Sir Geoffrey Cox | |
|---|---|
 Official portrait, 2020 | |
| Attorney General for England and Wales Advocate General for Northern Ireland | |
| In office 9 July 2018 – 13 February 2020 | |
| Prime Minister | Theresa May Boris Johnson |
| Preceded by | Jeremy Wright |
| Succeeded by | Suella Braverman |
| Member of Parliament forTorridge and Tavistock Torridge and West Devon (2005–2024) | |
| Assumed office 5 May 2005 | |
| Preceded by | John Burnett |
| Majority | 3,950 (7.8%) |
| Personal details | |
| Born | Charles Geoffrey Cox (1960-04-30)30 April 1960 (age 65) |
| Political party | Conservative |
| Spouse | |
| Children | 3 |
| Residence(s) | West Devon, England London, England |
| Alma mater | Downing College, Cambridge |
| Website | www |
Sir Charles Geoffrey Cox (born 30 April 1960) is a BritishConservative Party politician andbarrister who has been themember of parliament (MP) forTorridge and Tavistock, previouslyTorridge and West Devon, since2005. Cox worked as a barrister from 1982 onwards and was appointed aQueen's Counsel in 2003, two years before his election to Parliament. He served asAttorney General for England and Wales andAdvocate General for Northern Ireland underTheresa May andBoris Johnson from 2018 to 2020.
In January 2023 it was reported that Cox had, since the2019 general election, earned more than £2 million in addition to his salary as an MP – the second-highest amount of any MP, with only former prime ministerTheresa May having earned more.
Charles Geoffrey Cox was born on 30 April 1960 inWroughton,Wiltshire to Michael, aRoyal Artillery Officer, and Diane. He was educated atKing's College, Taunton, aprivate school, before reading law and classics atDowning College, Cambridge.[1][2]
Cox wascalled to the Bar at theMiddle Temple in 1982, and started practice as a barrister. In 1992 he co-founded Thomas More Chambers, as its Head of Chambers. He was appointed as aQueen's Counsel in 2003.[3]
For part of his career as a barrister, Cox was Standing Counsel to the government ofMauritius. His cases have included "civil fraud and asset recovery, commercial, human rights, defamation, and judicial review actions". He has appeared as leading counsel in theSupreme Court and thePrivy Council, and he was instructed to lead in commercial actions and arbitrations overseas, appearing in theDIFC, Mauritius, and theCayman Islands.[3]
His criminal cases have included theJubilee line corruption trial and successfully defending a member of theQueen's Lancashire Regiment who had been accused ofwar crimes related to thedeath of Baha Mousa.[4]
In 2014, Cox successfully defended the former Premier (and current Speaker of the Legislative Assembly) of the Cayman Islands,McKeeva Bush, on charges of corruption and misuse of office.[5] In March 2015, Cox successfully defended the deputy Editor ofThe Sun,Geoff Webster, in a trial of four journalists resulting fromOperation Elveden.[6] The jury had to decide at what point the behaviour of those on trial could be considered a criminal rather than a serious disciplinary matter; even the lawyers found this difficult to define.[7] Cox subsequently publicly criticised the vagueness of the law, and its disproportionate use that had led to the prosecution.[6]
Cox was first selected to stand for Parliament in 2000 by the Torridge and West Devon Conservatives. In the following2001 general election, he came second to incumbentLiberal DemocratJohn Burnett by 1,194 votes.[8][9]
After the 2001 election, Cox was reselected. Burnett announced in 2003 that he would not contest the seat again, and at the2005 general election Cox defeated the new Liberal Democrat candidate,David Walter, gaining a majority of 3,236.[10] Cox made hismaiden speech in theHouse of Commons on 28 June 2005.
