130 an hour for every hour she works, which is insulting to all the people caring, delivering, cleaning, doing agricultural work, selling and packing for far less than a tenth of that amount. Work should be honoured and properly and fairly paid. In the Viasat contract she receives £1000 an hour. It cannot be earned.

The issue is the Viasat Contract and its purpose. What is the work for? Viasat work in military and government communication systems, especially those developing “secure” satellite links across warzones and military systems. It is a very high tech company operating mainly with the US military satellite systems and it has few potential customers because it is so advanced. The UK Government and defence system is one of them. The planned bid for the MOD contract next year fits this pattern. Viasat  has some 6500 workers, many of them highly technical and full time. It is unthinkable that Priti Patel might have technical, military or other expertise to bring to this company at the end of a sixty hour plus week doing three jobs which should require high commitment. This money is not for work done in the normal sense.

So, what work has Priti Patel done in the past?  She has worked for a Public Relations Firm, Weber Shandwick, partly in relation to British American Tobacco’s interests. She also worked for Diageo defending alcohol interests. In 2017 she was sacked as a Minister for secretly having a series of meetings in Israel while on a private holiday discussing we know not what. She was dismissed by Theresa May for operating outside ministerial guidelines. She said she had cleared it with Boris Johnson, her secretary of State. He denied it and she was asked to resign. The meetings suggest opening up some kind of Israeli influence on Conservative Government policy, perhaps in relation to the Palestinian aid. Her work seems to have been in transmitting influence from interested parties into Government operations, both in Westminster and the EU.

So, the question is, What is Viasat paying Priti Patel a thousand pounds an hour to do? The declared work is as a “Strategic Advisor”, and the obvious strategic advice is on gaining contracts in the MOD, where Patel has no expertise. The contract occurred before she became a Minister, but influence seems the purpose of the contract. It is merely a question of the level of influence, not the character of it. What else can it be? Of course, both parties have the right to answer the question, but the question is, does the money go to Patel so that a lucrative contract might go to Viasat? The question needs answering by both parties. Why were Viasat paying Patel a thousand an hour? What “advice” did they hope she would give that they did not already understand in what we hope is an open contract procedure? To Patel the question is: What was she accepting a thousand an hour to do? We should have honest answers to these questions. Otherwise we know with high certainly that another munitions or government contract is being illicitly sought through political influence and another politician has been bought to provide the influence. That should never be part of UK politics.