Over a year after taking office, Keir Starmer’s government has announced its long-awaited Ethics and Integrity Commission, as well as other changes to how civil servants and ministers are regulated. Peter Riddell believes that the package of reforms is a positive one, but that the lack of a statutory footing inhibits enforcement. He also argues that these changes should represent a milestone, not a finish line, and that further action should be taken before the end of the current parliament.

The government has finally outlined its plans for strengthening standards in public life in a written statement by the senior Cabinet Office minister Pat McFadden – and it is a modest, but generally sensible package. This follows earlier piecemeal announcements on regulation of ministerial standards, declaration of gifts and the House of Lords. Many issues have still to be resolved about both implementation and enforcement before the changes come into operation in three months’ time in mid-October. The big omission is any commitment to legislation. 

The Ethics and Integrity Commission

The centrepiece is a new Ethics and Integrity Commission, as promised by Labour in opposition and in its election manifesto. It was always unclear whether this meant a super-regulator incorporating some or all of the current constitutional watchdogs, or primarily an oversight body. And if the latter, would it overlap with the 30-year-old Committee on Standards in Public Life (CSPL)? In our report Trust in Public Life: Restoring the Role of Constitutional Watchdogs (March 2024), and in our evidence to PACAC’s new inquiry into propriety and ethics, Robert Hazell and I have argued that it might be preferable to turn CSPL into the new Commission with a wider remit, but no regulatory responsibilities looking into specific complaints. This would avoid undermining the effectiveness of the current watchdogs with their very distinct roles. That is what the government has now decided to do. 

The government’s written statement was backed by detailed correspondence between the Cabinet Office Minister Nick Thomas-Symonds with CSPL and the Civil Service Commission. In his letter to CSPL the Minister said: 

Our intention is that the new Commission will sit at the heart of our standards system. It will promote the Seven Principles of Public Life; ensure public bodies have suitable codes of conduct; enable the sharing of best practice across the public sector; and report to government on the overall health of our standards system and on specific areas in need of improvement. 

There will be a new function of ‘regular engagement with public sector bodies to assist them in the development of clear codes of conduct with effective oversight arrangements’. This will be a wholly new, and demanding, responsibility. CSPL’s current informal role of convening the ethics and standards bodies in central government and parliament ‘to drive forward the agenda and to identify areas of common concern’ is, for the first time, given explicit recognition. 

This is in addition to CSPL’s existing role of holding broad inquiries into ethical issues. Too often in the past, these have been ignored by ministers, or only received evasive and long delayed responses. The government has now provided ‘a new commitment to respond to all reports in a reasonable timeframe’. Good intentions will need to be judged by results. 

As the correspondence with Doug Chalmers, the chair of CSPL, underlines, a good deal of work now has to be done on agreeing terms of reference, on increasing resources and on expanding the current small secretariat to perform its wider role. That role could also include providing a website portal explaining what all the ethical regulators do, how they relate to each other and how they can be contacted. While existing members of CSPL have agreed to transfer to become the new commission, Chalmers, designated chair of the new body, will need reinforcements to produce a stronger and slightly larger body than the current CSPL. At present, there are two vacancies and none of the members nominated by the parties is a serving MP.  

The new responsibilities associated with the creation of the Commission imply much more than just an evolution of the existing CSPL. They mean, in effect, a new organisation. The proposals offer the possibility of stronger, and more visible, oversight of standards. The risk is that expectations will be raised unrealistically about what the new Commission can achieve in practice, especially if, or no doubt when, a ‘sleaze’ scandal erupts. 

The end of ACOBA

The other big change is to the system of post-Whitehall appointments for former ministers and civil servants. The current Advisory Committee on Business Appointments (ACOBA) has been widely criticised as ‘toothless’, which is no fault of those involved, who have been frustrated by the weakness of the government’s own rules and the absence of effective sanctions against those who ignore their guidance.  

