‘Selflessness. Integrity. Objectivity. Accountability. Openness.
Honesty. Leadership.’ These are the Seven Principles devised by Lord
Nolan’s 1994 Committee on Standards in Public Life to promote a code of
conduct that all public servants should follow. Following the news in
the last week, it is apparent that our country has elected a government
that is attempting to rip to shreds all of these rules.
Lord Acton famously once said: ‘power
tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely’: ambitious
people who think themselves untouchable tend to bend the rules for their
purposes. Nonetheless, what shocks me is the level of corruption we are
seeing in our country, and how this country has become numb to it. This
is unsurprising based on our incumbent primus inter pares:
Boris Johnson who has paved the way for an unprecedented level
of sleaze and scandal. Whether it was the dispute over who paid the
furniture for Downing Street, or his oddly timed Marbella holiday in a villa owned by the family of environment minister Lord Goldsmith.
Johnson has already been admonished on four occasions, most recently over a £15,000 holiday to the island of Mustique between December 26, 2019, and January 5, 2020, but this was later overturned by the Committee on Standards.
Johnson has already been admonished by the commissioner on four occasions, most recently over a £15,000 holiday to the island of Mustique between December 26, 2019, and January 5, 2020, but this was later overturned by the Committee on Standards.dubiously funded holidays, or tennis
matches with dodgy donors, Boris has pushed the envelope out of what it
is acceptable for our political leaders to do.
This
has been apparent
with the Owen Paterson lobbying scandal that has engulfed the government
this week. Paterson , was found in breach of ministerial code by the
independent
watchdog for these type of matters. He was found to have repeatedly
lobbied ministers and officials on behalf of two companies he worked for
as a paid consultant.
On top of Paterson’s £81,932 salary, he took home £8,333 a month to lobby on behalf of healthcare company Randox Laboratories.
As
Johnson announced Covid safety restrictions in March 2020, the government handed Randoz a £133 million contract to manufacture Covid
tests.
The Sunday Times newspaper has revealed a phone call on 9 April
last year between Paterson and the Tory peer Lord Bethell, who was the
minister responsible for handing out contracts.
According to documents, civil servants were trying to cover for the fact that Randox did not have the equipment it needed.
In an email, an official wrote that Matt Hancock health secretary at the time, would send a letter to universities “asking for loans of the various things we need”.
Campuses would have to give up testing resources and send them to Randox, they continued.
Randox later received a £347 million contract. Paterson’s
lobbying interests extended to sausage company Lynn’s Country Foods who
paid him £12,000 for just 24 hours of work each year.
Last month the independent Parliamentary Standards Commissioner found Paterson had breached the tame paid advocacy rules.
Paterson had, on 16 occasions, used his House of Commons office for meetings relating to his private business interests.
He failed on a number of occasions to declare those interests.
The Committee on Standards suggested Paterson should just be
suspended from the Commons for 30 days. This was set to be voted on in
parliament.
In an effort to save him even this punishment, Johnson
instructed Tory MP Andrea Leadsom to put forward an amendment and set up
a committee to prevent his suspension.
Parliamentary votes on these reports are usually free, i.e. the party
whip allows MPs to vote with their conscience, and so MPs typically
endorse the recommendation of the Standards Select Committee. Yet this
time the government imposed a three-line whip , and the Leadsom Amendment
to the motion to suspend Paterson was backed.
The amendment was half-baked and an outrageous watering down of
current processes. It aimed to not only set aside Paterson’s suspension,
but also to throw the Standards Commissioner on a bonfire and chop up
the Standards Committee for firewood. A new committee of MPs was to be
set up to decide the future of the Standards Select Committee, which
interrogates the work of the Standards Commissioner,
The government narrowly won the vote 250 to 232, and the former MP announced he would resign and self pitying leave “the cruel world of politics”following his shameless lobbying for big businesses.
What
was outrageous was that when the debate in the house happened, the
cowardly PM was nowhere to be seen. Sorry but he is always
available for a photoshoot or somehting like that but when he us under
fire he disappears.
I've read that Con
MPs said the vote was not about letting Paterson off the hook but
rather introducing a fairer system.
The flaw there is that is they weren’t planning a fairer system. They
wanted to scrap a public committee & replace it with a Tory mates-led committee. Arrant corruption.
Amid fallout from the “sleaze”
row Labour Party leader Keir Starmer who has not previously been noted
for his voice of opposition at least had the tenacity to accuse Boris
Johnson of "corroded trust" in MPs. The Labour leader told
the emergency debate in the Commons that the PM had given the "green
light to corruption".
