Tag Archives: expenses scandal

Standards in public life: are we in a post-Nolan age?

Posted on by

In 1995, the Nolan report established ‘Seven Principles of Public Life’. Twenty-five years later, questions have been raised about the continuing relevance of the Nolan principles. Lord (Jonathan) Evans of Weardale, Chair of the Committee on Standards in Public Life, argues here that although we are not not yet living in a ‘post-Nolan’ age, there are reasons for real concern.

In recent months we’ve heard a new phrase used by academics, commentators, and members of the public who have an interest in public standards. That phrase is a ‘post-Nolan age’. 

The sentiment is encapsulated in an email sent to my Committee’s mailbox earlier this year. A member of the public told us they ‘feel a great sadness that the moral framework which has guided British public life for the past quarter century appears to be well and truly over’.

The email referred to the growing perception that those in public life no longer feel obliged to follow the Nolan principles of selflessness, integrity, objectivity, accountability, openness, honesty and leadership – otherwise known as the Seven Principles of Public Life. 

These principles have long underpinned the spirit of public service in this country, and were first formally articulated in Lord Nolan’s seminal 1995 report – the first from the Committee on Standards in Public Life, of which I am now Chair.

Since 1995 it has been increasingly accepted that anyone in public service should act in accordance with the Seven Principles. The Principles apply to ministers and MPs, all civil servants, local government officials, public bodies, the NHS, agencies as well as private companies and charities delivering services on behalf of the taxpayer. The Principles are not a rulebook but a guide to institutional administration and personal conduct, and are given a hard edge when they inform law, policy, procedure and codes of conduct. 

In their essence, the Seven Principles are there to govern the legitimate use of entrusted power in public life. All of us in public life, whether through democratic election or public appointment, have some degree of power afforded to us on the public’s behalf, whether it is the power to make decisions on benefits, to spend money on schools, to legislate to protect public health or to influence debate. This power is lent to us to be used for the good of the public.

Continue reading →

The Parliamentary Constituencies Bill: how to ensure a level playing field

Posted on by

alan.jfif (1)professor_hazell_2000x2500_1.jpgLegislation now before parliament will reform how parliamentary constituencies are drawn up. Most controversial is a proposal that the recommendations of the independent boundary commissions should be implemented automatically. Alan Renwick and Robert Hazell argue that the principle of automatic implementation is right, but it should be combined with stronger safeguards on the commissions’ independence. 

The government’s Parliamentary Constituencies Bill was debated in the House of Commons for the first time earlier this week. The bill, if passed, will keep the number of MPs at 650, cancelling a cut to 600 that was legislated for in 2011 but has not yet been implemented. It will also alter the procedures for drawing up Westminster constituency boundaries, in four main ways. First, it will reduce the frequency with which boundaries are reviewed, from five- to eight-year intervals. Second, it will slightly shorten the duration of the next review (but only the next one), from 34 to 31 months, to ensure its conclusions can be implemented in good time for a 2024 election. Third, it will adjust the sequence of the review process, so that public hearings on proposed boundaries take place after an initial round of written submissions. Finally, and most importantly, it will make the implementation of new boundaries automatic: parliament will lose its current power to block the proposed changes.

Cancelling the cut in the number of MPs is no longer controversial. That reduction was introduced in 2011 in the wake of the MPs’ expenses scandal, when public scepticism about the value of MPs’ work was at a peak. It was designed to show that ministers understood people’s anger about perceived waste at the heart of politics. Since then, however, parliament has done much to reassert its value. MPs have become more independent-minded in holding government to account. Following reforms implemented in 2010 – some of which were strongly based in earlier Constitution Unit research – select committees have risen greatly in prominence, and are now widely seen as doing much important work. Furthermore, many constituents were discomfited when they saw that cutting the number of MPs would reduce their own local representation at Westminster. The cross-party support that exists for retaining 650 MPs is therefore welcome.

Some of the changes to review procedures have, however, proved more contentious. In particular, opposition parties have argued against the introduction of automatic review implementation. Speaking in the Commons on Tuesday, both the Shadow Minister for Voter Engagement, Cat Smith, and SNP Spokesperson David Linden called it ‘a power grab’ by the executive over the legislature. Labour’s Stephen Kinnock described it as ‘nothing short of a constitutional outrage’. Continue reading →

Coronavirus and constituents: working for an MP during a pandemic

Posted on by

IMG_20200430_150419.jpgAfter it was announced that IPSA had made an additional £10,000 available to MPs to support their office costs to help adapt to the ‘new normal’ of working from home with an increasing workload, there was much confusion and some misinformation about what this money was for. Emma Salisbury explains what MPs’ offices do, where that money might go, and what it has been like working for an MP as the UK has experienced a change in the way we live and work of a type that few (if any) people have experienced before.

