Limited company boss fined for making Cable a contractor

A limited company director has been ordered to pay more than £12,000 after he tried to make the Liberal Democrat’s Vince Cable, the former business secretary, a PSC contractor.

Kevin Brewer, 65, filed paperwork to make the Lib Dem leader a director and shareholder of John Vincent Cable Services Ltd. Both appointments were without the MP’s knowledge.

He later set up a second company Cleverly Clogs Ltd – and made the Tories’ James Cleverly a director and shareholder, also without the MP knowing or having any connection to him.

Companies House took action in 2013 when it discovered the first filing, by dissolving the Lib Dem MP’s supposed ‘cable services’ firm and removing all traces of it from the register.

But it said that the second filing, in which Brewer made Mr Cleverly a co-director with Baroness Neville-Rolfe -- the minister responsible for Companies House, followed in 2016.

“Deliberately filing false information on the register is a serious offence,” a Companies House spokesman said.

“This is thought to be the first time a company director has been successfully prosecuted for falsifying company information under laws which came into force in 2009.”

Brewer, from Ullenhall in Warwickshire, did not fight the charges, but instead plead guilty to falsely filing on the companies register, breaking section 1112 of the Companies Act 2006.

Attending Redditch Magistrates Court last month, he was fined £1,602 and ordered to pay costs of £10,462, plus a Victim Surcharge of £160.

Business Minister Andrew Griffiths said: “This prosecution – the first of its kind in the UK – shows the government will come down hard on people who knowingly break the law and file false information on the company register.”