Decision

Correspondence: Grant Shapps, Chair, Cambridge Aerospace

Published 19 May 2026

1. COMPLIANCE WITH BUSINESS APPOINTMENT ADVICE: The Rt Hon Sir Grant Shapps, former Secretary of State for Defence – Chair, Cambridge Aerospace

19 May 2026

Dear Sir Grant,

I am writing concerning your role as Chair of Cambridge Aerospace following the announcement on 10 April 2026 of a UK government contract with the company to supply interceptor missiles and launchers. 

My role, in line with the terms of reference previously followed by the former Advisory Committee on Business Appointments (ACOBA), is to advise former ministers on the application of the Business Appointment Rules (‘the Rules’). You left the role of Secretary of State for Defence on 5 July 2024. The Rules apply for two years after leaving ministerial office. They are intended to ensure that, as stated in the Ministerial Code issued in December 2022 and with which you undertook in writing to comply, “there should be no cause for any suspicion of impropriety”. Advice issued under the Rules therefore seeks to address impropriety arising, or being perceived to arise, from an appointment. The Rules require former ministers to comply with all advice issued under them and this requirement is not limited to the conditions specific to a particular role.

In 2024, you sought ACOBA’s advice under the Rules for a prospective role, as chair and founder of Cambridge Aerospace, at the time a “yet to be established start-up” to be “focused on research and development with a civilian aerospace application” to “develop technologies that reduce the risks of disruption to aviation”. ACOBA provided advice in November 2024 (Annex A). This highlighted the risk of an overlap between your previous responsibilities as Secretary of State for Defence and the potential for Cambridge Aerospace to be involved with defence. The advice stated that it is “an applicant’s personal responsibility to manage the propriety of any appointment” and noted that you may need to make a fresh application for advice, should an extension or other change to the nature of your role be proposed. In view of the risks identified, ACOBA specified the following conditions on your taking up the role:

• “you should not draw on (disclose or use for the benefit of yourself or the persons or organisations to which this advice refers) any privileged information available to you from your time in ministerial office”;
• “for two years from your last day in ministerial office, you should not become personally involved in lobbying the UK government or its arm’s length bodies on behalf of Cambridge Aerospace (including parent companies, subsidiaries, partners and clients); nor should you make use, directly or indirectly, of your contacts in the government and/or ministerial office to influence policy, secure business/funding or otherwise unfairly advantage Cambridge Aerospace (including parent companies, subsidiaries, partners and clients)”;
• “for two years from your last day in ministerial office you should not undertake any work with Cambridge Aerospace (including parent companies, subsidiaries, partners and clients) that involves providing advice on the terms of, or with regard to the subject matter of a bid with, or contract relating directly to the work of, the UK government or its arm’s length bodies”; and
• “for two years from your last day in ministerial office, as Chair of Cambridge Aerospace, your work should be limited to civilian aerospace and you must not work in, or advise on, defence matters.”

Following concerns raised by a member of the public, in October 2025, ACOBA queried your compliance with the conditions in a published exchange of correspondence with you (Annex B). ACOBA noted your account of complying with the conditions, but also stated: “There is limited information in the public domain about this company’s work, but it all currently indicates that Cambridge Aerospace operates only in defence”.

A further concern was raised with me by a member of the public in April 2026, following the announcement of the government defence contract with Cambridge Aerospace. I therefore wrote to you on 20 April 2026 about the apparent inconsistencies between your role and the conditions applied by ACOBA (Annex C). Following your initial reply, I wrote with further questions and you responded (respectively Annexes D, E and F).

In your letters to me, you have stated that you complied with ACOBA’s conditions on privileged information, lobbying, bids and contracts with the Government and, specifically, in not working in, or advising on, defence matters. You have acknowledged that you should have complied with ACOBA’s request to make contact if “you propose to … otherwise change the nature of your role” and indicated that, in the light of this omission, you resigned from Cambridge Aerospace on 30 April 2026. Although your role title was “Chair” and this was the basis on which you received ACOBA’s advice, you have stated that you were not chairing the company in the ordinary sense of chairing the Board of Directors, being a Company Director, and having voting rights.

