Moon Under Investigation: New Hunting Ban MP Suspended Over Covid Loan

The Labour MP who lent his name to the New Hunting Ban’s short-lived “Parliamentary Committee” has been suspended from his party over a taxpayer-backed Covid loan.

Regular readers will remember Perran Moon. The Labour MP for Camborne and Redruth was one of five MPs who signed up to the New Hunting Ban’s (NHB) so-called “Parliamentary Committee”, the unregistered group that first met inside Parliament in June 2025 and then quietly disappeared from NHB’s website a few weeks later.

Moon is happy to put his name to a campaign telling the countryside how to behave. This week, the spotlight is on his own standards.

A £50,000 question

Moon has been suspended by Labour after referring himself to the party’s investigations process over a Covid bounce back loan, making him the second Labour MP suspended over the scheme after Bayo Alaba in August.

Moon is listed on Companies House as co-director of Autoswot Limited, a training company set up in 2019. In June 2020 the company took out a £50,000 bounce back loan, the maximum available under the scheme and fully guaranteed by the taxpayer.

According to The Telegraph, an attempt to wind up the company in November 2022 was blocked by a third party. The government introduced blocking measures during the pandemic specifically to stop borrowers dissolving companies while loans remained unpaid. Autoswot last filed accounts in June 2021.

“Clear questions to answer”

Moon says the loan was taken out in good faith to cover staffing and business costs, that repayments were made until the company stopped trading in late 2022, and that he will provide documents to Labour’s investigation. The BBC reports he was assured in writing by Companies House that no accounts needed to be filed after the strike-off application, guidance that turned out to be wrong.

The Conservatives are not satisfied. Shadow Cabinet Office minister Mike Wood said Moon needed to “come clean” about whether he had tried to avoid repaying the loan, adding that the public deserves transparency from elected officials when taxpayers’ money is involved.

We could not agree more.

Politically credible?

The New Hunting Ban’s website still lists Moon among its supporting Members of Parliament. According to NHB, the involvement of these MPs is what keeps the campaign “politically credible” and closely aligned with the legislative process at Westminster.

That is quite a claim to rest on an MP currently suspended from his own party. It is also the same wording NHB once used to describe its “Parliamentary Committee”, before that body vanished from the website following our reporting. The committee may have gone, but the sales pitch has survived intact.

If NHB’s credibility depends on its MPs, it is fair to ask whether the group still considers Moon an asset, and whether it plans to say anything about his suspension.

Transparency for thee

Bounce back loans totalled £46bn. The Covid counter-fraud commissioner estimated fraud and error at up to £2.8bn, and by March this year only 19 per cent of loans had been repaid in full. That is public money, and the public is entitled to answers.

Moon’s investigation is a matter for the Labour Party, and he is entitled to put his case. But this is an MP who was happy to lend his name to a campaign group with a virtual office, no published accounts, no record at Companies House, the Charity Commission or the Lobbying Register at the time, and a “Parliamentary Committee” with no right to call itself parliamentary. When we raised those questions last year, neither Moon nor any of his fellow committee members said a word publicly.

Rural communities have spent years being lectured by Westminster politicians about rules, compliance and accountability. They might reasonably expect those same politicians to hold themselves to the standards they demand of everyone else.