Now – and particularly during the pandemic – commercial interests are fusing with government, as tens of millions of pounds of taxpayer money is handed out to Tory chums.
And this week, Paterson, an experienced former minister, was found by Parliament’s Committee on Standards to have breached rules on paid advocacy – lobbying – several times. He was found to have been paid as a consultant by two private firms and made approaches on their behalf to government agencies and ministers – the Food Standards Agency and at the Department for International Development – without declaring any interests.
MPs are meant to declare the financial donations they receive in a register and when they speak or write on matters affected by their financial interests, so that their electorate can see on whose behalf they are operating.
How to clean up politics
It would be better of course if MPs (and peers) were not permitted to represent private interests other than those of their constituents.
We should ban MPs from holding second jobs. It should be a full-time job to effectively represent 75,000 constituents and one that does not allow time to represent other paid interests. MPs are well paid and receive generous expenses. There is no place for additional employment or payment.
As I set out in my recent wealth tax report, such a move is a vital part of a much-needed political revolution to prevent the power of wealth being used to subordinate our institutions.
We should also establish a far more comprehensive lobbying register, with tough rules, effectively policed. It could cover not just lobbying firms, as with existing legislation, but in-house employees and think tanks that engage in lobbying. Those think tanks would also be required to declare their funders. Trade unions, incidentally, do this – it’s some of the cleanest money in politics.
The register needs to cover lobbying of any MP and any employee of government, not just ministers, the very top civil servants and special advisers, as at present.
And it needs to tell us more about the lobbying: what was discussed? Too often government departments disclose very little.