A Labour peer and trade envoy for Keir Starmer has apologised for breaking the House of Lords code of conduct by writing to the Treasury to promote a cryptocurrency firm that was paying him.
Iain McNicol, a former general secretary of the Labour party, was found to have breached the rules by offering a paid parliamentary service on behalf of Astra Protocol in June 2023.
His actions were reported to the standards commissioner after the Guardian’s months-long investigation into the House of Lords examining the commercial interests of peers.
The reporting revealed the Labour peer wrote to the Treasury while he was a paid adviser to Astra Protocol, saying the company had assembled an “esteemed team of industry veterans and high-profile political advisers, with extensive experience in crypto”.
In a late submission to a Treasury consultation, Lord McNicol wrote to officials that Astra Protocol’s team was “uniquely placed to provide meaningful insights into the challenges and opportunities that come with regulating DeFi [decentralised finance] and other crypto assets”. He cautioned in the letter against allowing regulation to “stifle innovation”. His email and letter to the Treasury were released under freedom of information laws.
At the time, McNicol was paid a monthly retainer by Astra Protocol, which had launched a token that subsequently plunged in value by more than 99%. He later sat on Starmer’s frontbench, from autumn 2023 to July 2024, and was made a trade envoy to Jordan, Kuwait and the occupied Palestinian territories by the prime minister in January this year.
The Lords commissioner, Margaret Obi, in her findings wrote: “I consider that by writing a letter to HM Treasury officials in his own name on behalf of Astra Protocol, Lord McNicol provided a paid parliamentary service to Astra Protocol.
“Although Lord McNicol stated he was not paid specifically for providing this submission to HM Treasury, he was paid a monthly retainer by Astra Protocol. I therefore consider that this retainer can reasonably be understood to cover the various tasks he undertook for the company at that time, including his submission to HM Treasury. I therefore find Lord McNicol breached paragraph 9(d) of the code of conduct.”
This clause states members “must not seek to profit from membership of the house by accepting or agreeing to accept payment or other incentive or reward in return for providing parliamentary advice or services”.
The report said: “Although the letter responded to the questions posed in HM Treasury’s call for evidence, it was also used to promote the work of Astra Protocol. In the letter, Lord McNicol refers to Astra Protocol’s ‘unique offering’.”
The commissioner said she did not find it to be a significant breach, because it was a single letter and did not make use of any special access or contacts gained by being a peer.
But she added: “Nevertheless, this was a clear example of providing a parliamentary service in return for payment. It is also not clear why the letter was sent specifically in Lord McNicol’s name, instead of in the name of senior member of staff within the organisation, for example the CEO or chair. I therefore consider remedial action to be appropriate and propose a letter of apology to the chair of the conduct committee.”
In a letter to Lord Kakkar, the chair of the Lords conduct committee, fully accepting the findings, McNicol said: “I would like to offer my full and unreserved apology for breaching the code.”
Two other peers are under investigation – Lord Evans and Lord Dannatt – following reporting by the Guardian. Both have denied wrongdoing.
The complaint about McNicol was submitted to the commissioner by Tom Brake, the director of Unlock Democracy and a former deputy leader of the House of Commons, who raised questions over whether McNicol’s approach to Treasury officials fell foul of Lords rules.
Peers are allowed to take on paid roles and must list them on a public register, but unlike MPs they do not have to declare how much they earn unless working for a foreign state.
Brake said: “I welcome confirmation from the commissioner that there is a strict ban in force against peers providing parliamentary services … However, this case underlines yet again that clearer and tighter rules over Peers’ interests are needed to clear up uncertainty over what is and is not permitted.”
