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By Tony Hallett, 10 January 2000 00:25

NEWS IT and telecoms consultancy Ovum, has rejected allegations linking a Labour MP's policy-making activities with his holding in the company. Stephen Timms, financial secretary to the Treasury, was an Ovum employee for eight years, starting in 1986. However, Timms is now part the Labour Treasury team pushing through IR35 - the controversial component of the government's Welfare Reforms and Pensions legislation - which many contractors, opposition MPs and others claim will drive one-person service companies out of business. Before Christmas, UK newspapers The Times and the Daily Telegraph ran stories in which Shadow Chancellor Francis Maude queried why Timms and his wife still hold a 3.7 per cent stake in Ovum. On the back of the articles, the Professional Contractors' Group (PCG), which has campaigned strongly against IR35, issued a statement in which its director David Ramsden, referring to the alleged Ovum-government link, asked: "Is there any party in this country that can govern for the interests of the majority rather than the narrow self-serving interests of their cronies?" However, Julian Hewitt, Ovum chief executive, has denied any impropriety. He told Silicon.com that Ovum doesn't stand to gain from IR35 as it does not carry out any implementation of IT or telecoms systems. He also said it is wrong to group his 220-person company alongside IT services giants such as Andersen Consulting or EDS, and refuted "implied or explicitly stated" claims that Ovum had lobbied the government in favour of IR35. More importantly, Hewitt attributed the lengthy delay in transferring Timms' shares into a charitable trust to the bureaucratic difficulties of changing Ovum's constitution. Timms was unavailable to comment, but the Treasury said he began transferring his holding about 10 months ago. A spokesman for Francis Maude said that while "theoretically conceivable", it has taken such a long time to transfer Timms' stake, "perhaps Tony Blair should have appointed him to a department where there wasn't this conflict of interest". The PCG still characterised the time lag as "odd" when presented with Ovum's response.