Also
this week we have also heard about the MP and former attorney general
Sir Geoffrey Cox who had been accused of pocketing
hundreds of thousands of pounds to help stop ironically the exposure of
corruption
in a Caribbean paradise. the British Virgin Islands (BVI) during
lockdown.n his second job as a lawyer advising the Caribbean tax haven..
Iain Duncan Smith is also facing questions over his
£25,000-a-year second job advising a multimillion-pound hand sanitiser
company after he chaired a government taskforce that recommended new
rules benefiting the firm.in a brazen conflict of interest
The MP and former Conservative party leader chaired the Task Force on Innovation, Growth, and Regulatory Reform,
which reported back in May after he and two other MPs were asked by
Boris Johnson to recommend ways of cutting supposed EU red-tape.
However,
the fresh spotlight on moonlighting by MPs has now prompted questions
about the taskforce’s recommendations that alcohol-free hand sanitisers
should be formally recognised as suitable for use in the UK.
The
report made no reference to Duncan Smith’s relationship with Byotrol,
which provides the NHS with 92% of its non-alcohol sanitiser. It retains
the former Tory leader as an adviser for £25,000 a year, according to
his declaration in parliament’s register of members’ interests.
In
a message to investors after the recommendations of Duncan Smith and
his fellow former ministers George Freeman and Theresa Villiers, Byotrol
welcomed how an “influential UK government-sponsored taskforce has recommended a regulatory ‘green light’ for alcohol-free hand sanitisers”. Its directors were also quoted in a report as saying that it delivered a “powerful boost” to the firm.
The
taskforce said in its report: “Current guidelines in the UK on
non-alcohol based hand sanitisers are unclear. As a result, there is
confusion in industry and among consumers as to what products are safe
and effective to use, and we may be unnecessarily limiting the range of
sanitising products available.” It called on the government to review
guidance “to place alcohol- and non-alcohol-based on a level playing
field”.
Duncan Smith was a director of Byotrol between June 2009
and May 2010 and has previously declared share options. Both have been
approached for comment.
Byotrol, which is based
in Cheshire, said in August that its revenue almost doubled and its
pre-tax profits rocketed by more than 600% following “exceptional
demand” for its sanitising technologies due to the pandemic. It reported
a revenue of £11.2m for the 12 months to 31 March, up from £6m the
previous year.
Angela Rayner, Labour’s deputy
leader, said: “The prime minister needs to explain why he think it is
justified for one of his MPs to be paid by a company that stands to
benefit from a recommendation of a taskforce chaired by that same MP.
This is exactly the kind of brazen conflict of interest that proves that
the Conservatives think it is one rule for them and another for the rest of us.
“Did
this MP declare an interest when these matters were discussed and
reported on by the taskforce? Why is the prime minister failing to act
over these glaring conflicts of interest?”
More than a quarter of Tory MPs have second jobs with firms wbose
activities range from gambling to private healthcare, making more than
£4m in extra earnings in a year, Guardian analysis has found.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/nov/09/at-least-a-quarter-of-tory-mps-have-second-jobs-earning-5m-a-year
These aren't MP's 'with second jobs. They're lobbyists with second jobs
as MPs. And if we don't do something to stamp it out now, it's only a
matter of time before it's as corrupt here as it is in the US.
It's been interesting to see Tory MP's saying thy can't live on £82 k a
year when they thought some of the poorest people in the country could
cope with £20 a week less. The party of low wages, austerity,
exploitaiton and poor ambition. With a huge slice of sleaze and a
massive dose of corruption and a total lack of morals,.It’s one rule
for us, and no rules for them The criminals are right here Cressida
Dick, arrest them!
Boris
Johnson did not cause all these
mounting scandals, but it was his nature of governing and what he views
as
acceptable that is seriously harming our political culture. Over the
centuries this land has produced some absolute rotters, but I honestly
cannot think of anyone worse than this lying, arrogant, cheating dishonest,
incompetent, racist thug with blood on his hands,
The Conservative Party Party is also facing demands for a police investigation into a fresh cash for honours scandal. The SNP
are demanding action from the Metropolitan Police to determine whether
any criminal offence has been committed after it was reported party
treasurers who meet a £3 million threshold in donations are virtually
guaranteed a peerage.
The Sunday Times and Open Democracy found 15 of the last 16 Tory treasurers have been offered a seat in the Lords having each donated more than £3m.
The most controversial appointment was that of Lord Cruddas, who took
his seat after Boris Johnson rejected the advice of the House of Lords
Appointment Commission not to grant him a peerage.
