UK politics: Cameron does not deny using Greensill’s private jet to fly to holiday home in Cornwall – as it happened

Meg Hillier, the chair, gets the final question.

Q: When you were PM, and I went to school assemblies and pupils asked what you were like, I said something positive. What should I say now?

Cameron says he would like to be seen as someone with “a record of public service” who put together the first coalition government in 70 years. He dealt with a tricky economic situation, and made a lot of changes, like equal marriage.

But explaining the decision he took on Greensill has been difficult, he says.

There will be lessons to learn, and he looks forward to reading what the committee recommends, he says.

And that’s it. The session is over.

Q: With hindsight, should you have asked more questions about the state of the company?

Cameron says Lex Greensill himself did not think the company was in trouble until December. So he does not see how he could have known it was in difficulty if the boss didn’t.

He says he did ask the proper questions.

Q: Was there more risk here than was understood?

Possibly, says Cameron. He says it is the job of the committee to make recommendations as to how to manage that. But it should also remember the importance of not losing the opportunity to innovate.

Q: And what have you learnt from this?

Cameron says he accepts former prime ministers are different, and have to act differently.

Sir Bernard Jenkin goes next.

Q: What lessons are to be learnt from this?

Cameron says he would be wary of making recommendations. He says government should not lose the chance to benefit from working with the private sector. And there are great advantages to be had from technical innovation, he says.

Q: How could Earnd afford to pay people earlier?

Cameron says there would have been a cost to Greensill.

Q: The NHS is one of the biggest employers in the world. How could Greensill afford this?

Because the cost would have been relatively low, says Cameron.

He says Lex Greensill described this as the company’s corporate responsibility programme.

Q: Did you know Bill Crothers joined Greensill when he was still at the Cabinet Office?

No, says Cameron. He says he did not know that when he was PM.

And when he was at Greensill, he did not know that Crothers had still been working for government for a period when he was working for the company.

Meg Hillier goes next.

Q: Have you disclosed all your contacts with Greensill?

Cameron says he thinks he gave the Treasury committee more than they wanted. He would have to chat to see if they have had all the contacts.

Q: You told the Treasury committee you spoke to Lex Greensill once a week. When did you learn the company was in financial difficulties?

David Cameron says there was conversation in December when he was told there was a problem.

Richard Holden (Con) asks if the pharmacy supply chain finance scheme just led to pharmacies putting up their costs for consumers, so they could recover the money.

Cameron says they were willing to pay a cost to be guaranteed early payment. So they benefitted and the government benefitted. Cameron says “without wanting to sound like Chinese politician”, that meant it was “a win-win” situation.

Q: Wasn’t it useful for Lex Greensill to introduce a scheme when he was in government from which his company subsequently benefited? (Greensill Capital later ran the pharmacy scheme.)

Cameron says he thinks that charge is unfair. When the scheme was first introduced, it was run by the government payment service. He says Greensill Capital did not take over management of it until six years later, after the contract was put out to tender.

Cameron says, in an ideal world, the Treasury would pay pharmacies on time. That would probably be cheaper all round.

But it does not work like that, he says. He says that is because bureaucracy holds up payment. And he says the Treasury does not like the cost of paying early.

Sarah Olney (Lib Dem) asks if there was a problem with cash flows to pharmacies. She suggests this idea was a solution searching for a problem.

Cameron says it was both. He says pharmacies like the scheme.

Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (Con) goes next.

Q: At what stage were you involved in the pharmacy supply chain finance initiative?

Cameron says he does not recall exactly, but he assumes a plan was worked up, it went into his red box, and he approved it, and the launch, at the same time.

Q: So why was the idea not applied elsewhere in government?

Cameron says he does not have an answer.

Q: Why did Greensill have an office in No 10?

Cameron says he thinks it was the Cabinet Office, not No 10.

Sir Bernard Jenkin (Con) goes next.

Q: This committee is looking at value for money, not lobbying. But the “revolving door” syndrome might affect how much people in government are willing to pay private companies.

Cameron says he understands the point. There is an appointment process, he says. But he thinks former ministers should be allowed to take up commercial roles.

Peter Grant (SNP) goes next.

Q: Why did you start working for Greensill?

