Former UK Cabinet minister advised private equity firm on £1.3 billion project before taking job as consultant

• Alun Cairns met Elite Partners Capital during a holiday in Singapore and discussed the Swansea Bay City Deal.
• The former Secretary of State for Wales later took a £30,000-a-year job with Elite Partners Capital.

A former Cabinet minister took a job with a Singaporean private equity firm after giving it advice on securing investments in a £1.3 billion government-backed programme that he had direct oversight of.

Documents obtained by Insider shed light on how Alun Cairns, a Conservative MP, got the £30,000-a-year side job, and the work he did to support the firm's goals while in office.

They offer an insight into the limited scrutiny of how ministers sell their services after leaving office, and may further the widespread doubts about the effectiveness of the UK system of checks and balances. The Labour Party told Insider Cairns "has serious questions to answer" over whether the work is appropriate.

Cairns met Elite Partners Capital in Singapore while on a family holiday in August 2019 to discuss details of the Swansea Bay City Deal, per the documents.

The Swansea deal is a £1.3 billion programme of investment projects between the UK Government, the Welsh Government, local authorities, and private investors. As Secretary of State for Wales, the city deal was one of Cairns' ministerial responsibilities.

Minutes of the meeting, taken by a Department of International Trade official working in Singapore, detail the specific support Cairns gave to Elite. The minutes were obtained by Insider through a Freedom of Information request.

Elite was looking to invest in the Swansea City Deal programme, specifically the Swansea City and Waterfront Digital District project, the minutes show. The firm had already visited Swansea twice and was working through its due-diligence process. A meeting objective was for "EPC to be reassured of additional support" from the UK government.

Cairns gave Elite details on delays to the Swansea City Deal, and supported its proposal to seek a commitment to become a long-term partner of Swansea Council. He said such a partnership would have "real value".

The minutes conclude that the Wales Office would produce a fact sheet for Elite with information on the attractiveness of different projects, along with UK employment data.

Cairns' private office — composed of officials working on his diary management and correspondence — was to see if he could provide a tour of Parliament to Elite executives on a visit to the UK later that month. It is unclear if such a tour did go ahead.

Further government assistance was to be offered by the Department of International Trade in arranging meetings with senior officials at the Treasury and HMRC (the UK's tax revenue and customs agency) to discuss tax regimes.

However, Cairns told the committee responsible for examining ex-ministers' jobs about none of the support he had given Elite in any detail while seeking official approval to take up a second job with Elite some months after quitting the front bench.

In March 2021, Cairns told the Advisory Committee on Business Appointments (ACOBA) that he had no involvement in policy development, decisions related to the company, contractual, or commercial decisions. The former minister made no reference to the £1.3bn project in Swansea.

Cairns told ACOBA his meetings were to "highlight City and Growth Deal policies around Wales and the UK."

He said he was unaware of "Elite Partners Capital investing in any City or Growth Deal plan or in seeking government assistance" in documents sent to ACOBA in connection with the role.

The Vale of Glamorgan MP also told the arms-length moderating committee his role was to "champion investment opportunities in general", and that he had no role in contractual or commercial decisions.

He said that "if any organisation wanted to pursue an investment opportunity further, they were passed to the Welsh Government or to the local City or Growth Deal team to develop further."

Cairns's former department, the Wales Office, did not reject Cairns' claim to only ever have promoted investment opportunities in general terms in material it sent to ACOBA.

It supported Cairns's claim that he made no regulatory or policy decisions that would have affected the firm, even though he was responsible for the investment programme in question.

Cairns's request for approval from ACOBA of his job with Elite was granted. He joined Elite in June 2021 as an advisor to the board on "economic and political developments in the UK that could impact the group's international investments." He declared an annual income from Elite of £30,000 for up to 84 hours work, an hourly rate of at least £357.

Cairns' office did not respond to several requests for comment. It is unclear whether Elite has actually invested in the Swansea City Deal programme, but most projects in the Swansea Bay City Deal are not yet at the stage of receiving private investment.

A spokesperson for the Wales Office declined to comment.

An ACOBA spokesperson told Insider it did "not consider any further action is required."

The opposition Labour party said Cairns has "serious questions to answer" after Insider's findings.

Jo Stevens MP, the shadow Welsh Secretary, told Insider: "Alun Cairns was cleared by ACOBA to take up his £30k-a-year second job with Elite after he submitted that his previous involvement with the company was very limited."

"But the notes of his meeting with Elite whilst on a family holiday in the Far East, and the detailed actions he promised to take up for them afterwards, mean that he has serious questions to answer.

"These rules exist to ensure that when former ministers take up second jobs, there are no suspicions about improper influence or conduct."

Parliamentarians and campaigners have long been critical of ACOBA. On January 11, Lord Jonathan Evans, the chair of the Committee on Standards in Public Life, told a Parliamentary committee that ACOBA "doesn't have the teeth that it needs."

The ACOBA chair, Lord Eric Pickles, has conceded how little it can accomplish, saying in April 2021: "ACOBA is not a watchdog, not a regulator. It has a very limited and defined role."

It is more than two years since Cairns left his ministerial job, which brings looser rules. He is now free to lobby the UK government on behalf of Elite, and advise them on "work with regard to any policy [Cairns] had specific involvement or responsibility for as Secretary of State of Wales", according to the advice letter stating the committee's approval of the job sent by ACOBA to Cairns in April 2021.

There is no suggestion of wrongdoing by Elite. The firm did not respond to requests for a comment.

As Insider reported in June 2021, one of Elite's investments in the UK is a £500 million property portfolio of 155 offices across the country, 99% of which are leased to the UK government. The primary occupier is the Department of Work and Pensions, which operates Jobcentres and back offices from the leased buildings. Elite also runs several other funds.