Major changes appear to have occurred in the 18 months between your joining Cambridge Aerospace in November 2024 and your resignation in April 2026. The civilian-focused start-up, in respect of which you sought advice, is now widely referred to as a defence company, for example by the Secretary of State for Defence who recently referred to it as a “UK defence start-up scaling at pace to deliver new interceptor missiles”. In light of this, I have reached the following conclusions:

You have allowed a perception of impropriety to develop

In my recent letters, I set out that Cambridge Aerospace seemed publicly to have only one project, which is defence-related, and that this, on the face of it, raised a question around your statement that you had had no involvement with what appeared to be your company’s primary project. I therefore requested that you substantiate the explanation you had given to ACOBA in October 2025 – that your role was to “contribute specialist knowledge in airspace conspicuity” in support of “research into technologies designed to safeguard airspace from incursion” in terms of civilian application and not defence purposes. I asked detailed questions to assist you in this.

You have stated that legal obligations of confidentiality prevent you from providing any of the types of material I suggested would be helpful in clarifying your position. I consider that you could have provided redacted information in a way that would have complied with your constraints in order to confirm the civilian focus of your role specifically and of Cambridge Aerospace more generally. You might, for example, have supplied marketing material issued when the company was seeking funding. I also consider that some of the questions posed could have been answered without legal considerations coming into play, such as on the average time per week you spent working for the company. It is regrettable that, given your decision not to supply any further information, I cannot reconcile your statements to ACOBA and myself with the information available publicly. 

My confusion concerning the nature of your role has been compounded by the public presentation of you as chair, without qualification, throughout your involvement with the company. Whilst you argue that you were not chair in the usual sense of the term, the public impression would have been that you were chair of a defence company and therefore involved in all aspects of the company’s work. This impression would have been gained from a variety of media sources and online profiles, such as on LinkedIn and on speaker agency websites. For example, an article in Global Financial Market Review, as recently as 27 March 2026, described you as chairing Cambridge Aerospace. 

It was your responsibility to manage the propriety of this appointment, as specified in ACOBA’s advice, and I consider that you were insufficiently diligent in doing so. 

You neglected to seek fresh advice on a changing role

You have stated that the broader global context has changed markedly and at considerable speed since Cambridge Aerospace was founded. You acknowledged that you “fully accept” that you should have sought further updated advice as those circumstances changed and have apologised for not doing so.

You failed to follow ACOBA’s advice to correct public domain information about Cambridge Aerospace and your role within it

In ACOBA’s exchange of correspondence with you in October 2025, you were given clear advice to “take all necessary steps to correct” the inconsistencies between your descriptions of your and the company’s work and the information in the public domain. I can see no evidence that you followed ACOBA’s advice and this can only have exacerbated the perception issues I set out above.

I consider that by not abiding by the advice given by ACOBA as set out above, you have failed to uphold the standards expected in the Rules. As noted in my last letter to you, my remit allows me to make breaches of the Rules public. Accordingly, this correspondence will be published on my GOV.UK pages. I am copying this letter to the Director of Propriety and Ethics in the Cabinet Office.

Yours sincerely,

Sir Laurie Magnus CBE

Independent Adviser on Ministerial Standards

2. Annex A – ACOBA’s advice to Sir Grant Shapps on the role of Chair of Cambridge Aerospace in November 2024

ACOBA advised Sir Grant about taking up an appointment with Cambridge Aerospace, setting out its consideration and the conditions imposed on the appointment in November 2024. The appointment was taken up later that month.

3. Annex B – Correspondence between ACOBA and Sir Grant Shapps about Cambridge Aerospace in October 2025

ACOBA wrote to Sir Grant about Cambridge Aerospace, following an enquiry from a member of the public.

4. Annex C – Letter of 20 April 2026 from the Independent Adviser to Sir Grant Shapps

Dear Sir Grant,

I refer to the advice you received under the Government’s Business Appointment Rules for Former Ministers (the BARs), issued to you by the former Advisory Committee for Business Appointments (ACOBA) in November 2024 about your appointment as Chair of Cambridge Aerospace. As you will be aware, the Rules aim to protect government integrity and to avoid any suspicion that those who have served in government might profit improperly from that experience or that an employer might gain unfair advantage through privileged access to government. Former ministers must follow conditions designated under the Rules. 

