Peston: What outside investments are allowed for No10 communications boss and deputy chief of staff?

Back in 2005, when I worked for the Telegraph, I reported that Sue Gray at the Cabinet Office had told the founder of PR company Portland that he would have to sell his stake in Portland if he wanted to take up the offered role of Director of Communications at Number 10 for Tony Blair.

Tim Allan chose not to sell and didn't take the job. So I have tried to find out whether Boris Johnson's new Director of Communications Guto Harri has a stake in Hawthorn Advisors. I am still working on that, but if he does have a stake it isn't huge, because there is no sign of it in the business's filings at Companies House.

But I did go back and look at the filings for Francis Maude Associates, a consultancy that advises governments, and was set up by Francis Maude with Simone Finn, Prime Minister Johnson's deputy chief of staff.

Now when Baroness Finn took up the post of deputy chief of staff, last April, I was told by Downing Street that she had resigned from the consultancy, though - to my surprise - the Cabinet Office allowed her to keep her shareholding of between 25% and 50%.

You decide whether the Cabinet Office has become too lax in preventing conflicts of interest, in allowing her to keep her stake.

But here is what surprised me today: Companies House says she remains an active director of Francis Maude Associates. This could of course be an unusual bureaucratic error at Companies House.

But there is independent evidence that on December 2, 2021, eight months after she entered Downing Street, Finn remained active at the firm - because on that date she signed the 2021 accounts for Francis Maude Associates as a "designated member".

This begs so many questions I don't know where to start.

The clear impression from the the Companies House filings for Francis Maude Associates and Finn is that standards to prevent conflicts of interest in government ain't what they were.

Harri tells me he’ll be advised by the Cabinet Office’s Propriety and Ethics section on what to do with his outside interests. He won’t say what they are.

Companies House shows that Harri remains an active director of a business called Hydro Industries, which says it uses technology to clean up industrial waste.

And Chris Bryant , chair of the committee on standards, has tabled a question to Steve Barclay , the chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, asking whether Finn remains a designated member of Francis Maude Associates and what shareholding she retains there.

Francis Maude tells me that Francis Maude Associates is dormant and does not trade. And that it is separate from the advisory company that still trades, from which Finn resigned.

He says Finn’s continuing directorship in and ownership of Francis Maude Associates was disclosed to the Cabinet Office “without there being any kind of a problem.”

As for the active government advisory business, that is called FMAP Ltd. Finn continues to own between 25% and 50% of this business, which as I said earlier seems an odd concession allowed by the Cabinet office. But she resigned as a director of FMAP Ltd on 28 February.

Below is the latest financial statement for FMAP Ltd, which shows net assets of just over £900,000 and cash at bank and in hand of £956,000. The other business I referred to earlier that does not trade, Francis Maude Associates, is a partnership and Finn is a partner in it and not a director.