Cox was re-elected as MP for Torridge and West Devon at the2010 general election with a slightly decreased majority of 2,957 votes (5.4%).[11][12][13]
At the2015 general election, Cox was re-elected with an increased majority of 18,403 votes (32.5%).[14]
In January 2016, it was reported he had a number of office expense claims for items, such as a 49pence pint of milk, rejected by the Commons authorities. In response, Cox said that his staff had been unaware of a recent change in the rules for office expenses, which no longer permitted office hospitality items such as tea, coffee or milk to be claimed.[15]
In February 2016, Cox told the House of Commons that he had concluded, after examining the published renegotiation proposals, that the case for leaving the EU was now overwhelming and that he would vote to do so in the forthcomingreferendum.[16]
Cox was again re-elected at the snap2017 election, with his majority increasing to 20,686 (34.7%).[17]
In theHouse of Commons he has sat on theEnvironment, Food and Rural AffairsSelect committee, the Committee on Standards and the Committee on Privileges.[18] Cox resigned from the latter role in 2016 after registering more than £400,000 of outside earnings within the time limit.[19]
On 9 July 2018, Cox was appointed to the Cabinet as Her Majesty's Attorney General for England and Wales and Advocate General for Northern Ireland.
In the2019 general election, Cox was re-elected with 60.1% of the vote and a majority of 24,992 (41.8%).[20]
On 9 July 2018,Theresa May appointed Cox asattorney general taking over fromJeremy Wright following aCabinet reshuffle, prompted by the resignations ofDavid Davis andBoris Johnson. Two days later on 11 July, Cox was sworn in as a member ofHer Majesty's Most Honourable Privy Council.[21]
On 1 December 2018,The Sunday Times newspaper reported the leaked contents of a recent letter written by Cox to Cabinet Ministers detailing the Attorney General's legal advice on Theresa May's Brexit deal. The newspaper reported that his legal advice declared the Withdrawal agreement's backstop protocol would mean the UK being indefinitely locked into a customs union with the EU if future negotiations collapse and that the only way the UK could leave the Backstop would be the signing of a future trade deal which could take many years to complete. The formerBrexit SecretaryDominic Raab and three serving Cabinet members confirmed the contents of the letter to theSunday Times.[22]
In February 2019, Theresa May placed Cox in charge of negotiating changes to theNorthern Ireland backstop in theEU withdrawal agreement.[23]
On 24 September 2019, theSupreme Court of the United Kingdom ruled unanimously that Prime MinisterBoris Johnson'sprorogation of parliament was unlawful, overturning the High Court's judgment, given by the Lord Chief Justice, in the government's favour. On the same day, minutes of a conference call between cabinet ministers (which included Cox) were leaked toSky News. The minutes of the call, which took place after the prorogation had been approved by the Queen, detailed that Cox briefly told the cabinet at that time that in his view the prorogation was lawful and constitutional and that any accusations of unlawfulness "were motivated by political considerations". Cox's full advice to the Government has not been published, as per precedent to protect government legal advice being prone to influence.[24] The next day Cox appeared in the House of Commons to answer an urgent question on the Government's legal advice and on the implications of the Supreme Court's decision. Cox rebutted calls for him to resign and criticisms of the Government's position, stating that senior and distinguished judges had agreed with the Government's view that the issue was not justiciable and chiding MPs for refusing to agree to a means of the UK leaving the EU while repeatedly preventing the House of Commons from dissolving for an election.[25]
In February 2020, Cox said the public is concerned about the creeping "judicialisation of politics" and said people were right to worry that unelected officials were making decisions that ought to be taken by Parliament. He promised there would not be radical reforms. He stated his opposition to the highly politicised US selection process ofSupreme Court and suggested he preferred the Canadian system. Cox said that "there's a case for looking at how supreme court judges are appointed... There's a committee of the Canadian parliament that carries out interviews [of candidates]."[26][27]
On 13 February 2020, in a Cabinet reshuffle, Cox was dismissed as attorney general, at the request of the prime minister, Boris Johnson, and replaced bySuella Braverman.[28]
He wasknighted in the2021 New Year Honours for parliamentary and political service.[29]
Cox has continued to practise as a King's Counsel (KC) whilst an MP.[3] According toThe Daily Telegraph, based on the declarations in the Register of Members' Interests, Cox's extra-parliamentary work was worth £820,867 in 2014, while the total time on extra-parliamentary work that was registered in 2014 (although the register shows the hours were worked over 3 years) was 1,954 hours.[30]
