Business roles Lister joined Mather and Platt Alarms in 1969 as a trainee, and rose to become Commercial Director. In 1979 he moved to Britannia Security as Sales Manager. In 1987 he joined
ADT Fire & Security, initially as Major Projects Director, and from 1990 as general manager. ADT at this time was controlled and led by
Lord Ashcroft. In 1997 ADT was purchased by
Tyco. From 1997 to 2007 Lister was Director, Government Relations, for Tyco Fire & Security. In the early years of this period Tyco was known for its very hard-driving and cost-conscious operational management culture, under
Dennis Kozlowski.
Public service roles Lister was first elected to
Wandsworth Council in 1976. His approach was regarded as congruent with
Thatcherism, and he supported adapting policy to local conditions.
LabourList has called Lister a 'right-wing uber-privatiser' who privatised street cleaning and refuse collection, and sold off council housing. Wandsworth was one of the earliest councils to take such actions. Between 2007 and 2010 only 11% of the "affordable" homes built in Wandsworth were for social rent – the lowest in the whole of London. Many ex-council homes became owned by concentrated and absent private landlords. Lister has been criticised for defending bankers and other wealthy Londoners, saying it would be "really bad news" for London if they left. He has similarly been criticised for high focus on cutting costs. In 2019, Wandsworth's council tax remained the lowest in the UK, which the council ascribed to continued cost focus. From 2007 to 2019, Lister was a Director of
Localis, a think-tank focused on local government issues, and particularly
localism. In 2008 Lister carried out a financial audit of
Greater London Authority finances for Mayor Boris Johnson. Lister was appointed as Chief of Staff and Deputy Mayor for Policy and Planning at the Greater London Authority, under Boris Johnson who was
Mayor of London. He served until 2016. During this time he became known among senior local government officials in London as 'Steady Eddie' because of the quality of the practical and restraining advice he offered to Johnson. One area of focus was long-term infrastructure planning. After leaving City Hall, he took up the role of Chairman of
Homes England, and also served as a non-executive director at the
Foreign and Commonwealth Office, including during the time that Boris Johnson served as
Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, and other board roles. In August 2019 Lister stepped down from his position at Homes England in order to focus on his newly created role as chief strategic adviser to Prime Minister Johnson. Lister's role as chief strategic adviser and
Dominic Cummings' role as chief adviser were in place of a formal chief of staff. As well as detailed operational management, Lister played an important role in some aspects of
Brexit diplomacy. Lister was believed to have indicated that he may not have stayed in the role after Brexit had been resolved. After the news broke in November 2020 that
Dominic Cummings and
Lee Cain were departing Downing Street, Lister was appointed by Johnson as acting
Downing Street Chief of Staff. It was announced later that month that
Dan Rosenfield would succeed him in January 2021. In February he became the Prime Minister's special envoy to
the Gulf. In April he left this role and departed the government.
Controversies In 2019,
Nigel Farage, then-
Leader of the Brexit Party, alleged that Lister was involved in intimidation and offering bribes in exchange for political candidates stepping down.
Conflict of interest In February 2021,
The Sunday Times reported that Lister was on the payroll of two developers,
Stanhope and
Delancey, while serving in government as chief strategic advisor to prime minister
Boris Johnson, a role which commanded the highest salary band of any special adviser, between £140,000 and £149,000 a year. Lister did not declare these interests in the parliamentary records despite having been ennobled in the summer of 2020. That Lister invited Delancey owner, and Conservative Party donor,
Jamie Ritblat into
10 Downing Street at the height of the
COVID-19 pandemic to advise on government policy relating to the construction sector, while being remunerated to sit on its board, a fact that was not then known, has also raised conflict of interest concerns amid the
Greensill scandal. In 2014, two years prior to joining Delancey, Lister had presided over the firm's planning application for the revamp of the Olympic media centre in east London as Johnson's deputy mayor of planning, for which permission was granted. Lister's conduct in government was also the subject of controversy in the
Royal Mint Court case. Although the claims have been denied, it was reported that Lister arranged the sale of Royal Mint Court for the new Chinese embassy, while holding down a £15,000-a-year non-executive directorship on the board of the
Foreign and Commonwealth Office. He was also paid by both parties in the transaction: the consultancy advising the Chinese government and buying the land; and Delancey, the property company founded and run by Ritblat, who had the freehold. During his time at
Homes England, Lister accepted donations totalling nearly half a million pounds from EcoWorld, a Malaysian property development firm, between 2016 and 2019. Although legal, Lister did not declare the amounts he received from EcoWorld. After the news of this possible conflict of interest came to light, Clive Betts, chair of the
UK parliament's
Housing, Communities and Local Government Select Committee, stated that it is "very wrong that someone in charge of allocating resources to build housing, including affordable housing, has this arrangement with a developer". In May 2021, the nature of Lister's relations with Ritblat was revealed in
The Sunday Times, which extracted an apology from the former senior Boris Johnson aide for having presided over the granting over a generous taxpayer-backed loan of £187m in 2019 to one of Ritblat's developer companies. This state aid, then the largest amount of money ever awarded by
Homes England, was granted after an unexpected appearance by Lister at the body's investment committee. Lister had failed to declare that he was being paid by Delancey at the time and instead opened the meeting by claiming that he had "previously undertaken advisory work for Delancey", which led the committee to conclude that "this did not constitute a conflict of interest." In his register of interests, Lister had declared that he advised a firm called Dream Ltd, a formulation that has not been used before or since and is a reference to Delancey Real Estate Asset Management, according to
The Sunday Times report. In a statement to the newspaper, Lister conceded that he should have "fully" recused himself at the meeting, but said that he had never lobbied government in relation to the Delancey group.
Approach and key skills Lister has said he desires to understand the operations he is responsible for; "If I'm to do the job properly, I've got to understand it, how it works, what makes it tick." His focus is on value; "Firstly, it's got to be about value for money, that's absolutely essential." His key skill is operational delivery; "I just want to get the thing done. That's what I'm good at. The organising and doing and making it happen." == Personal life ==