It remains more than a little hazy,
to say the least, whether the PM declared his wife’s interest in a child care
company before, or only after, he was challenged over the matter in a meeting
of a committee of the House of Commons. And the reason for the haziness is that making a declaration isn’t the same thing as publishing the details. For ministers, it seems that, whilst they are obliged to
declare everything, the government’s ethics advisers decide which bits
should appear on the public register and which bits should remain a secret
between the minister and civil servants. And the implication – although the
fact that no-one has actually defended Sunak by putting it in these terms
suggests that it might not actually stand up to detailed examination – is that
he duly told the relevant people about the interest, and was then advised that
it did not need to be made public. As I understand the position in relation to
MPs, there is no such filter – they are simply obliged
to declare, for a public register, any interest “which someone might
reasonably consider to influence their actions or words as an MP”. In
short, it looks as though those scrutinising the decisions of ministers are
held to a higher standard than the ministers making the decisions, and that, on becoming ministers, MPs are magically exempted from the rules applying to others.
The basis on which the ethics
advisers decide which interests need to be declared and which do not is even
hazier. The current adviser had this
to say on the matter: “To [publicly declare all interests] would represent
an excessive degree of intrusion into the private affairs of ministers that
would be unreasonable, particularly in respect of their family members. The
list instead documents those interests, including of close family, which are, or
may be perceived to be, directly relevant to a minister’s ministerial
responsibilities”. It’s not helpful and doesn’t strike me as being particularly
reasonable either. Assuming for a moment that the story which Sunak wants us to
believe is true (whilst accepting that that proposition is at least open to
question), and that he did declare the shareholding in the child care agency but the adviser told him that it did not need to be made public, on what
basis did he decide that? He could not have known in advance, of course, that
Sunak would announce a policy from which that agency (and therefore its
shareholders) would benefit – but, by the same token, he could not have been
certain in advance that Sunak would not do so either. And to ignore the
specific and concentrate on the general: the same is true for all ministers in
all governments. Unless you know in advance every decision which every minister
in every government is going to take, you can never be certain that any
specific financial interest will not gain a benefit from those decisions. It
may be an “intrusion” into the private lives of ministers, but people who have
chosen to put themselves in a position of taking decisions which impact on all
of us should expect proper scrutiny as to whether the decisions they take are
directly benefiting themselves or those close to them. And that is impossible
to do without a full and public list being available.
It ties in with another story
this week, about ministers being allowed to remain directors of companies after
being appointed. It has long been accepted practice that anyone appointed as a
minister should resign any directorships at the time of his or her appointment,
but it isn’t a rule, and has been increasingly ignored since Boris Johnson became
PM. The thread which binds these stories together is the fact that there are so
few hard rules around how governments should behave; the English constitution,
such as it is, depends on what historian Peter Hennessey called the “good
chaps principle”, the idea that people in government are essentially honourable,
honest, decent, and trustworthy. There is, though, no mechanism for ensuring
that only “good chaps” get into positions of influence (the ascent of Boris
Johnson demonstrating the point admirably) or of controlling
those who don’t fit into that category once they get into positions of power.
Depending on the fundamental honesty of those who govern us opens the UK up to corruption
on the grand scale (see PPE acquisition, for example) with little redress. The
system is badly broken, and probably irreparable as things stand. With a proper
written constitution and clearer enforceable rules, we in Wales really could do
better on our own.
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