At the end of October, I asked a cabinet minister to apologise for some dubious statements he had made in the Chamber, on social media and in a letter to a Scottish Cabinet Secretary at Holyrood.
His chosen subject to misrepresent? Scottish water quality as compared to English, the former being worse than the latter, an odd choice given the years of bad headlines about water issues south of the border but also a potentially misleading one as the UK Statistics Authority pointed out, one which could possibly affect public trust.
This lack of candour is obviously a problem but, as I write this, no apology has been forthcoming. The cabinet minister has taken no accountability for his misrepresentation even when pulled up by an independent body who verified that their data was correct and not his.
It’s almost as if the Nolan Principles on selflessness, integrity, objectivity, accountability, openness, honesty, and leadership don’t apply to said Rt Hon. But this is not a case of just one rogue agent, it’s a pattern which we are witnessing in the Labour Government, made all the more egregious by the fact that one of their core manifesto promises was to restore our faith in standards in public life.
How is that going? The report card says could do better.
Since coming into power, we’ve had scandals over accepting expensive clothes, accommodation, costly freebie tickets, junior ministers forced out of office for conflicts of interest, the former Deputy PM’s resignation over underpaying tax on a second home purchase and the forced sacking of former US ambassador, Lord Mandelson over his close personal involvement with the late Jeffrey Epstein. Now another cabinet minister has had to apologise for breaking the rules by accepting donations from someone she then picked to run England’s independent football regulator.
This is where the Nolan Principles need to be the bible by which public figures guide their decision making and their behaviour. They came into being in 1995 after a series of sleezy scandals informed the then PM, John Major’s intervention to “examine current concerns about standards of conduct of all holders of public office”.
Twenty-six years later, in the teeth of another Tory scandal laden government, the Committee for Standards in Public Life published a further report entitled “Upholding Standards in Public Life’’. This Committee noted that government needed to take a more formal and professional approach to its own ethics obligations, that maintaining high standards required “vigilance and leadership” and recommended “a necessary programme of reform to restore public confidence in the regulation of ethical standards in government.”
Interestingly, just this summer, John Major intervened again telling the current Prime Minister that he needed to crack down on misconduct in politics. One of his suggestions for improvement included asking the House of Lords advisory commission to scrutinise the suitability of political peerages as well as their propriety. Lord Mandelson and Baroness Mone spring to mind in this instance.
In fairness, Labour has now established an Ethics and Integrity Commission. One might hope that this body will make a significant contribution, ensuring the proper and full application of the Nolan Principles. In addition, these principles are now clearly integrated into the proposed Public Office Accountability Bill exemplified by the new Duty of Candour. In my speech I also indicated my support for an Office of the Whistleblower to protect those who have the courage to speak up.
This may be a difficult topic for the government but as I highlighted in my Adjournment Debate, the truth hurts and the truth is that in the vacuum of leadership and vigilance that exists at the heart of Number 10, a series of unnecessary scandals have mired this Labour government from the get-go.
The result is public trust in politics is at an all-time low with negative popularity ratings for the PM. But this is not just about winning a popularity contest; high standards in public office matter because in the context of a disastrous loss of confidence in the behaviour of public servants, is it any wonder that people do not take part in the democratic process, is it any wonder that we see trouble in our streets, is it any wonder that snake oil sales men and women obtain support?
History teaches us that when the people lose faith in the democratic process, when they lose trust in the Government, when our institutions fail them, the door opens to very dangerous people who do not have our interests truly at heart. That is why the Nolan Principles are so important and must remain at the heart of everything we do.
Why the Nolan Principles are just as important now as they were 30 years ago