The government has decided to split the functions of ACOBA. Departing civil servants will be the responsibility of the Civil Service Commission (CSC), and former ministers will be overseen by the Independent Adviser on Ministerial Standards (currently a small office which will presumably be expanded). The civil service side can be achieved by expanding the functions of the CSC under section 17 of the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act 2010, and fits well with its existing remit. Baroness (Gisela) Stuart of Edgbaston, the First Civil Service Commissioner, welcomed the opportunity to ‘provide much needed clarity by providing end-to-end oversight of an appointee’s experience’, but emphasised three areas where the CSC will need to reach agreement with the Cabinet Office prior to the transition taking effect in October: 

• Timely publication of revised Business Appointment Rules (BARs) 

• Additional resources to support two new teams: one to advise applicants, another to audit departmental compliance 

• Additional funding for the CSC’s website, as the entry point for BAR applications. 

There must also be a risk of regulatory divergence in the treatment of former ministers and civil servants by two different regulators – though this can be addressed by a clear process of coordination between them. 

The government has also made an important series of proposals to streamline the system, set out in an annex to the letter to the Civil Service Commission. This will make it simpler and more straightforward for those leaving government service—for instance taking up positions in the media or academia which do not raise an obvious conflict of interest, while not penalising inadvertent errors. The proposals address an important weakness in the present system, applications for grades below the senior levels administered by ACOBA. These are currently overseen by individual departments, with inconsistent results, and creating a significant loophole in the rules, as Lord (Eric) Pickles, the former chair of ACOBA, has pointed out. Under the future arrangements, the Civil Service Commission will undertake regular audits of departmental decisions on the Business Appointment Rules, drawing on its experience of its risk-based audit programme of appointments to the civil service. 

Ministers found to have committed a serious breach of the Business Appointment Rules in the period (usually one or two years) following their departure from office will be expected to repay their severance payment. This is linked to a general tightening up of ministerial severance payments. At present ministers are automatically entitled to a severance payment equivalent to three months’ salary when they leave office for any reason, after any period of office, however short. In future, a new minimum service requirement will be introduced with ministers expected to forgo their severance payment if they serve for fewer than six months. If ministers leave office and are subsequently reappointed to another paid ministerial office within three months, they will be expected to forgo their salary until the full three-month period has elapsed, avoiding simultaneous receipt of salary and severance. That would address the results of the frenetic in/out changes of ministers in the summer and autumn of 2022, when the Johnson and Truss governments collapsed within months of each other.  

As the ministerial statement implies when it says ‘ministers will in future be asked to repay their severance payment’, the system will remain essentially voluntary. Indeed, the potential penalty is small compared with what ex-ministers can sometimes earn in the private sector. There is similarly no enforcement mechanism for officials who ignore the advice of the CSC. Much will depend on how the First Civil Service Commissioner responds to the request from the Cabinet Office to report on any further strengthening of the Rules ‘to ensure proper standards are applied as people leave the civil service’. There has been a lengthy debate on enforcement and whether statutory changes are needed via employment contracts. 

A welcome start, but more needs to be done

The proposed approach reflects the evident desire of ministers to avoid legislation. That has the advantage of allowing a rapid introduction of the new Ethics and Integrity Commission and the new rules, but it weakens enforcement.  

More generally, there remains a strong case for a statutory underpinning of the existence and appointment of the constitutional watchdogs to secure their longer-term position, as well as measures to improve the working of the individual watchdogs, which should be reviewed by the new Ethics and Integrity Commission. There is, for instance, no reference to the widely discussed need to strengthen the powers and remit of the Registrar of Consultant Lobbyists to cover in-house lobbying: this would require legislation. 

Nonetheless, this is a positive package following earlier steps to strengthen of the powers and role of the Independent Adviser on Ministerial Standards announced last autumn. But it is not, and cannot be, the last action in this area in this parliament.  

About the author

Sir Peter Riddell is an Honorary Professor at the Constitution Unit, UCL, a former Director of the Institute for Government, and served as Public Appointments Commissioner from 2016 until 2021. Read more of Sir Peter’s commentary on this blog and his report on constitutional watchdogs on our website.

Featured image: Pat McFadden, Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0) by UK House of Commons.