Cox has previously defended his outside work, pointing out that MPs of all parties have practised as KCs over the years, and that theattorney general andsolicitor general are normally chosen from their ranks.[31] He has argued that he has always been used to long hours, that 70 and 80 hour weeks are normal at the Bar, and that theNolan report concluded that Parliament needed people with current experience of a wide range of professional and other backgrounds.[31]
In 2016, the House of CommonsStandards Committee—of which he was a member—found that he had committed a serious breach of a House of Commons rule, designed to make transparent an MP's financial interests, after failing to register £400k of outside earnings (11 payments) for legal work within the permitted 28-day period. Cox registered the payments late, between two and seven months after the deadline; he said that he had omitted to prioritise the rule in the midst of an intense political and professional schedule. When first registering the payments, in September 2015, Cox apologised to the Registrar for his omission, referring himself to theParliamentary Commissioner, and stepped down from the committee. The Commissioner and the Committee accepted that the payments had not in fact given rise to any conflicts of interest and that the failure to register the payments within 28 days had thus had no practical effect.Alistair Graham, the former chairman of theCommittee on Standards in Public Life, criticised the lack of punishment and called for a complete reform, whileMartin Bell said the Committee on Standards had a long history of inflicting light punishment, which showed that the House was incapable of regulating itself.[32]
On 9 July 2018, Cox gave up all private practice upon his appointment as attorney general,[33] but resumed sometime after being sacked in February 2020, working as "consultant global counsel" to the international law firmWithers LLP.[34] He earned "£468,000 a year for 48 hours of work per month"[34] including over £150,000 for advising the government of theBritish Virgin Islands about alleged corruption in a case bought by the Foreign Office.[35] Beginning on 26 April 2021, Cox spent one month in the Caribbean and with the permission of the chief whip, continued to vote in Parliament via proxy due to the coronavirus lockdown.[34]
In January 2023,Sky News said that Cox had, since the 2019 general election, earnt more than £2 million in addition to his salary as an MP – the second-highest amount of any MP, with only former prime minister Theresa May having earnt more.[36]
On 10 December 2019, Danish media claimed that Cox had earned £380,000 (3.4 million DKK)[37] in legal fees during the years 2015–2017 for representingSanjay Shah, a Dubai-based British businessman and prime suspect in what is reported to have been thelargest tax fraud case Denmark had ever seen. Shah and his legal team said that he only exploited legal loopholes which Denmark had failed to close.[38][39]
Preben Bang Henriksen, chairman of the legal affairs committee of the Danish Parliament, claimed that Cox's engagement for Shah posed aconflict of interest ordisqualification issue because the Danish investigation is dependent on British assistance. Henriksen feared that the ties between Shah and Cox "might discourage British authorities from investigating the case as thoroughly as it evidently needed to be".[40] A spokesman for Cox rejected that Cox had influenced the investigation in Britain or Denmark, since a system at the Attorney General office would prevent conflicts of interest because Cox would not take part in any decisions within cases where he had previously been involved as a lawyer.[37]
Cox lives in ruralWest Devon, nearTavistock, and London. As with the majority of MPs who do not represent a constituency close to Parliament, he maintains accommodation on expenses in London for when he is working there.[41] He married Jeanie MacDonald in 1985 and they have one daughter and two sons.[1][42]
In September 2014, it was reported that Cox was one of a number of individuals, includingWayne Rooney,Guy Ritchie, andJeremy Paxman, investing in thePhoenix Film Partners LLC scheme run by Ingenious PLC, of whichHM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) had said it believed it "was designed to avoid tax". A tribunal was to take place later in the year. Ingenious had replied that the scheme had been submitted to HMRC for pre-approval and that HMRC had not raised any objections. Cox said that his instructions to his financial advisers were that he did not wish to be involved in "aggressive tax avoidance", and the newspaper reported that there was "no suggestion that he has done anything illegal".[43] Following a court victory against two sale and leaseback film partnerships, Proteus 1 and Samarkand 3, HMRC said it was contacting users of similar schemes, "encouraging them to settle their affairs". Ingenious Media commented: "HMRC has persistently failed to distinguish between commercial businesses and tax avoidance schemes, and without proper differentiation has deemed all film partnerships to be tax schemes."[44]
| Parliament of the United Kingdom | ||
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| Preceded by | Member of Parliament forTorridge and West Devon 2005–present | Incumbent |
| Political offices | ||
| Preceded by | Attorney General for England and Wales 2018–2020 | Succeeded by |
| Advocate General for Northern Ireland 2018–2020 | ||
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