A website run by newly elected Conservative MP Jamie Wallis promoted a “sugar daddy” service offering students financial relationships with wealthy “sponsors”.
Sugar-Daddy.net, which is now defunct, asked potential clients: “Are you a student, a single parent or just short of money? 1000s of wealthy executives, international businessmen and diplomats are eager to sponsor you through these difficult times. Typical sponsorship can be £2,000 - £25,000 per year.”
The "sugar daddy" site is listed as one of four “recommended resources” on Clean-Break.co.uk, a trading title of Wallis’s company Quickie Divorce Limited. “Sugar Daddy has been a trusted introduction service for over 10 years. Sugar Daddy can introduce you to your very own sugar daddy and solve your money worries,” it says on Clean-Break.co.uk.
On Thursday, BuzzFeed News reported that Wallis’s companies, which offered various online services, received hundreds of trading standards complaints before he became an MP, and that one of his companies was prevented from representing customers at employment tribunals following a Ministry of Justice investigation. Wallis said the figures were “nonsense” and that his former business was threatening legal action against his own local council.
Wallis resigned as a director of Quickie Divorce Limited on Dec. 20, seven days after he became the first Conservative MP for Bridgend since 1983. He is still listed by Companies House as the person with significant control of the business.
Clean-Break.co.uk’s recommendation of the "sugar daddy" service — which was live on its website while Wallis was a director and remains on the site today — says: “The service is not illegal or secret, it just maintains a low profile and respect people's wish for privacy.”
Despite the recommendation on his website, Wallis told BuzzFeed News that he had nothing to do with the "sugar daddy" site. However, the site was run by a company controlled by a former director of Quickie Divorce Limited.
In a statement, Wallis said: “Online queries indicate the sugar-daddy.net website was registered in 2004 and ceased to be operational in 2010. The site appears to have been owned and operated by a company named SD Billing Services Limited. For the avoidance of any doubt, I have never had a financial interest, nor been a director of SD Billing services Limited and cannot comment on its operational activities.”
SD Billing Services Limited was dissolved in February last year. Its director was Adrian Hill, who was a director of Quickie Divorce Limited before Wallis.
Jon Trickett MP, Labour's Shadow Minister for the Cabinet Office, said: "This website and Jamie Wallis's other businesses range from the unsavoury to the downright appalling, with exploitation at the heart of every one.
"The Conservative party must take immediate action or accept that they have no ethical code left."
Wallis did not respond when BuzzFeed News asked him why his website had promoted the "sugar daddy" service or whether he still recommended them today.