The international development secretary has stopped employing her husband after being criticised for paying him tens of thousands of pounds to run her office while he held two other jobs.
Priti Patel, MP for Witham, had used her staffing allowance to pay Alex Sawyer up to £25,000 a year to work part-time as her office manager. He had held the job since early 2014 but, as The Times revealed in May, had been working as a marketing consultant for Nasdaq, the American stock exchange, for much of that time. He has a third paid role as a Conservative councillor in Bexley, southeast London.
Mr Sawyer had been employed by his wife since February 2014 but the new register of MPs’ interests reveals that he stopped working for her after the general election in June.
Ms Patel, who retained her seat with a majority of more than 18,000, declined to comment last night and the circumstances in which Mr Sawyer left are unclear.
The Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority has banned politicians from taking on staff who are “connected” parties. Mr Sawyer would have been allowed to continue working for Ms Patel because those employed before the last general election are exempt from the rules.
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Ms Patel has previously faced questions over her decision to employ her husband. His role at Nasdaq was not declared on the register of interests for MPs’ staff because Mr Sawyer said that he did not believe the company had “benefited or been advantaged by my parliamentary pass”. He has previously said that he was “like many others who balance two part-time jobs over the course of a week”.
Sir Alistair Graham, former chairman of the committee on standards in public life, said that the financial sector’s interest in politics meant the role should have been declared.
Sir Alistair said that there was a danger the public would think Mr Sawyer’s role as his wife’s parliamentary office manger “is a device to access public funds and boost the family income”.
Mr Sawyer, who married Ms Patel in 2004, has worked as a consultant at Nasdaq since early 2014 and was listed as the main marketing contact for Nasdaq NLX, a now-defunct interest-rate futures market.
According to former colleagues, he appeared to work full time for about a year before moving to a three-day week in late 2015. Mr Sawyer has denied this, insisting that he had never “worked for Nasdaq or Priti Patel simultaneously full-time”. A Nasdaq spokesman said that he had always been on a part-time contract of “two or three days a week”.
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Mr Sawyer has been a member of Bexley council’s cabinet since May 2015 and is entitled to an annual allowance of about £23,000.
According to records published by the MPs’ expenses watchdog, as his wife’s office manager he has already been paid between £35,000 and £50,000 from February 2014 until April last year, including up to £25,000 in 2015-16. Figures for the 2016-17 financial year have not been released.