Cameron says it took him a while to choose a commercial job to do. He says he liked the idea behind Greensill. It was a potential UK fintech success story. He did due diligence. But ultimately it failed.

As PM he had promoted fintech, and so he wanted to help a fintech company.

He says Greensill never raised the prospect of a job when Cameron was in office.

But he says the fact that he had promoted fintech as PM meant he had some understanding of the sector. It was “a point of shared interest”. But there was no other connection.

Q: And what did they see in you?

That is more a question for them, Cameron says.

He says they were small but growing, and competing with bank. He thinks they wanted someone who would roll up their sleeves and get involved. The public sector side of it did not come til later. Initially he was there to help Greensill win big, commercial customers.

Q: So how did you start lobbying?

Cameron says, when Covid happens, Greensill needed to get government to take an interest in its idea. That is when he got involved.

He says they also thought, if the technology could be used to pay suppliers early, it could also be used to pay workers early. Cameron says he thought this was a good idea, and Greensill thought it would offer it free to employees and employers in the NHS.

Barry Gardiner (Lab) goes next.

Q: How did Greensill end up working for government?

Cameron says Sir Jeremy Heywood brought him in. He says he is sure he was informed of this. Greensill was given an office and a pass. But he cannot find a paper record of this.

Q: You gave him a shout-out at an event in 2014. When Liam Fox resigned, he said he had allowed his professional and personal responsibilities to become blurred. Did that happen to you?

No, says Cameron. He says he thinks he met Greensill just twice when he was PM. On of those occasions was the one mentioned by Gardiner.

The shout-out was because he thought this was a good initiative, says Cameron.

Q: So that was just your natural bonhomie.

Cameron says he would like to think so, but he can’t recall the event.

Q: If it such a good idea, why did only one major scheme get off the ground in your time.

Cameron says that is a good question. He says he can’t really answer, but the Cabinet Office might be able to answer, or the late Sir Jeremy Heywood, who brought Lex Greensill into government as an adviser, but he is no longer with us, Cameron says.

Q: Isn’t it really because the Treasury knows it will cost the government more.

Cameron does not accept that. He says pharmacists like the scheme.

Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (Con) starts.

Q: When were you aware of supply chain finance when you were in office?

David Cameron says he does not think he met Lex Greensill until 2012. Greensill was working on two schemes: a project for the private sector, which would help them with cash flow during the credit crunch, which he was in favour of; and the scheme for pharmacies.

Q: Does supply chain finance have a role in the public sector?

Cameron says the pharmacy scheme shows it can. It saved the NHS £100m. He says in theory the government could pay bills more quickly, but in practice that does not happen.

And the Treasury could face a cost if it paid bills earlier.

There is not much sympathy for David Cameron amongst the Twitter commentariat.

This is from the Independent’s sketch writer Tom Peck.

And this is from the Times columnist Matt Chorley.

This is from the Sunday Times’ Gabriel Pogrund, who has helped the paper break some of the best stories on Greensill.

This is from Angela Rayner, the deputy Labour leader, on David Cameron’s evidence to the Treasury committee on Greensill.

David Cameron is getting a short break. The public accounts committee says it will not start until about 5.10pm.

Mel Stride ends the session by thanking Cameron for attending and for answering questions that were difficult for him.

But there won’t be much of a rest. Cameron is probably now finding the Zoom invite for the public accounts committee, which is due to start its hearing with him at 5pm.

Ali says, when Covid contracts were being handed out, there was a separate VIP route for procurement. The Treasury said no to the CCFF proposal. But the Treasury did help Greensill get access to CBIL (coronavirus business interruption loans). She says she has no pleasure in saying a former PM has been used by someone acting as “con artist”.

Cameron says the CBIL application process was a separate one.

Ali ends by saying it is “bitterly disappointing” what has happened because it has been appalling for our democracy.

Ali says, having listened to Cameron’s evidence, people will be alarmed by the way Cameron allowed himself to be used, bringing the office of former PM into disrepute. He should have been much more careful about due diligence, she says.

Cameron says that he takes “a different view”. He worked for the company because he thought it had a good product, and he did due due diligence, he says.

He says before he became PM people did not know who was lobbying government.

