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Three former prime ministers have said they do not use a taxpayer subsidy for their private office for any commercial work after the Guardian revealed Boris Johnson appears have done so.
One of them, Gordon Brown, said that rules should now be changed to require former prime ministers to publicly declare their business interests. He said there should be a crackdown on the jobs taken by former ministers.
Brown, Tony Blair and Liz Truss all said they had only claimed for reimbursements related solely to their public duties.
There are mounting questions over whether Johnson has been misusing his portion of the £5.2m in public funds that has been paid out since 2015 as part of a scheme to support former prime ministers.
Leaked files from the Office of Boris Johnson, a limited company, show his private office staff helping him exploit contacts made in No 10 to secure business deals. Cross-party senior politicians have been calling for Johnson’s taxpayer support to be suspended in the wake of the revelations.
Johnson’s private office receives funding from the public duty costs allowance (PDCA), which is afforded to all prime ministers to assist with their public duties after leaving Downing Street. PDCA funds are not supposed to be used for private or commercial activities.
Former prime ministers can claim up to £115,000 a year for the remainder of their lifetime. A senior Cabinet Office source confirmed that Johnson claimed funds under the scheme to pay for staff salaries in his private office. Official data shows he has claimed £182,000 in PDCA payments since leaving government.
A cache of leaked files seen by the Guardian suggests all three of Johnson’s private office staff have supported his commercial activities. Johnson has been using his office to broker deals worth millions with foreign governments, the files indicate.
The files were obtained by Distributed Denial of Secrets (DDoS), a US-registered non-profit that archives leaked data.
Other prime ministers are now likely to be asked to declare how they are using the public funds.
A spokesperson for Brown said: “The PDCA allowance is paid to the Office of Gordon and Sarah Brown and not directly to Mr Brown. The PDCA is only used to reclaim partial salary costs for some members of staff who support Mr Brown’s public duties.
“This varies for each member of staff to reflect the public duty element of the work they do. In line with staff’s right to privacy and confidentiality, we only provide detail to the Cabinet Office.”
He added: “Mr Brown favours former prime ministers being subject to public declarations of their business interests and has called for a stronger code on business appointments.”
A spokesperson for Blair said he “fully conforms to the rules relating to the public duty costs allowance, which allows for a reimbursement towards the costs associated with his former role and for which all documentation is provided to the Cabinet Office and subsequently reviewed by the NAO [National Audit Office]”.
A spokesperson for Truss said: “Liz’s claims for PDCA cover office and staffing costs relating to her ongoing public duties and do not support any private or commercial activities.”
Tim Durrant, a programme director at the Institute for Government, said: “Former prime ministers have to account to the Cabinet Office for the spending of their offices in order to claim the allowance. The allowance is only for costs relating to their public role as a former prime minister and it’s important that the Cabinet Office ensures that public funds are only being used for this purpose.”
The Cabinet Office guidance states it does not retain any of the documentation provided to it by former prime ministers.
The scheme was created by Robin Butler, Margaret Thatcher’s loyal cabinet secretary. According to a report in the Times from 1991, it was introduced after friends of Thatcher, by then a backbench MP on a reduced salary, “let the considerable difficulties she faced on leaving office be known at Westminster”.
The money was always intended to pay for the public functions expected of former prime ministers, not to subsidise profit-generating business. Former leaders are entitled to use the scheme for the rest of their lives. The amount they can claim has been frozen since 2011.
Cabinet Office data reveals that John Major, Blair and Brown have claimed more than £1m each since 2015-16. Cameron has claimed close to the threshold but reduced his claims when he became foreign secretary under Rishi Sunak. Theresa May and Truss did not claim the maximum entitlement. Data is yet to be published on claims, if any, by Sunak.
Cameron, Sunak, Major and May did not respond to requests for comment. Neither did Nick Clegg, who was exceptionally entitled to the scheme as a former deputy prime minister. Johnson has not responded to repeated requests for comment from the Guardian.
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