Conflicts, Cronies and Confidential Briefings: Welcome to the League Against Accountability

Private Eye exposes how Chair Dan Norris used his publicly funded adviser to handle League business — raising fresh questions over misuse of power, undeclared interests, and charity mismanagement.

Private Eye, No. 1638, 6 December 2024

Desperate days from Dan Norris, the Labour MP and “absentee landlord” mayor of the West of England Combined Authority.

Forced to defend himself on the BBC’s Politics West after an FoI request suggesting payoffs were used to hush up explosive allegations, Norris then accused former Tory minister Simon Hoare of being politically motivated when he put the authority into special measures on the advice of civil servants. It’s never Norris’s fault. Could things get worse from the North East Somerset and Hanham MP? Yes!

Norris’s third, unpaid, job is chairing the League Against Cruel Sports. To lessen his workload, Norris, 64, who is paid £91,346 as an MP and £93,579.96 for being mayor, used his mayoral special adviser Alex Mayer to run his League work.

In a League document seen by the Eye, trustee Astrid Clifford confirmed that “Ms Meyer [sic] was copied into email communications and privy to some information regarding the League, some of which could be considered confidential, whilst working as a special adviser to Mr Norris”.

In addition, League acting CEO Chris Luffingham was asked to add Mayer to the circulation list for board papers.

Mayer – who in July was herself elected MP for Dunstable and Leighton Buzzard – was also in on everything that went through the League’s key finance, risk and general committee.

Her charity work was not declared to parliamentary authorities, as it should have been because she was simultaneously working as chief of staff to Cambridge MP Daniel Zeichner, raising further possible conflicts of interest by being involved in a countryside charity while working for an MP in the shadow Defra team.

Perhaps disentangling from these multiple roles explains why, more than four months after the election, Mayer has still not got round to holding any surgeries for constituents.