From the BBC’s business editor Simon Jack

Labour’s Rushanara Ali puts it to Cameron that he did not do due diligence on Greensill before he joined, or else he turned a blind eye to its problems. She says his reputation is in tatters.

Cameron does not accept that. He says he was an adviser to the company. He was not on the board, he did not involved in lending decisions, and he was not on the credit or risk committees, he says.

He says Greensill cannot be accused of not supporting the steel industry, and of lending too much money to Gupta. Perhaps it should have been more sceptical of Gupta, he says.

Cameron says he is meeting Nigel Boardman, the banker asked to investigate the Greensill affair for the government, next week.

Baker says he has a “delicate” question to ask.

Q: When you were PM, did Lex Greensill advise you on supply chain finance. And did he ever hint you might get a job with him later?

Cameron says Greensill came up with the plan for pharmacies. That was in 2012. He says he thinks he met Greensill twice. He says “at no stage did he ever suggest that I would go and work with him or for him afterwards”.

From the Financial Times’ Jim Pickard

Cameron says he was a passionate enthusiast for Greensill’s Earnd app because he thought it would reduce the need for payday lending.

Steve Baker (Con) asks about Greensill’s supply chain finance for pharmacies.

Cameron says people say this is unnecessary because the government could just pay pharmacies more quickly. But he says it is not as simple as that because sometimes early payment won’t happen. And he says although the Treasury is in theory in favour of early payment, in practice it isn’t because that involves more borrowing.

Some of the early posts have been beefed up with direct quotes. You may need to refresh the page to get the updates to appear.

Mel Stride, the chair, returns to the matter of Cameron’s pay. Was it over £1m?

Cameron says it was a generous salary, the sum someone might make working for a bank. It was “a generous salary”.

He says if he had gone to work for a large bank, like some of his predecessors, he may have made even more. But he did not want to work for a large bank. He wanted to work for fintech company.

Angela Eagle (Lab) asks if Cameron has any message for people who work at Liberty Steel?

Cameron says he wants the UK to have a steel industry. But he says that it is not simply a matter of saying that Greensill is to blame for what happened to Liberty Steel. They had a symbiotic relationship, he says.

Anthony Browne (Con) asks Cameron whether he checked what he was telling the Treasury about Greensill was correct.

Cameron says the information was checked carefully. He thinks the letter went through several drafts. He wanted to be sure he was getting it right.

Q: What would you do differently?

Cameron says, if you work for a company that goes into administration, you ask if you made the right choice. He did due diligence, he says. But he thinks about that.

With regard to contacting the Treasury, he has said a formal letter would be better, coming from a former PM. But they were in special circumstances.

Q: Anything else?

Cameron says he would like to have got to a better solution as to how to amend the CCFF more quickly.

And he says he took a time issuing his lengthy statement because he expected someone else to come out defending Greensill. He felt that was not his job, explaining why it went bust.

Cameron says the UK must continue to be a financial innovator.

There are lots of thing that banks used to do badly, that other companies are doing better. For example, remittances - money sent abroad. He says, as we improve regulation, we should not lose the ability to deliver low-cost finance more effectively.

This is from David Lammy, the shadow justice secretary, on the exchanges at 3.20pm.

Q: How much were you paid? More than Boris Johnson earned as a backbencher?

Cameron says he was well paid. He had an interest in the company. But he was not affected by the amount, so he considers that a private matter, he says.

Q: But isn’t this a matter of public interest?

Cameron says, in talking to the government, he was motivated by how to help small businesses.

Q: But if the company had floated you would have been a multi-millionaire.

Cameron says, when Lex Greensill was at the committee on Tuesday, the MPs did not ask him how much he earned.

Q: It is reported in the Wall Street Journal you made several million dollars from selling shares in 2019. Did you pay UK tax on them?

Cameron says he pays UK tax on everything. Some of his earnings are to help fund his office, and some are for personal benefit, he says.

Labour’s Angela Eagle goes next. She says the 56 messages that Cameron sent seem “more like stalking”.

I read your 56 messages and they’re more like stalking than lobbying - looking back are you at least a little bit embarrassed about the way you behaved?

