The furore around many of the measures announced in Labour’s first budget in 14 years must be a welcome relief to Keir Starmer and his cabinet colleagues in one key respect – the national conversation has now at last moved on from sunglasses and Taylor Swift.
But Labour’s early communication missteps may soon grow into a broader crisis of legitimacy if it does not take action to create greater transparency in its dealing with business and other interests. Who government ministers accept gifts from and how policy is shaped are two distinct but closely related questions. As things stand it is extraordinarily hard to know what the nature of the link is for this government. Such a lack of transparency certainly isn’t in the public interest, and it may well turn out not to be in the government’s interest either.
The old question ‘cui bono?’ (‘who benefits?) is naturally followed by the next question – ‘quis influebat?’ (who has been lobbying) – or more precisely, whose lobbying has been successful? Trade unions are exempt from the provisions of the 2014 Lobbying Act, as are trade associations, bodies such as the CBI and IoD, and think tanks. Where does the government get its ideas from? Who gets a hearing? Who is able to influence a budget at the highest level as it takes shape?
As matters stand, it is very hard to say. Only consultant lobbyists who pay VAT in the UK are allowed to put themselves on the statutory lobbying register. In the absence of proper public information made available in a timely and official manner, we are left to try and make as much sense of events as we can. How is it that Rachel Reeves announced before the election that Labour’s flagship £28bn Green Deal pledge was unaffordable and had to be scrapped, yet even before her first budget she had already pledged £22bn for carbon capture and storage? Why should we have to try and piece this together for ourselves?
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It is 30 years since John Major set up the Committee on Standards in Public Life, which gave us the Nolan Principles, but his government found itself so mired in ‘sleaze’ that it could not hold onto power. In 1997 New Labour under Tony Blair introduced the ministerial code, but almost simultaneously allowed Bernie Ecclestone to lobby successfully on tobacco sponsorship for Formula 1. David Cameron introduced the current (2014) Lobbying Act, which he said would draw a line under previous scandals, only to become the story himself in 2020 by lobbying for Greensill Capital, before it went bust a few months later.
The lesson from all of this is that the need for transparency in lobbying is both longstanding and urgent; that Britain’s existing government framework does not provide for it; and that this is not a party-political issue. Every government eventually comes to grief over this. The only question is how soon and how gravely.
Again and again when the press breaks stories about parliamentary passes, or gifts, we are told ‘no rules were broken.’ We know. We get it. It’s the rules themselves that are broken. Fixing them wasn’t a priority for the last government. It would be a great shame if Labour does not learn from their mistake.
The deadliest thing for Labour is to have people believe that ‘they’re all as bad as each other’. If voters believe that, they will either vote for another party they believe is genuinely committed to change, or, more likely, will just not vote at all. Labour stands or falls on its ability to persuade the public that it represents something better than ‘the other lot’. Its first four months in power have shown it to be painfully unaware of the political consequences of failing to persuade the public that this is the case. Time is rapidly running out for Labour to turn things around.
A clear public commitment now to repealing and replacing our failed Lobbying Act will set down a marker for the public and make clear the intention to govern better. The previous Conservative government set a pretty low bar for Labour here – they were just not interested in lobbying reform. For Labour now, this is both an easy win and an increasingly necessary one.
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