A company connected to a Reform UK MP banked £100,000 in taxpayer-funded furlough cash despite raking in £7.9million in profit, a Mirror investigation has revealed.
Rupert Lowe has shares in a company that ran a Covid test firm during the pandemic which paid out six-figure dividends to its shareholders across two years.
Biopharma Process Systems Ltd recorded a £7.9 million pre-tax profit in 2021 – with a further £2.65million in 2022.
The company also received £141,741 in government grants in 2021, according to accounts.
Lowe was elected as the Reform UK MP for Great Yarmouth in July, pledging to hand his MP’s salary to good causes.
But he said nothing of the fact that a company he is associated with took hundreds of thousands of pounds of taxpayer money during the pandemic despite turning a handsome profit.
There is no suggestion of wrongdoing by Lowe or the firm.
The MP, elected to Parliament in July, said: “I am involved in a range of business interests, exclusively in a non-executive director role. This brings welcome experience to Parliament, otherwise severely lacking in individuals who know and understand how businesses operate.
“In no way am I the ‘boss’ of Biopharma, I am a non-executive director – with no say over the day-to-day running of the company. As with all areas of the economy, lockdown changed the way that industries operated. I myself actively and vocally campaigned against lockdowns and the widespread use of COVID testing.
“Evidently, my directorship made zero impact on my very public view on lockdown and the wider COVID response, which remains the biggest Government policy mistake inflicted on the British population during my lifetime.
“I declared my directorship in PE487, the holding company that controls and owns Biopharma operations, as I was under the impression this was sufficient to demonstrate my involvement in the group – which was already fully public through my declarations.
“All directorships in separate Biopharma companies, and my shareholding in PE487, have now been declared in order to clarify matters. I made a promise during the campaign to the good people of Great Yarmouth to donate my monthly net MP salary to local worthy causes, and I am sticking to it – something rather unusual in today’s politics, I know.
“So far, there have been three recipients of my donations – Great Yarmouth Town FC, Hemsby Lifeboat, and the Pathway Cafe and Support Centre. Plenty of other MPs who have just as much wealth as me, and even far more in some cases, choose to take the money. That’s their decision, and I have never put any pressure on them to do otherwise.”
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