Something seemed off as early as last week. That’s when the Labour Party changed the name of its Twitter media arm, Labour Press, to ‘The GPC Files,” and its avatar from a red rose to a blackened tree, mimicking the Tories’ logo.
What became clear over the weekend was published in full this morning, as ministers were accused of permitting “lavish spending” across Whitehall that included spending thousands of pounds on luxury hotel stays, flowers, dinners and art through Government Procurement Cards. Labour’s deputy leader Angela Rayner said it showed a “scandalous catalogue of waste”. Does it?
For starters, some context. In 2022-23, the OBR expects public spending to amount to £1.182 trillion. This is not an argument for lax spending – this is taxpayer money, after all. But cash on hotels and wine is not the reason public sector borrowing hit £27.4bn last December, a record high for that month.
If nothing else, transparency is a positive. Even if the Conservatives can point out that some of this stuff is already available, a lot was unearthed via hundreds of parliamentary questions tabled by Shadow Attorney General Emily Thornberry.
But who exactly is Labour aiming for? The government, of course, but that is comprised of a political party and tens of thousands of neutral civil servants with little power to push back. Take two examples out of many:
In September 2021, the Cabinet Office spent £996 on two nights’ accommodation at the five-star Four Seasons hotel in Amman, Jordan, for the then National Security Adviser and two officials attending a UK-Jordan Strategy Dialogue later that month. Or the Public Sector Fraud Authority paying £1,705 for 500 branded notebooks distributed to staff to mark the launch of the organisation.
£1,000 at a luxury hotel sounds egregious. But three rooms takes the cost down to £166 per head per night. I’ve not been to Amman. I’m sure it’s possible to do it cheaper. But it doesn’t seem ridiculous. While £3 per unit for specialised notebooks – so people working at a new organisation can feel like they are part of something real – also seems not unreasonable.
Waste, mismanagement and under-reform blight government. From defence procurement to the NHS and, most famously, IT projects. The problem is that these are far more complicated to analyse and fiendishly difficult to address. But that is where the real savings, if any, are to be found and, depending on the government’s priorities, reinvested into public services.
And then there is the inevitable blowback for Labour. Rayner herself has had to defend her use of Apple products as part of her parliamentary work. But more to the point, the party is likely to form the next government. It will have to account for every penny of spending on these cards. And it is on record as effectively calling a lot of it waste, or at least a bit suspect.
I have to admit, I’d not spent any time previously thinking about GPCs. When I worked at the Treasury, staff had to fund their own Christmas parties while the greatest indignity of all was that a ‘large’ cup of tea in the canteen cost 20p more than a ‘medium’ – even though it was literally 100ml more hot water from a tap.
But that’s by the by. To be fair, this is proper opposition research and speaks to a Labour Party operation light years ahead of its previous iteration. But broad political lessons ought still to be heeded.
Don’t create a rod for your own back. Don’t call for “back to basics” (John Major) or promise to be “purer than pure” (Tony Blair – he never said ‘whiter than white’), for the end of “Punch and Judy politics” (David Cameron) or that you’ll restore ‘integrity, professionalism and accountability’ to government (Rishi Sunak). You’re only writing your opponent’s attack lines for them, while the public will shrug and say you’re all the same.
In the comment pages, Stephen King says more immigration can be the solution to Britain’s economic woes – but who will dare to say it? Lucy Facer, a member of Islington Clean Air Parents, urges Londoners to change their cars or, better yet, ditch them. While Simon English declares the real winners of the Super Bowl to be the Hunt Family.
And finally, Josh Barrie’s latest dishes that can do one: the McDonald’s hash brown. No notes.
