Phil Brickell
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Nolan Principles
Phil Brickell Excerpts(1 day, 13 hours ago)
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Phil Brickell (Bolton West) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to speak in this debate on the Nolan principles; I congratulate the hon. Member for Mid Dunbartonshire (Susan Murray) on securing it.
As chair of the APPG on anti-corruption and responsible tax, let me say that it is on all of us to speak truth to power in a spirit of constructive criticism, regardless of which party is in power. I wish to focus my remarks on two topics where, collectively, it is my view that we are falling short of the Nolan principles: lobbying reform, which is long overdue, and MPs’ outside employment.
Let me say from the outset that lobbying is a vital part of public discourse in driving workable policy solutions. It ensures that differing viewpoints are heard by the Government before decisions are made, but we need to know who is being lobbied by whom so that politicians, the public and the media can accurately scrutinise the machinery of government. Regrettably, that is not the case in the United Kingdom in 2026.
In July, the Ethics and Integrity Commission published its review “Lobbying, Business Appointment Rules and Disclosure: Access to Government Decision Making”, which details 37 recommendations to modernise the regime. Doug Chalmers, the EIC’s chair, wrote in that report that the lobbying system
“fails to deliver the required level of transparency and, in doing so, falls short of meeting the Nolan Principles.”
Over the years, review after review and scandal after scandal have shown that the current system is broken. Only about 4% of all lobbying activity is required to be declared on the register of consultant lobbyists. That means that 96 out of 100 lobbying interactions simply fall outside the disclosure requirement, including in-house lobbyists, lobbyists with a turnover of below £90,000, non-VAT registered foreign businesses, the activities of special advisers, and informal comms such as WhatsApp.
Dr Scott Arthur (Edinburgh South West) (Lab)
People can mostly see who lobbies me because I often cannot resist putting their pictures on my Facebook page when I meet them. However, I do have to correct my hon. Friend. He is wrong to say that lobbying is not taken seriously in the UK, because in Scotland there is a register of lobbyists, so there are things we can learn even from inside the UK. What is in place in Scotland is not perfect, but does he agree that there is something we can learn from?
Phil Brickell
I am always willing to learn from comparative analysis of what works elsewhere, including in other jurisdictions across the United Kingdom.
The Government have it in their power to bring about a culture shift, and the time to do so is now. Not all of the EIC’s recommendations require primary legislation. There is recommendation 8, which is that the Government simply refuse to meet any organisation seeking to lobby them unless that organisation is on the lobbying register. Recommendation 10 on having one digital repository for transparency releases is a simple fix. How about recommendation 13, which is that transparency releases include informal communication channels, including the likes of WhatsApp?
If we are to address the deficiencies in our system, I urge the Government to find time to overhaul the register of consultant lobbyists so that we have a truly representative register that closes the loopholes I have mentioned, that empowers the regulator to levy significant fines for systemic offences of the registration requirement, that is properly resourced, and that documents interactions between the Government and organisations in sufficient detail that it serves as more than a mere box-ticking exercise.
Let me turn to MPs’ outside employment, colloquially known as second jobs. This Government pledged in the 2024 manifesto that they would
“task the Modernisation Committee to take forward urgent work on the restrictions that need to be put in place to prevent MPs from taking up roles that stop them serving their constituents and the country.”
In November 2024, my right hon. Friend the Member for Manchester Central (Lucy Powell) tasked the Committee on Standards to look at how
“to conduct further work into how changes to the rules on outside interests and employment might be implemented”.
The Standards Committee opened its inquiry on 8 January 2025 and took oral evidence in public through to July 2025, yet—more than a year later—no report has been published, and no recommendations have been forthcoming, and no action has been taken in Government due to this delay. Despite my writing to the Standards Committee requesting an update, I have yet to receive a substantive response.
Having advised—for the good part of more than a decade, in my old job before being elected to this place —on conflicts of interest, and on outside employment and related matters, I have been incredibly patient and so have other Members of this House. The Standards Committee has a broad remit and does good work, but after almost 24 months of waiting for a report, after my mentioning this matter previously in the House and after writing to the Standards Committee, there seems to have been no progress. I said in Westminster Hall more than four months ago that this House is moving at a glacial speed. My fear is that the glaciers will have melted by the time the report is published. The lack of progress is simply not good enough.
Sir Bernard Jenkin
May I suggest that the questions about lobbying and Members’ outside interests might have turned out to be a little bit more complicated than the Labour manifesto considered them to be? May I also suggest that the hon. Gentleman approaches the Chair of the Standards Committee? The Chair is a Member of Parliament, so he is not difficult to find. We are in the same House—there are only 650 of us. May I suggest he does that, rather than getting on his high horse and criticising the Committee because he does not know what it is doing?
Phil Brickell
As the hon. Gentleman may have heard, I have approached the Chair of the Standards Committee and I have followed the proceedings that the Standards Committee has been undertaking over the past two years. I have not named any Member in this Chamber. I have approached the Chair and I have had correspondence, so I think the hon. Member for Harwich and North Essex (Sir Bernard Jenkin) will know that I have been following these matters very closely, suffice it to say. As I said, I worked on conflicts of interest in the private sector for more than a decade, so I have sufficient expertise to be able to talk at length about this matter.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)
Order. The hon. Gentleman is being very generous with his time, but I will be starting Front-Bench speeches at 4.30 pm and we do have another Member who wants to speak.
Phil Brickell
I do not think it is complicated; I think it is pretty simple, and the Government have said repeatedly that the focus should be on delivering for constituents.
In summary, will the Minister do what she can to ensure that the report is expedited? Across the standards landscape, it pains me to see progress moving at far too slow a pace. My understanding is that the Prime Minister has yet to meet the EIC, so my final ask is: might the Minister venture to ensure that such a meeting takes place as soon as possible?
Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)
On a four-minute time limit, I call Adam Thompson.
Charlie Dewhirst
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his point. He is right that people in glass houses should not throw stones, and we do not need to end up in a tit-for-tat argument. He is right that those things were declared, but when it comes to the former ambassador, I think he will find that there were issues that were not declared, and they led to that downfall.
The former Prime Minister was, as he later admitted, well aware that Peter Mandelson had maintained his friendship with Jeffrey Epstein even after his conviction for child sex offences. The choice to appoint him was bad enough, but it was the cover-up that ended up being worse perhaps than the crime. The former Prime Minister’s assurances to this House last year that full due process was followed, despite not maintaining a record of what it was doing, not recording the Prime Minister’s decisions and despite key Government WhatsApp messages and phones mysteriously—
Phil Brickell
Each and every one of us could talk through a litany of issues or scandals that have happened in years past. What I am keen to hear from the shadow Minister is his party’s policy proposals. The Starmer Government set up the Ethics and Integrity Commission, got rid of the hereditary peers and brought into being more frequent disclosures for transparency. What is his party’s position on these matters?
Charlie Dewhirst
I am delighted that the hon. Gentleman is willing to stand up and try to defend the record around Peter Mandelson. I will come to the points he has raised in just a few moments.
As I was saying, the former Prime Minister made assurances to this House, despite Mandelson having failed his vetting. It clearly shows that the Nolan principles of integrity, objectivity, honesty and openness were no longer guiding the former Prime Minister. While this scandal ended up costing him his job, which some may argue is the Nolan principle of accountability in action, unfortunately he tried to cling on to power by throwing the jobs of his chief of staff, Cabinet Secretary, head of the Foreign Office and director of communications in No. 10 under the bus first, along with, it seems, the two remaining Nolan principles of selflessness and leadership.
Governments, like fish, rot from the head down. I will not go on to list all the examples that occurred under that leadership, but it is worth noting that a donor was appointed to the civil service and the Treasury—and I will not go into the detail of the infamous Le Chameau wellies. All of this happened under Keir Starmer’s leadership; I do not think that service and respect will be his legacy. We now have a new Prime Minister, who took over two years into this Government promising to do things differently. I had hoped to see the Nolan principles upheld better under his leadership, but I do have concerns, and I will return to those shortly.
Turning to the ways in which we can improve standards in public life, the Government’s newly introduced Ethics and Integrity Commission published its first annual letter to the Prime Minister last month. As the Government do not yet appear to have responded to that letter, I hope that the Minister will enlighten the House as to the Government’s view on a number of points.
On public service appointments, for a while there have been delays, with fewer than one in five public service recruitment campaigns completed in line with the three-month target. In its letter, the commission expresses concerns that there is risk that the lengthy delays could deter the best candidates from entering public service. It would be useful to know what the Government are doing to speed up the public appointments process. The letter also pointed out that the 2021 Committee on Standards in Public Life report, “Upholding Standards in Public Life”,
“called for all future Independent Advisers to be appointed through an enhanced version of the current process for significant public appointments”.
Again, the House awaits the Government’s opinion on that proposal.
The commission further recommended that the cross-governmental task and finish team, announced in September, looking at political finance and the way in which political parties play a vital role in our democracy, should
“engage with all major political parties so that decisions are not seen to be enacted in a partisan manner”,
to ensure that
“reforms have democratic legitimacy and are more likely to endure.”
This Government have singularly failed at such an approach in their consultation up to this point. I hope that that can be addressed.
The previous Conservative Government pledged to develop a single database to collate and publish departmental returns. The commission’s letter says that work should begin, but this Labour Government have scrapped it. The Conservatives also pledged to modernise the business appointment rules and take a risk-based approach to considering applications. Again, the commission recommends that; again, Labour has failed to deliver. Those proposals would help to promote the Nolan principles, and both were recommended to the Prime Minister by the Ethics and Integrity Commission in its annual letter.
Similarly, under the Procurement Act 2023, the previous Conservative Government introduced a form of accountability for when rules are broken in the public sector by introducing the Debarment Review Service to prevent businesses that are failing to meet standards in their current Government contracts from winning more contracts. Like many MPs, my inbox has been full of horror stories from local constituents and their families who have been unable to access their public sector pensions due to the poor service that Capita is providing. We are all aware that Capita has failed on public service pensions, and I give credit to the Minister for the work that she is doing on that. I wish her all the best, but will she provide a specific update on whether she is considering use of the debarment service for Capita?
My speech has focused heavily on the Government’s conduct, but integrity, objectivity and accountability are for all public servants across the British state. The whole country was shocked by the rape gang scandal. Though the last Prime Minister smeared those calling for a national inquiry as jumping on a far-right bandwagon, we have heard allegations that some in authority, including in the police, local councils and social services, covered up cases because of concerns about so-called community relations, thinking it was more important to do that than to protect vulnerable young children from heinous predators.
It took relentless campaigning and finally, just days before they looked set to lose the vote in Parliament, the Government U-turned and agreed to a national inquiry. Hardly a shining example of the Nolan principles. Meanwhile, in the Senedd, Labour and Plaid Cymru voted against commissioning an independent inquiry, and in Scotland, the SNP Government held out against an inquiry for even longer, finally announcing a date for one just a week ago.
There are some serious questions for the Government to answer on whether they still believe in the Nolan principles of public life. This Labour Government have seen resignations of their homelessness Minister, anti-corruption Minister, Deputy Prime Minister and Housing Secretary, and Transport Secretary, and all of that, we were told, because—