Cameron says Greensill thought they had a good idea, and he wanted it in front of government.

Q: Did you ever call yourself a director of Greensill?

Cameron says there was letter that referred to a “fellow director”, but that was a mistake.

Q: Are you aware the concept of a shadow director?

Cameron says that applies to someone controlling a company who is not actually on the board. He says she was not “in any way” controlling the company.

In my case, there’s absolutely no question that I was in any way controlling this company while not being on the board, so I don’t think that applies to me at all.

Q: It is said that Lex Greensill was offering meetings with you if people in government agreed to meet him?

Cameron says he is not aware of that. But he did a lot of meeting for the firm, he says.

Q: Do you regret your involvement with Greensill?

Cameron says, when you work for a firm that goes into administration, you think what other decisions you might have made.

Since leaving No 10 his main focus has been working on Alzheimer’s and dementia and fragile states, he says.

He says he wanted business interests too. Greensill seemed like an exciting company, he says.

But the dementia board he chairs looking at early diagnosis and finding a cure is the most important thing he does. He says he may now have more time for that work.

Felicity Buchan (Con) is asking the questions now.

Q: Did your view of the company change over time?

Cameron says when he joined the firm in 2018 it was attracting considerable investment, from companies like SoftBank.

While he was at the company, there were good signs of strengthening.

But the concentration of risk with Sanjeev Gupta was an issue, he says.

From the Financial Times’ Jim Pickard

Labour’s Emma Hardy is asking the questions now.

Q: Do you think making 56 contacts with government was appropriate at a time when they dealing with the pandemic?

Cameron says senior civil servants have told MPs that these communications were not excessive or a distraction.

Hardy asks about 3 April. On that day Cameron contacted the chancellor, the economic secretary to the Treasury, Downing Street, the deputy governor of the Bank of England, Michael Gove and Tom Scholar. All in all, there were two calls and 16 written communications to six different people. Was the appropriate?

Cameron says that was when the decisions were being taken. But, looking back, he would contact government differently now.

Cameron says he was contracted to work a certain number of days for Greensill, but he comfortably exceeded that because he was enthusiastic about the business.

He spoke to Lex Greensill about once a week, he says.

Cameron says civil servants were “clearly” not intimidated by communication from him.

But he says he can see an argument for saying that a committee should advise former prime minister on what commercial work is appropriate.

He says there is not really a roadmap for an ex-PM, “particularly for a younger one”, who wants not just to sit on a board and give speeches, but to “get stuck in and help a business grow”. There might be a role for a committee to give advice to people in this situation.

• Cameron suggests his relative youth as an ex-PM may have been a factor in his launching into a business career. Cameron is 54.

Cameron says Gordon Brown has said former PMs should not have any contact at all with government.

He does not agree, he says. He says he can imagine someone like Brown or John Major running a bank. He says as PM he used to talk to the head of BP. Companies like that should be able to talk to government, he says.

Cameron says in future any former PM contacting the government on a commercial matter should send a formal letter or a formal email. But these were exceptional times.

He was passionate about Greensill because he thought their service would help small businesses.

The banks are “on speed-dial with the Treasury”, he says.

But lending has changed. Fintech firms and non-bank financial institutions are lending huge sums, he says.

This is from Pat McFadden, a shadow Treasury minister, on Cameron’s evidence.

McDonagh criticises Cameron for treating Lex Greensill as a “reincarnation of Mother Theresa”.

Q: You wanted access to the NHS to benefit Greensill.

Cameron says he does not accept that at all. He says the Greensill proposal for NHS staff to be able to access their pay early would have tackled the problem of payday lending. He says this is a problem that McDonagh may even have raised with him when he was PM.

Labour’s Siobhain McDonagh is asking the questions now. She quotes from the speech Cameron gave on lobbying in 2010. He said:

We all know how it works. The lunches, the hospitality, the quiet word in your ear, the ex-ministers and ex-advisers for hire, helping big business find the right way to get its way.

Cameron says his government did change the rules on lobbying. At the time of the speech, multi-client lobbyists could fix up meetings with ministers without people knowing who they were lobbying for. That has stopped, he says.