An ex-party chairman explained: “Once you pay your £3m, you get your peerage.”
The
report found that, since 2010, 22 of the party’s main financial
donors have been given peerages after donating a combined £54m. Two
Labpir and five LibDem major donors have also been handed peerages.
SNP MP Pete Wishart said the latest scandal was corruption – “plain and simple”.
He commented: “The Tory corruption scandal is growing worse by the
day. It’s now beyond all doubt that the honours system has been abused
by the Tories.
The Metropolitan Police should launch a fresh cash for honours
investigation to determine whether a criminal offence has been
committed.
“It is utterly appalling that so many millionaire Tory party donors
have been handed life peerages by Boris Johnson and his predecessors.
But this isn’t just a scandal for the Tories – the Labour Party and Liberal Democrats
have also been dishing out peerages to donors as though they were
sweeties. It is corruption plain and simple – and it absolutely stinks.
“The undemocratic House of Lords is packed with hundreds of Tory,
Labour and LibDem donors and cronies, who are making laws without being
elected and claiming allowances at our expense. It should have been
abolished centuries ago but, whenever they’ve had the opportunity, the
Tories and Labour Party have instead chosen to continue benefiting from
the broken system – milking taxpayers for every penny they can get.”
Sadly Starmer chose last week to announce that Labour was no longer in favour of abolishing the House of Lords.
Wishart continued: “This is just the latest scandal for Boris Johnson
who seems to believe he is immune to abiding by the rules everyone else
does. Whether it’s cash for peerages, changing the standards system to
suit him best, or soliciting dodgy donations for the refurbishment of
flats and holidays, he is reigning over a system that he’s using to
benefit him and his party.
“People
in Scotland are looking in horror at what’s going on at Westminster.
The sooner Scotland can become an independent country, and shake off
this broken system, the better.”
Regardless
of Boris Johnson’s attempts to appeal to the whole country his same
tendency to serve the elite has manifested in the government’s COVID-19
pandemic response. Nearly £1 billion in government contracts ’have been awarded to 15 companies
with directors, or people with controlling interests over these
companies, who have donated £12 million to the Conservative Party’. That
is to say, public money has been funnelled to Tory donors in vast
quantities. The problematic nature of these transactions is obvious: any
argument that those bodies which were awarded contracts are the best
suited to the job is naturally suspect as a consequence of their
relationship with the Conservative party. This suspicion is further
justified when many COVID contracts have been awarded without competition and in breach of transparency rules,.
During the last year of the pandemic, the wealth of British billionaires increased by over a fifth. In a similar period, food bank use increased by about one third.
This stunning inequality is unlikely to be addressed by a Conservative
party whose raison d’etre is to protect the existing centres of wealth
and power. Yet Labour leader Keir Starmer’s current search for rich donors
to replace the subscription fees of a reduced party membership gives
little reason to think that the opposition offers a viable alternative
to the current plutocracy. To build a Britain that works for the many,
the impetus for change will have to come from the ground up.These
scandals and the furore to which it has given rise have deep
roots in our political system and highlight the structural flaws that so
urgently need to be addressed. But incredibly knowing all this
corruption is going on in plain sight, the public still vote for the
Tories and they are still ahead in the polls.I wish people would wake up
and realise that Britain is being run by the Bullingdon State; a
chummy elite who are above
pesky things like parliamentary standards and so-called ‘transparency’ behaving like arrogant masters pursuing their own interests while the
little people find supermarket shelves empty as prices and taxes rise.Whoever leads them, the British Conservative party is
diametrically opposed to the good of the British public and
deliberately acts against their interests. Their motives driven by
authoriarianism designed to disenfranchise all, unless you are not a
millionaire, the Conservative Party is not your friend, they are enemies
of the people.
The Conservatives with their feelings of self entitlement
believe they are born to rule. Unconcerned by any principles except
their maintenance of power, they U-turn on positions at a drop of a
hat, betray promises and even sacrifice their own in order to maintain
control.The interests they serve are not yours or mine, but those of the
bankers, financiers, fossil fuel magnates and the elite, look how they have voted.to pollute our waterways to keep their donors happy. I cannot believe the UK keeps accepting this crap.
There will likely be many more scandals .As to the outcome of the
investigations into these scandals, they’ll undoubtedly conclude that
lessons must be learned and rules tightened, etc. In other words,
business as usual, unless that is, both Scotland and Wales manage
to break free from the rotting corpse of Westminster and the stench of
Tory corruption, because we can't allow Boris and the Tory's to keep getting away with what they have up to now, surely we all deserve so much better.
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