A key figure from the ‘remain in EU’ campaign has been given unique access to the heart of Whitehall ahead of the referendum. Guido can reveal that the Campaign Director for the Business for New Europe group, Lucy Thomas, was allowed to go ‘on secondment’ to the Department of Health’s HQ last year. According to Thomas’ LinkedIn CV, the role also included work at the Cabinet Office, though she now claims it was limited only to the Department of Health. Sources suggest the placement was organised with by the puppet-master of UK Europhilia, the mega-rich lobbyist Roland Rudd. Arch-Europhile Rudd is famously close to the Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt…

Lucy’s CV is hardcore Europhile; LibDem, BBC, Business for New Europe, Whitehall, then back to Business for New Europe as the Campaign Director.

When she was at the BBC in 2008 she won the European Parliament’s Prize for Journalism – demonstrating once again the BBC’s famed “impartiality” on Europe. Strangely she has no previous campaigning experience…

Guido has requested details of outside secondments from all departments under the Freedom of Information Act. Of the departments which responded, no staff from the various EU ‘leave’ campaigns have been on secondment. The revelation is reminiscent of the row caused in 2013 by Guido’s story revealing Prince Charles’ “spy” on secondment in the Cabinet Office, which made front page news at the time. Thomas says:

“My six-month stint working to raise the awareness of dementia and the need to speed up the search for a cure was neither policy-related or anything at all to do with the EU.”

On a day when Downing Street is trying to look neutral on Europe, it’s suspicious that a government department has been handing out cushy Whitehall placements to the Campaign Director of the pro-EU campaign… it is not what you know, it is who you know…