UPDATE: Cameron said:

When I made those remarks there had just been, I think, a lobbying scandal involving a firm that was approached by a journalist, pretending to be from the government of Uzbekistan.

The lobbying firm in question said ‘we can get you into ministers, we can get you to see people and no-one needs to know who you are lobbying on behalf of’.

So, the change that the Lobbying Act brought in - I know it’s criticised now but that changed the Lobbying Act ... to make sure that multi-client lobbyists had to register who their clients were ...

You got two very valuable tools to make sure we can see who is lobbying whom and on whose behalf.

With my interactions from Greensill to the government, I absolutely knew that if the meetings I wanted to take place that did take place, they would be properly reported on, and everyone would know about them, and that is absolutely right.

Q: Did the Treasury come to a wrong decision on Greensill and the CCFF?

Cameron says they came to “very justifiable decision”. He says Greensill could have acted more quickly to come up with a better proposal.

Harriet Baldwin (Con) is asking the question now. She asks about Cameron’s relationship with Sir Tom Scholar, the permanent secretary at the Treasury.

Cameron says Scholar worked for him when he was PM.

Q: You signed off your text to him “love DC”. Do you have a close friendship with him?

Cameron says they have met once or twice since he left office. He signs off any messages to people he knows like that. He says he is not sure why, but he does. He says his children tell him there is no need to sign off text messages with anything.

Anyone I know even at all well, I tend to sign off text messages with ‘love DC’ - I don’t know why, I just do.

My children tell me that you don’t need to sign off text messages at all and it’s very old fashioned and odd to do so.

Cameron says Greensill made a “mistake” because it did not come up with a proposal for how it could be allowed to access the CCFF properly quickly enough.

From Simon Jack, the BBC’s business editor

After Cameron’s opening statement, Mel Stride, the committee chair, said it went on for longer than agreed. He asked for an assurance that Cameron could come back if they failed to get through the all the questions. Cameron said they had two hours, and he would see after that. Stride asked for a promise he would come back if necessary. Eventually Cameron agreed.

Cameron says he started working for Greensill in August 2018. Lex Greensill wanted it to become a successful fintech firm.

He says Lex Greensill advised the government when he was PM, but he says he only met him briefly.

He says he was not employed by Greensill as a lobbyist. But in the Covid crisis, he thought he would be able to help.

He says he contacted the chancellor and others directly because he knew decisions had to be taken quickly.

He says he thought Greensill supply chain finance was a good thing. It could deal with the scourge of payday lending, he says.

He says he did not know Greensill was in financial difficulties.

He ends by saying he thinks there is a case for making the rulings of the Advisory Committee on Business Appointments (the body that advises ministers on what commercial jobs they can take after they leave government) mandatory.

He also says former prime ministers could be made to wait longer than other people before being allowed to take up jobs.

Cameron says former prime ministers are in a different position to other ex-MPs.

He says lobbying is a necessary part of government.

But having an ex-PM do this can be “open to misinterpretation”, particularly when he is using informal means of communication like text messages.

My colleague Rupert Neate has also summarised the key questions he thinks David Cameron has to answer.

This is what the Treasury committee said in a press notice about the topics it would be covering in its session with David Cameron.

The committee is likely to examine the failure of Greensill Capital and Mr Cameron’s knowledge of it.

The committee is also likely to seek views on Mr Cameron’s relationship with civil servants, his actions in the context of him being a former prime minister, the nature of his role at Greensill, and the amount of lobbying that he undertook.

At the Downing Street lobby briefing the prime minister’s spokesman went further than the prime minister did in his interview earlier (see 12.34pm) in playing down the prospect of a return to local lockdowns in response to surges of the Indian variant.

The spokesman said there was nothing in the data currently to suggest the government would have to move away from the plans in the roadmap (which envisages the full lifting of restrictions in England from 21 June).

Asked if there might be a return to regional tiering (ie, local lockdown measures), the spokesman said the focus at the moment was on surge testing and contact tracing locally. But he said Sage, the government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies, was meeting today, and ministers would consider any further advice.

He also said the roadmap for easing lockdown restriction in England published in February was “very clear” about what would happen if there were local surges, and that some of these measures had been taken.

