MP James McMurdock suspended from Reform whilst facing accusations of illegal business activity

Yesterday we saw a Reform councillor being accused of a crime. This time it’s one of Reform’s five Members of Parliament who is facing accusations of criminal activity.

James McMurdock, MP for South Basildon and East Thurrock, has “suspended himself” from his party due to an investigation by the Sunday Times ending up in accusations of illegal business activity.

Most of the allegations relate to the Bounce Back loans that the government was previously offering at favourable rates to support businesses who were affected by the Covid-19 pandemic – if your business met the necessary criteria to qualify.

McMurdock took advantage of the scheme, borrowing tens of thousands of pounds for companies that seem to barely have even existed, let alone met the criteria for receiving such a loan.

He borrowed funds through two companies he owned. One was JAM Financial Limited, which had no employees and negligible assets until the pandemic. In 2020 it took out a loan of £50,000, the maximum sum available under the loans scheme available for medium-sized businesses during the pandemic. For a firm to have received such a loan, it would have needed to report turnover of at least £200,000.

The other was Gym Live Health and Fitness Limited, which was dormant until January 31, 2020. Over the following year it borrowed £20,000, which would have required a turnover of £80,000 under the Bounce Back scheme.

So, had his companies reported the necessary turnover that would have made them eligible for these loans? No.

In fact:

Neither company filed accounts or annual corporate filings after the loans — a violation of the Companies Act.

A company that violates the act in that way would normally be forced to shut down.

As a result of the failure to submit the information required, both companies were due to be struck off the register, meaning they would have ceased to exist and any remaining assets would have been seized by the Crown.

But for whatever reason, following an objection from a third party, this apparently hasn’t yet happened.

Neither company had any employees or much in the way of assets at all pre-Covid according to the Guardian.

McMurdock himself doesn’t seem keen to fill in the blatant gaps, nor acknowledge the hypocrisy in taking possibly illegal advantage of this sort of scheme whilst being in a party that constantly bangs on about government over-spending and waste.

When asked by the Sunday Times:

He repeatedly refused to say why he took out the loans but the disclosures will be awkward for Reform which has prioritised slashing the size of the state and reducing waste in government.

Will DOGE be paying him a visit I wonder?

McMurdock also broke the parliamentary rules a in totally separate way: by concealing his personal interests in these ventures.

…McMurdock appears to have breached parliamentary rules by failing to list his directorship of Gym Live Health and Fitness Limited on his register of interests.

Parliamentary rules state MPs must register “significant, formal unpaid roles such as an unpaid directorship, a directorship of a company not currently trading, or a trusteeship”.

Regular readers might recall McMurdock featuring here before, being accused of trying to mislead the public about the severity of his violence that led to his prior criminal conviction for assaulting his girlfriend.