Ben Houchen refuses to declare Albania trip on register of interests

The most recently available declaration of interests form from Houchen - who will soon take his seat in the House of Lords as Lord Houchen of High Leven - is from August 2022 and states that gifts and hospitality that he has received are “as disclosed, past and present, to the Electoral Commission.”

As an elected mayor, Ben Houchen is classed as a “regulated donee” by the Electoral Commission, and as such is also subject to their rules on declaring gifts.

According to the Electoral Commission’s guidelines for regulated donees, if overseas visits are paid for by the hosts, the donee “should calculate the notional value of the trip, based on the equivalent commercial travel and accommodation costs.”

The threshold for declaring overseas visits as gifts to the Electoral Commission is on trips with a value of £1,500 or more. Tees Valley Combined Authority (TVCA) calculated that the trip cost £1,455.76, and therefore isn’t subject to being declared to the Electoral Commission.

After ignoring five requests for comment from The Yorkshire Post, a spokesperson for TVCA eventually said: “The Tees Valley Mayor represented the Tees Valley Combined Authority on an official business trip. This was organised by the Tees Valley Combined Authority and there is no requirement for this to be registered as an interest.”

TVCA’s constitution states that, “All offers of gifts and hospitality of £25.00 or more in value… whether or not they are accepted, must be recorded promptly (and by no later than 28 days from the date of the offer) in a register held by the Combined Authority.”

Regarding the Electoral Commission’s rules on declaring gifts, TVCA’s spokesperson added: “There was no requirement to report this to the Electoral Commission as the hospitality total did not exceed £1,500, and this includes expenditure for both the Tees Valley Mayor and an accompanying officer.”

When asked to further explain why an overseas trip paid for by somebody else has no requirement to be registered as an interest, despite the guidance relating to offers of gifts over £25 in its own constitution, TVCA said that they were acting on the guidance of their Monitoring Officer.

During his visit to the Balkan state, Houchen was accompanied by a TVCA press officer, Teesworks’ CEO Martin Corney, and Corney’s Albanian son-in-law Orion Kotrri.

Corney is one of the local business people who acquired a 90% stake in the public-private company, Teesworks Ltd, apparently without having to invest a penny. Kotrri is reported to be responsible for the removal of scrap from the enormous site that contains the former Redcar steelworks.

More than £90m of scrap has been removed from the site so far, and much more remains to be processed.

It is not clear on what grounds Corney and Kotrri were on the trip, and TVCA refused to explain their presence. Teesworks did not respond to a request for comment.

TVCA has also refused to provide The Yorkshire Post with a full itinerary of the trip, despite inconsistencies appearing in online reports of the visit from the time. While TVCA released a press release on 17th June 2022 celebrating Houchen’s meeting with Tirana mayor Erion Veliaj, the Albanian mayor shared a video of the meeting the previous day.