When pressed again on whether tiering was still a possibility, the spokesman said:

We have set out what we want to do on the roadmap, moving together as a nation on this, and that has been very successful so far.

So there are no plans to reintroduce tiering measures. Like I say we have got a raft of measures available to us which are already in place, with regards local testing, surge testing and tracing.

The roadmap said the government wanted “to ease restrictions at the same time across the whole of England”. But it also explicitly said that local lockdown would remain an option. It said:

Where a dangerous variant of concern is identified and is likely to pose a real risk to the vaccination programme or public health, the government will take a highly precautionary approach, acting fast to address outbreaks. The government is developing an enhanced toolkit of measures to address variants of concern, including surge PCR testing, enhanced contact tracing, communications and targeted enforcement

The government cannot rule out reimposing economic and social restrictions at a local or regional level if evidence suggests they are necessary to contain or suppress a variant which escapes the vaccine.

Tom Randall (Con) goes next.

Q: Is it tricky advising the PM when you are also investigating him?

Geidt says that is an important question. He does not see any difficulties. He is well served because he has the power under the new terms of reference to publish “in a timely manner” his advice.

Q: If you were to recommend an investigation, and the PM were to refuse to allow an investigation, what would you do?

Geidt says in this case [ie, the flat case] he has the ability to publish that advice. So he is “very confident” that what he has to say as advice will be passed to the PM, and published.

That’s it. The hearing is now over.

I will post a summary shortly.

William Wragg, the chair, asks what criteria Geidt will use to decide whether or not an investigation should take place.

Geidt says he will be guided by the ministerial code. He is “deeply immersed” in it, he says. He wants to become instinctively familiar with it.

Geidt says he wants to see how the new terms of reference work before deciding whether or not to push for changes.

Geidt says it was “unfortunate” that the update to the register of ministers’ interests was not published in December 2020 as it should have been.

John McDonnell (Lab) puts it to Geidt that he is working for a PM who does not tend to accept the view of the umpire.

Geidt says he will be willing to come back to the committee to explain how the new system is working in practice.

He says he would be happy for the committee to say whether it thinks the new terms of references are making a difference.

But he stresses that he does not want to see breaches of the rules occurring. It would be better if he could encourage people to obey the rules in the first place, he says.

Geidt says he also has to publish a report every year. He will use it to give “a full and fair account”, he says.

Geidt says he agrees that “rules are not sufficient to stimulate good behaviour”.

Geidt says the resignation of Sir Alex Allan, his predecessor as independent adviser on minsters’ interests, will have increased public confidence in the system.

Labour’s John McDonnell is asking the questions now. He asks how Geidt can be an ethics adviser when he used to work for an arms company, BAE Systems, that has been accused of being implicated in war crimes.

Geidt says the BAE Systems job was the first one he took when he left public service. He says his background as a solider made him suitable. He says the company plays a role in protecting British interests around the world. He acknowledges the concerns raised by McDonnell. But he stresses that the arms industry is regulated.

He was “proud” to do this job for a couple of years, because it aligned with his past experience, he says.

He says people in uniform should be properly equipped.

He has now stepped down from that role, he says.

William Wragg (Con), the committee chair, asks Geidt if he has ever had to say “no, minister” in his previous jobs. (He has worked as a diplomat, and as private secretary to the Queen.)

Geidt says he does not want to reveal the contents of confidential conversations. But he says he is someone able to “speak truth unto power”.

Nicola Sturgeon and the Scottish parliament’s other party leaders have been sworn in as MSPs, PA Media reports. PA says:

Returning and new members are being sworn in following last week’s Holyrood election.

The first minister made an affirmation, followed by the Scottish Conservative leader, Douglas Ross, and the Scottish Labour leader, Anas Sarwar, taking the oath.

Ahead of affirming, Sturgeon said the SNP “pledges loyalty to the people of Scotland in line with the Scottish constitutional tradition of the sovereignty of the people”.

Before making the affirmation, the Scottish Greens co-leader Patrick Harvie said he would like to reassert that his party’s “allegiance lies with the people of Scotland who elected this parliament and who are sovereign, and we look forward to the day when they can choose their own elected head of state”.

The oath states that MSPs “will be faithful and bear true allegiance to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth”.