ACOBA’s advice to you was predicated on specific assurances that you provided – namely that Cambridge Aerospace was being established to work on research and development in the civilian aerospace sector and that the company sought ‘nothing’ from the Government; and on the Ministry of Defence’s input and recommendations to ACOBA also being based on the role being concerned with civilian, not defence, applications. ACOBA designated the standard conditions on privileged information, lobbying and advising on contracts and bids, together with a clear restriction: ACOBA specified that for two years from your last day in office, your Cambridge Aerospace work should be ‘limited to civilian aerospace’ and that you ‘must not work in, or advise on, defence matters’. ACOBA also noted that, should an extension or other change to the nature of your role be proposed, you may need to make a fresh application. 

I note a subsequent exchange of correspondence, published in October 2025, between you and the ACOBA Chair after concerns were raised about your attendance at Defence and Security Equipment International UK (DSEI UK) and about the public profile of Cambridge Aerospace being indicative of a defence technology firm with two defence-related products: ‘Skyhammer’ and ‘Starhammer’. Your reply provided assurances about your DSEI UK attendance and about your work. In response, the ACOBA Chair reminded you of the formal advice under the BARs to avoid defence work ‘entirely’; cautioned you that your assurances were not consistent with the publicly available information about the company such as on its website and LinkedIn page, and asked that you take all necessary steps to correct this.

On 10 April, the Defence Secretary announced a multi-million pound contract with Cambridge Aerospace to supply ‘Skyhammer’ interceptor missiles and launchers to the UK Armed Forces and Gulf partners. Cambridge Aerospace also announced the contract. This development appears to be at direct variance with your original description of the role submitted to ACOBA. Additionally, I note that the company remains externally presented – for example, on its Linkedin profile and on your own JLS Speakers profile – as a defence company.

The receipt of a Ministry of Defence contract by a firm under your chairmanship, alongside the continued marketing of defence technologies, raises a serious question as to whether your activities are consistent with the conditions set out by ACOBA. It is on the face of it difficult to reconcile the current scope of Cambridge Aerospace’s operations with the restriction that you avoid defence matters entirely, and in the absence of a fresh application for advice in view of changes to the nature of the business of Cambridge Aerospace under your chairship. 

Where compliance with the BARs is questioned, the onus is on the former minister to explain how the conditions have been complied with and to account for any apparent discrepancies with publicly available information indicative of the contrary. Before I reach a formal conclusion on this matter, I would be grateful for your comments on how you consider your current activities to be compliant with the advice you received. In particular, I should be grateful for your explanation as to:

• why, prior to Cambridge Aerospace pursuing and being awarded a Ministry of Defence contract, you did not seek advice under the Business Appointment Rules given that there had been a material change in the work of Cambridge Aerospace under your chairmanship to commence working on defence matters
• what involvement you had with the recently announced MoD contracts
• what steps you have taken to ensure that your role as Chair remains strictly confined to civilian aerospace, as per the Committee’s direction, and is publicly perceived to be so.

It is part of my role to make public any material breaches of the Rules and this can include publication of correspondence between me and a former minister. In order for me to consider any information you wish to provide and for your response to be included in any report I may make on this matter, I would be grateful if you could respond to this letter by 27 April 2026. 

Yours sincerely,

Sir Laurie Magnus CBE

Independent Adviser on Ministerial Standards

5. Annex D – Letter of 27 April 2026 from Sir Grant Shapps to the Independent Adviser

Dear Sir Laurie,

Thank you for your letter of 20 April 2026. I am grateful for the opportunity to respond.

When I co-founded Cambridge Aerospace I intended to use my personal and professional knowledge of the aviation and aerospace to build a UK-sovereign and European civilian aerospace company. Given the potential crossover between civilian and military aviation, I welcome your questions:

‘What steps you have taken to ensure that your role as Chair remains strictly confined to civilian aerospace, as per the Committee’s direction, and is publicly perceived to be so.’