The headlines were stark – MPs given £10,000 bonus to work from home! The news prompted criticism from political commentators and on social media, resulting in a petition (signed by 250,000 people) to reverse the decision. This wave of headlines prompted Lindsay Hoyle, Speaker of the House of Commons, to make a statement on the matter. Misinformation such as that put out about this issue has been one of the many democratic challenges of the coronavirus crisis, as the Unit’s Deputy Director, Alan Renwick, and Michela Palese have discussed elsewhere on this blog.

The truth is less exciting, and results in fewer sales and clicks. MPs pay for their offices and staff via the expenses system administered by IPSA, a body set up after the 2009 expenses scandal (for a summary of the 2009 scandal, see this recent blogpost by former Commons clerk Sir David Natzler). Each MP has budgets for their necessities: accommodation, travel, staffing, and office costs. The latter of these is how we pay for the boring things we need to run an office, everything from paperclips to envelopes to printer ink. In order to help support us during the pandemic, IPSA raised the cap on this budget by £10,000 to make sure that every MP’s office had the capacity, if needed, to buy whatever was necessary to make the transition to home working; if the MP or one of their staff does not have access to a computer or printer at home, for example, the budget can cover acquiring this equipment. 

All purchases reimbursed through IPSA need to be claimed for with a receipt and an explanation of why it was necessary, and the conditions of these new funds are no different. If IPSA decides that a claim for an item is not reasonable, then it can refuse to reimburse the MP for that expense, meaning it would have to come out of the MP’s own pocket. The extra amount is a cap, not a target: many MPs will not need to claim for the maximum additional amount. No matter how much of the budget MPs end up spending, this £10,000 is certainly not a lump sum gift to them or their staff.  Continue reading →

An ‘extraordinary scandal’: looking back at the 2009 MPs’ expenses crisis and its consequences

Posted on by

sir_david_natzler.smiling.cropped.3840x1920.jpg

More than ten years on from the 2009 expenses scandal, Andrew Walker and Emma Crewe have published a book that seeks to offer fresh insight into the origins and legacy of the crisis. David Natzler, a former Clerk of the Commons, offers his own take on the book, and the crisis it seeks to shed light on.

Over a decade has passed since the Westminster expenses scandal of 2009. It is widely regarded as one of the factors, together with the banking crisis and the absence of a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty, which led to popular contempt for the political class, the growth of UKIP, and thus the outcome of the 2016 referendum. There have been useful books and articles on the scandal’s effect as well as accounts by the journalists involved, and last year there were several TV and radio programmes looking back to what seemed at the time to be a momentous series of events. 

Now there is a book by Emma Crewe and Andrew Walker, An Extraordinary Scandal: the Westminster Expenses Crisis and Why it Still Matters, published late in 2019 by Haus. Andrew Walker was the senior Commons official responsible for the administration of the expenses regime; Emma Crewe is an academic anthropologist who has specialised recently in looking at parliamentary culture. I should declare an interest as it was at my suggestion that Andrew approached Emma with the prospect of working together on this project.

The basic story is familiar. A disc (or discs) containing at least a million documents was bought by the Daily Telegraph, who through May and June 2009 published daily exposés of the claims made by MPs. The information was on the discs in preparation for the major clerical task of responding to a court ruling under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 requiring the publication by the House of Commons of much more detailed information than hitherto on payments made to members under the expenses scheme. The Act’s final incarnation included within its statutory ambit both ‘the House of Commons’ and ‘the House of Lords’, although neither appeared in the bill as first drafted. Jack Straw, the minister in charge of the bill, added them to the list of public authorities in Schedule 1 to the Act, and is said to have regretted it ever since. Individual MPs and peers were not then – and are not now – regarded as public authorities. But the House authorities were subject to the Act, and since they administered the expenses system and held the information on MPs’ claims, it became disclosable.

The Act did not come into force until 2005, giving anybody that would be affected five years to prepare. One obligation was to prepare ‘schemes of publication’, which would list what information would be published proactively. The House of Commons made similar preparations to other public authorities: they appointed specialist staff to oversee the effort and discussed what they would proactively publish. The House of Commons eventually decided in late 2004 to publish details of MPs’ expenses broken down into several headings, for each of the previous three years, and to then issue quarterly updates. Crewe and Walker recount the vain attempt to prevent the press from creating ‘league tables’ of MPs by publishing only a locked pdf, which the press had little difficulty in cracking. Various MPs were appalled and angry at being ‘exposed’ as the UK’s or Lancashire’s most expensive MP. One external PR adviser had to resign when it emerged that he had been secretly encouraging one party to make more of a meal of the other party’s record. Continue reading →