The minister, the mine and the £1,300-an-hour payday

A former Foreign Office minister is being paid up to £1,300 an hour by a mining company in Africa on whose behalf he lobbied while in Government.

Henry Bellingham, the Conservative MP for North West Norfolk, was appointed the non-executive chairman of Pathfinder Minerals 18 months after losing the post of Minister for Africa in the 2012 reshuffle.

Pathfinder is locked in a dispute with a Mozambique Army general over ownership of highly lucrative mining licences.

Mr Bellingham told the external appointments watchdog that, while in the Foreign Office, he had written to the Government of Mozambique supporting the Pathfinder claim.

And since taking up the post in February, Mr Bellingham has received £28,000 from Pathfinder Minerals, at a rate of up to £1,300 an hour, according to Parliamentary records.

He has registered payments approximately once a month of £4,000 for between three and seven hours’ work, giving advice on strategy and corporate governance. The most recent payment was registered on September 29.

There is no suggestion of wrongdoing, and all the work has been declared in line with Parliamentary rules.

​However, Mr Bellingham’s appointment will re-ignite concerns of a revolving door between Whitehall and the private sector, with ministers benefiting from contacts they made in office.

He was given approval to take the job by the Advisory Committee on Business Appointments (ACOBA) on the condition that he did not draw on any privileged information he had gathered as a minister and did not become “personally involved” in lobbying the Government until September 2014, two years after he left office.

^{Mineworkers: Mozambique is rich in mineral wealth}

However, the committee noted that, as a minister, Mr Bellingham had lobbied Mozambique on behalf of the company.

It said: “When considering this application the Committee took into account that Mr Bellingham met Pathfinder Minerals on one occasion whilst he was in office; and subsequently wrote to the Government of Mozambique supporting the company in an ongoing legal dispute it is involved in that country.”

The Government of Mozambique is highly dependent on Western aid, overseen by the Foreign Office, and the UK spends £85 million a year in the country.

The disputes concerns ownership of two 25-year mining licences covering 32,000 hectares of land on the Indian Ocean coast which is rich valuable heavy minerals, including ilmenite used to make paint and rubber, and zircon, used in ceramics.

According to Pathfinder, the licences were unlawfully transferred to a company controlled by General Jacinto Veloso, a business partner in the venture who had initially agreed to help develop the site.

The general is also a former Mozambique government minister.

The “expropriation” occurred in November 2011 with the help of Mozambique’s Ministry of Mineral Resources, it is alleged, following a furious row between the British firm and Gen Veloso over shares.

Court papers lay bare the directors’ shock at learning through a series of phone calls and letters that they had lost control of the mines.

The High Court ruled in Pathfinder’s favour in the ownership dispute the following year.

On taking up the post, Mr Bellingham said in a statement to the stock market: “As the former Minister for Africa, I am acutely aware of Mozambique’s will to work with international companies to develop responsibly the vast natural resource capacity of the country.

“I share my fellow directors’ aim to restore control to Pathfinder of the heavy mineral sand deposits in Zambezia Province acquired by Pathfinder in 2011; and to develop them for the benefit of Mozambique and of Pathfinder’s shareholders.”

^{Mr Bellingham worked at the Foreign Office under William Hague until 2012}

The company is now waiting for the High Court judgement to be recognised by the Mozambique Supreme Court, according to a stock market statement issued in Mr Bellingham’s name six weeks ago.

Life outside of Government has proved lucrative for Mr Bellingham.

He is a director of Developing Markets Limited, a consultancy, which has paid him more than £30,000 in the past year.

Acoba approved his appointment with the firm, but noted he had had “official dealings with his prospective employer whilst in Government”.

He is also a director of Pontus Marine Ltd, a fisheries company operating off the Gulf of Aden. Mr Bellingham met the chief executive of the firm while in office, Acoba said, but approved his appointment, noting he had previously been a contact.

Mr Bellingham insisted he had never discussed working for Pathfinder or the other firms when he met them in office and the job offer afterwards was “completely unexpected”.

He said: “During my time as Minister for Africa and the UN at the FCO, I met will in excess of 700 companies as part of our commercial diplomacy.

“As far as Pathfinder Minerals and DMA are concerned, I had one meeting with the former and two with the latter. I can state absolutely categorically that neither company made any suggestion of future employment or relationships. Indeed, had they done so it would have been a very serious breach of the civil service and ministerial code, and they would have been reported to the relevant authorities and all dealings with them immediately terminated.

“When I received approaches from the two companies in question many months after leaving Government this was completely unexpected. Furthermore both directorship offers were subject to rigorous scrutiny by the Cabinet Office.”

^{Fishing boats on the Gulf of Aden, Somalia}

Some 26 former ministers made 58 applications to ACOBA to take up external appointments last year, an increase of 10 applications from last year.

The body's role is to "avoid any suspicion that an appointment might be a reward for past favours" granted by civil servants or ministers entering the private sector. It is also designed to prevent companies gaining commercial advantages by hiring officials with classified information about their rivals, or about Government plans.

A further 57 retiring Civil Servants made 158 applications to take up external jobs. The greatest number of applications came from former Cabinet Office mandarins (13) followed by eight Diplomatic Service members and eight staff from the Department for International Development.

The body, chaired by Conservative peer Lord Lang of Monkton, judged none of the applications to be unsuitable.