I recognise the sensitives of my former role and scrupulously abide by the guidance provided by the Business Appointment Rules. Despite my title of ‘Chairman’, I am not the legal Chair of the Board of Directors, nor am I a Company Director or an employee with voting rights. I have no executive power, nor oversight of the whole business. Moreover, I am not authorised by the business – and could not self-authorise – to represent the company to any UK government body, in any form, at any time, and nor would I ever attempt to do so. My title therefore reflects my position as one of several Co Founders focused on specific areas of the business rather than a more expansive role that is not naturally confined within my own expertise.

Your letter also asks:

What involvement you had with the recently announced MoD contracts.’

Absolutely none. I was not – and would not be – involved in any way, at any time, in any capacity, with the contract between Cambridge Aerospace and the Ministry of Defence. I strictly and scrupulously comply with the four ACOBA conditions on privileged information, lobbying, bids and contracts, and, indeed, was only abstractly aware of the Urgent Operational Requirement as it neared completion. For absolute clarity, I declare clearly and without hesitation that I was not associated with this process at any point.

‘Why, prior to Cambridge Aerospace pursuing and being awarded a Ministry of Defence contract, you did not seek advice under the Business Appointment Rules given that there had been a material change in the work of Cambridge Aerospace under your chairmanship to commence working on defence matters.’

Given the limited scope of my role, I did not judge that – as per paragraph 17 of my ACOBA advice letter – there had been a ‘material change’ in my position; given I was not involved. However, with receipt of your letter, I recognise that this was an oversight for which the excessive speed of events is the only mitigating circumstance.

To simplify matters, in view of recent geopolitical events, and a greater-than-anticipated focus on military technology at Cambridge Aerospace, I have agreed to step down.

Although there is not much of an online presence maintained, I will additionally endeavour to ensure that third-party profiles accurately reflect this change.

I remain committed to compliance with the Business Appointment Rules, and I am grateful for your continuing advice.

Yours sincerely,

Sir Grant Shapps

6. Annex E – Letter of 8 May 2026 from the Independent Adviser to Sir Grant Shapps

Dear Sir Grant,

Thank you for your letter of 27 April 2026 in response to the questions set out in my letter of 20 April. I note your statements to the effect that, despite holding the title of Chairman of a company developing defence technology and securing a major government defence contract, you had no involvement in, or knowledge of, the company’s defence work. You state that you “strictly and scrupulously” complied “with the four ACOBA conditions”, which included that “… as Chair of Cambridge Aerospace, your work should be limited to civilian aerospace and you must not work in, or advise on, defence matters”. You also state that, following my letter, you have resigned from the role. It would be helpful to know the precise date when you ceased to be Chair and, if later, when you resigned from any role with the company.

I also note, however, that your response to me gives no indication of what your role in substance did, as opposed to did not, involve. Cambridge Aerospace seems publicly to have only one project, which is defence-related. This, on the face of it, raises a question around your statement that you have had no involvement with what appears to be your company’s primary project. To satisfy me, or indeed any external observer, that you complied with the condition, I would ask you to substantiate the position implied in your October 2025 correspondence with ACOBA that your role was to “contribute specialist knowledge in airspace conspicuity” in support of “research into technologies designed to safeguard airspace from incursion” in terms of civilian application and not defence purposes such as the company’s ‘Skyhammer’ interceptor missiles and launchers. I would be grateful, therefore, if you could provide a comprehensive account of your work at Cambridge Aerospace by addressing the following:

