Prime Minister Keir Starmer has accepted £76,000 worth of freebies over the last five years – but hardly any of that came from the media sector.
Foreign secretary David Lammy is the leading Labour minister who has declared the most income from the media sector, banking more than £163,000 from Global since 2021 through the weekly show he previously hosted on Sunday mornings for LBC.
All MPs are required to disclose financial payments, and payments in kind, via the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. Ministerial meetings with media figures are monitored and published by the Cabinet Office.
The Labour shadow cabinet has previously published details of meetings with media executives but does not appear to have done so for around a decade.
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Press Gazette has looked through the Register of Members’ Financial Interests going back to the start of 2021 to see what sort of financial relationships, if any, top ministers have with media companies.
This research focuses on the two DCMS ministers (Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy and Minister of State Chris Bryant), the holders of the four Great Offices of State (Prime Minister Keir Starmer, Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves, Foreign Secretary David Lammy and Home Secretary Yvette Cooper) and Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner.
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Keir Starmer: £18,000 News Corp book advance returned
Keir Starmer had the second fewest payments or freebies from media companies of any of the seven ministers assessed after Yvette Cooper, who had none at all.
In 2022 and 2023, he accepted four tickets from Global for Capital FM’s Jingle Bell Ball, a concert hosted in the O2.
In 2022 Starmer received an advance payment of £18,450 to write a book for Harper Collins, the book imprint owned by News Corp, but he returned the sum at the start of 2024.
Angela Rayner
The deputy prime minister has not taken any freebies from media companies, but has been paid for a few media appearances. She was paid £600 and £1,000 for two LBC guest hosting slots in 2022 and 2023 respectively, and in October 2022 she received £1,000 for an appearance on the Channel 4's online comedy Rosie Jones' Dine Hard. That fee was allocated to Rayner's campaign fund.
Rachel Reeves
Rachel Reeves, the new chancellor, has also guest presented a show on LBC, earning £600 for the slot in 2022. Her two other entries are both freebies from the BBC: last year the corporation gave her two tickets for the first night of the Proms as well as two tickets for the last.
David Lammy
Because of his former show on LBC Foreign Secretary David Lammy has earned by far the most money from media companies of any of the ministers checked: since the start of 2021, he has declared £163,172.50 in income from Global. He was also paid £350 for contributing to coronation coverage on the BBC last year, but he donated the fee to charity.
Lammy has not declared any gifts from publishers.
As well as being the best-paid minister on this list, previous Press Gazette analysis found that between October 2021 and September 2022 Lammy made the most money of any MP for his media work, earning £47,532.
Lammy left the show in April ahead of the election, to be replaced by Lewis Goodall.
Lisa Nandy
New Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy was paid a £2,500 advance in 2021 for signing a book contract with News Corp's Harper Collins and a further £5,000 in royalties in 2022.
Most recently, she was gifted two tickets to the final of the Eurovision Song Contest when it was hosted in Liverpool last year.
Chris Bryant
Finally, the other DCMS minister, Chris Bryant, has registered the most diverse set of media earnings of any of the ministers on this list - totalling £23,000 since the start of 2021.
Like Rayner, Reeves and Lammy, Bryant has received hosting fees from Global. He has also regularly written articles and book reviews for magazines and newspapers ranging from the Daily Express to The Guardian.
His most recent media fee, recorded in April, was £1,500 to record a podcast based on his book. A month earlier he received £2,871.17 for the radio recording of his book with the BBC.
Away from fees, Bryant has registered two freebies since the start of 2021: in 2022 Channel 4 gifted him two tickets to an awards dinner run by PACT, a trade body representing independent production and distribution companies. In February he again received two tickets from Channel 4, this time to attend the BAFTAs. (In opposition, Bryant's brief was as Shadow Minister for Creative Industries and Digital.)
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