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Hi, I'm Anouche. I'm Alfa. And I'm Steven.

And on today's New Statement Podcast, we discuss the latest developments in the Green Sill lobbying scandal, and you ask us, what's happening in the Metro Meryl elections?

The Green Sill lobbying scandal is rumbling on. The latest developments are that there are going to be a number of inquiries into what happened, but also the other stories that it touches on, including officials, senior civil servants and their moon lighting.

So there's been the story that's been revealed about Bill Crothers, a senior civil servant who worked on procurement, actually working as an advisor to Green Sill for two months when he was still in that job and about to leave Whitehall.

It looks like a great many parts of the way that Westminster and our government is run are being touched by this story.

Does that make it any more of a danger for this government? Alfa, you were covering it this morning. What do you think?

Yeah, I think I haven't really made my mind up on this one, to be honest, because as you just outlined, as this story develops, it is simultaneously coming closer to the current government.

So as you mentioned, Boris Johnson is actually on the front page of the Daily Mail today for intervening on behalf of the Saudi Crown Prince, having been lobbied by him, even though ultimately the thing that the Crown Prince was asking for wasn't granted.

There is a quite mild lobbying story by the Prime Minister this morning, and also there is a story about, or this is the revelation that Boris Johnson's deputy chief of staff retained part ownership of a company that advises foreign governments, while in number 10, she still, I mean to this day, retains those shares.

And so it's simultaneously coming closer and closer to the conservative government, but it's also expanding wider and wider to incriminate or potentially incriminate a lot of civil servants, senior civil servants too.

So I think it could kind of go either way. I actually think that the thing that's kind of politically difficult about this, or it makes it possibly less interesting to cover, is really I think quite how bad this is for the civil service.

It's only a tiny number of people so far, but a handful of senior civil servants who do have second jobs, or did it at some stage have second jobs in the private sector alongside their work for the civil service, there's not actually any suggestion of any wrongdoing so far.

And it seems to be the case that this was within the rules, but there is a question about those rules and it makes the civil service I think in particular look very bad because this is a sort of different thing to politics in that.

I mean, most politicians, you know, certainly in a Westminster context, you have, I mean, you've MPs and you've ministers and they are all to a degree powerful. I mean, MPs aren't making laws, but they are all quite prominent and have a great deal of power and responsibility and doubly so for ministers.

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