• On average over the past 12 months, how much of your working time per week was spent working for Cambridge Aerospace? 
• You state that your title reflects your position as “one of several co-founders focused on specific areas of business”. Please provide details of the specific areas of business that you covered and, if possible, an organisation chart showing the allocation of responsibilities between you and your co-founders. Any organisation chart can be anonymised.
• During the past 12 months, on what products, projects or services relating to civilian aerospace did you work on behalf of Cambridge Aerospace? Please provide details, such as meetings that you attended externally or examples of correspondence with which you were involved to promote Cambridge Aerospace’s civilian related products and services.
• Please provide details to show the split between Cambridge Aerospace’s civilian and defence work – for example, how many staff are principally working on civilian projects and how many on defence matters?
• Please provide copies of the relevant parts of board minutes that demonstrate the company’s focus on civilian projects and any evidence of your involvement. These should be as recent as possible (within the past six months).
• Please provide copies of pitch books or other marketing material supplied to prospective investors in Cambridge Aerospace since foundation together with any reports, presentations and other communications provided to shareholders and/or prospective investors demonstrating the nature of Cambridge Aerospace’s work and its governance. I am interested in what has been stated concerning the company’s strategy, its board and management, and how its business activities are described including in relation to types of target customer. It should be straightforward to provide this information without sharing commercially sensitive data (e.g. product specifications or names of customers).
• In October 2025, ACOBA advised that information in the public domain about Cambridge Aerospace – for example on the company website and LinkedIn – was not consistent with your description of the company’s work and your specific involvement in aviation and aerospace. ACOBA requested that you take all necessary steps to correct this. What steps did you take in response to this request and when did you do so?

In order for me to consider any information you wish to provide and for your response to be included in any report I may make on this matter, I would be grateful if you could respond to this letter by the end of 12 May 2026. As noted in my last letter, it is part of my role to make public any material breaches of the Rules and this can include publication of correspondence between me and a former minister.

Yours sincerely,

Sir Laurie Magnus CBE

Independent Adviser on Ministerial Standards

7. Annex F – Letter of 12 May 2026 from Sir Grant Shapps to the Independent Adviser 

Dear Sir Laurie,

Thank you for your letter of 8 May 2026. I have considered its contents carefully and wish to place the following observations on the record.

I have held no public office since leaving government in July 2024, now approaching two years ago. I am aware that, as a private citizen, the Business Appointment Rules exist to prevent improper use of privileged access, contacts and influence; rather than being designed to prevent former ministers from working.

The broader geopolitical context has changed markedly and at considerable speed since Cambridge Aerospace was founded. As we have seen from recent events in Iran, the age of warfare being purely a military-on-military act has passed, and as such the need to protect against a range of threats from the air, targeted at anything from infrastructure to civilian populations is only increasing. I fully accept that I should have sought further updated advice at an earlier stage, as those circumstances changed. I apologise for not doing so.

I also wish to clearly state and without qualification, that I had absolutely no involvement whatsoever in the pursuit or award of any Ministry of Defence contract. I was not consulted, I was not involved in preparing any bid or tender, I played no part in any negotiations, and I was only abstractly aware that an Urgent Operational Requirement process was nearing completion. I recused myself entirely from the company’s dealings with the UK Government, and this remained my position throughout my involvement with Cambridge Aerospace.

As regards adhering to ACOBA advice: I did not disclose or make use of any privileged information obtained during my time in ministerial office; I did not engage in lobbying of the UK Government; at no point did I seek to use my former position, or any contacts arising from it, to influence policy or secure government funding. I took no part in any work relating to MoD bids, tenders or contracts with the Government or its agencies, at any stage or in any capacity.

I have given careful consideration to the seven detailed questions set out in your letter of 8 May. There has now been a substantial exchange of correspondence, and I believe the principal matters have been addressed to the extent that it is within my power to do so. I am not in a position to provide the documentary and organisational material you have requested, as it relates to internal company documents, commercial arrangements and third-party confidences subject to legal obligations of confidentiality which I cannot unilaterally waive. I would not wish to place myself in breach of those obligations in the course of responding to this inquiry, and I hope you will understand that this reflects the legal reality of my position now that I am no longer party to the company’s internal governance, and not any desire to be uncooperative. 

It is worth further clarifying that although I held the title of “Chairman”, I was not the legal Chair of the Board of Directors, I was not a Company Director, and had no voting rights. My title reflected my position as one of the co-founders and, since I was not full time, it may have been clearer to simply have been a co-founder to avoid confusion.

I resigned as Chairman, and from the wider company, on 30 April 2026.

I fully accept that I should have sought further guidance sooner, given the speed of developments, and I once again sincerely apologise.

Yours sincerely,

Sir Grant Shapps