Senior Reform figure paid nearly £40k to deliver other parties’ leaflets

Martin Shipton

A freedom of information disclosure has revealed that a company run by one of Wales’ leading Reform UK figures has been paid tens of thousands of pounds by Senedd Members to deliver leaflets at taxpayers’ expense.

Lee Canning recently took over as interim chair of Reform in Cardiff, having stood in the Cardiff East constituency in last year’s general election, coming third behind Labour’s Jo Stevens, now the Secretary of State for Wales, and Rodney Berman, the former Liberal Democrat leader of Cardiff council.

Until 2019, Mr Canning was the deputy chairman of the Welsh Conservatives. He resigned and joined the Abolish the Welsh Assembly Party.

Mark Reckless

As well as working for a time for Mark Reckless, the former Ukip MP who became a member of the then National Assembly and later joined Abolish, Mr Canning was managing director of a leaflet delivery company called LDP Services, which he now describes as the biggest leaflet delivery firm in south Wales.

On his website he says delivery charges are from £50 for 1,000 leaflets. He also states: “My management style is robust, demanding the best out of people by leading by example. Our job at LDP Services is to bring your business into the public eye, delivering results for you. My management style might not be a cuddly one but as most business owners appreciate business is business and if a member of the team is not representing the team the way they should then sometimes they need to be replaced.”

A political source who wishes to remain anonymous asked the Senedd how much public money had been paid to Mr Canning’s firm for services provided to MSs.

Senedd members

After receiving the FoI disclosure, the source said: “Specifically, Mr Canning has warehoused £38,664 cash from Senedd Members in the last six years for his businesses.

“His paymasters are interesting. Senedd Conservatives overall have paid Mr Canning £10,739. Mr Canning was once a Conservative Party member before defecting to Abolish. His businesses may have also been paid money from the Conservative voluntary party, but that won’t be recorded on Senedd records.

“Conservative Senedd Member (with Abolish sympathies) Joel James has paid him £10,259 in just over two years.

“Bizarrely, Labour Senedd Members have paid Mr Canning £25,176 of taxpayers’ money, with Julie Morgan and Mark Drakeford coming in with over £15,000 and £4,000 respectively. Ex solicitor Mick Antoniw has sent Mr Canning’s businesses over £5,000. Dawn Bowden is also a contributor.

“Mark Reckless in 2021, at a time when both he and Mr Canning had defected to the Abolish party, paid him over £1,800 in one sitting. This does not include the additional taxpayers’ money he was also given by (then) Abolish party member Mark Reckless as one of his paid Senedd employees at the same time. Both Messrs Canning and Reckless are now members and/or involved in Reform UK’s operation in Wales.

“There is some irony in the fact that the business of a man who wanted to abolish the institution is making quite a bit of money from it.”

The total sums paid to LDP by individual politicians are:

Dawn Bowden (Labour, Merthyr Tydfil): £850.

Joel James (Conservative, South Wales Central): £10,259.

Julie Morgan (Labour, Cardiff North): £15,420.

Mark Drakeford (Labour, Cardiff West): £4,000.

Mark Reckless (Ukip/Independent Conservative/Brexit Party/Abolish the Welsh Assembly Party): £1,899.

Mick Antoniw (Labour, Pontypridd): £5,756.

Suzy Davies (Conservative, South Wales West): £480.

‘Discriminate’

Mr Canning said: “I’ve been running LDP for 14 years. I don’t choose my customers – they choose me. I don’t discriminate between clients in terms of their political affiliations. I am happy to facilitate the democratic process by working for a wide range of parties, including Plaid Cymru, the Green Party, the Liberal Democrats, the Labour Party and the Conservative Party.

“In doing so I’m helping people to earn a living. Some of them are employees, and some, for their flexibility, are self-employed. We also charge less by quite a margin than the Royal Mail, so when we undertake work for MSs, we are saving the public purse quite a lot of money.”

Mr Canning said market conditions had forced him to “let a couple of workers go” this week, which he regretted.

He accepted that he had wanted to abolish the National Assembly, but that was no longer his position.

“People had the opportunity to vote for Abolish, but only did so in small numbers, “ he said. “We now have a Welsh Parliament, and while I still have reservations about devolution, I think the focus has to be on removing the party that runs it rather than getting rid of the institution itself.”