Nigel Farage now faces up to four investigations by Daniel Greenberg, the parliamentary commissioner for standards – although it is possible that some of them could be merged and considered as part of the same complaint.
After the Guardian revealed that Farage received £5m from the cryptocurrency billionaire Christopher Harborne shortly before the 2024 general election, the commissioner launched an inquiry into claims that this was a breach of rule 5 of the code of conduct for MPs, which is about the requirement to register interests. There is a reference to this on the commissioner’s website.
Yesterday Josh Babarinde, the Lib Dem MP and president of the party, published an open letter to the commissioner saying the new allegations in the Sunday Times should also be investigated on the grounds they were about gifts that should have been registered.
It is for Greenberg to decide whether or not to investigate this complaint. He could do this as part of the Harborne investigation, or separately. Given that the issues involved overlap, it would be logical to look at both issues together. But that would slow up the process, potentially by many months. The Harborne case just involves a single donation, and the facts of the matter are not in dispute. The Sunday Times story refers to multiple things that could be described as unregistered gifts, and some of the facts do seem to be contested.
After the Times reported last week that Farage and his partner own at least five homes, some of which are not mentioned in the register of members’ interests, the Labour MP Joe Powell said that he had also raised this with Greenberg.
A fourth complaint is potentially more serious. The Labour MP Phil Brickell revealed last week that he has asked Greenberg to investigate claims that Farage has broken the rules on paid lobbying. Farage has always denied this (just as he denies breaking the rules about registering interests) and Brickell’s complaint does not seem to be based on information not already in the public domain. But he submitted his complaint after Keir Starmer in effect accused Farage of paid lobbying at PMQs on Wednesday, and that might make the complaint harder for Greenberg to ignore.
Starmer told MPs:
[Farage] received £5m from a crypto billionaire and then privately lobbied the Bank of England on digital currencies. Did the Reform leader carry out paid lobbying?
