Lobbying rules will be toughened up across Whitehall in a long-awaited response by ministers to issues raised by the Greensill scandal, the Guardian has learned.
Government departments will be forced to release more information about meetings with lobbyists and extend current requirements for disclosure to phone and video calls, sources say.
Private emails, as well as WhatsApps and texts on personal phones that are used to discuss government business, will also now need to be declared, and senior civil servants will have to comply with the new rules.
The changes come nearly two years after a major report was published following the Greensill lobbying scandal, involving a multinational supply chain finance firm, the former prime minister David Cameron, serving ministers and top officials.
Nineteen reforms were proposed by Nigel Boardman, a corporate lawyer who was commissioned by the government to conduct an independent investigation and published his findings in August 2021.
In its response, the government will commit to improving the quality of departments’ transparency disclosures, which cover meetings, gifts and hospitality, and are meant to guard against any perception of improper or secretive lobbying. Declarations will be aimed to be published monthly instead of quarterly under the plans to be announced later this week.
Instead of departments publishing their own declarations separately, an integrated database hosted on a single platform will be developed by the Cabinet Office. Stricter minimum standards will also be enforced about the level of detail regarding meetings that need to be declared. Phone calls and virtual meetings will have to be disclosed, as well as any exchanges via personal email, text or over WhatsApp concerning government business.
Top civil servants, including commercial and finance directors, will need to comply with the new rules as well.
Moves will also be made to avoid departments giving minimal detail about meetings with consultant lobbyists. The government will aim to tweak secondary legislation forcing those on the register of consultant lobbyists to provide more information about who they are operating on behalf of, meaning they will have to declare the ultimate beneficiary and subject matter of their lobbying approaches.
The moves go some way towards meeting the recommendations made by Boardman, after a series of reports he produced about the scandal and associated issues to do with lobbying. In his August 2021 report, Boardman criticised the “self-regulatory” approach of Whitehall and the “patchwork” approach to ethics regulation.
It followed an outcry over the government’s then chief commercial officer, Bill Crothers, having been given approval to work as an adviser to Greensill Capital in 2015 while still employed in the civil service.
Questions were also raised over why Lex Greensill, the Australian financier behind the firm, was brought into the heart of government. He had a No 10 business card calling him a “senior adviser” and was nominated for a CBE by the then cabinet secretary.
After leaving No 10, Cameron became an adviser to Greensill Capital. He approached ministers and officials with texts at the outset of the Covid pandemic to urge the government to support the bank, it was later revealed.
When the scandal emerged, Cameron released a statement saying he had done nothing wrong, but accepting his communications with ministers should have been “done through only the most formal of channels, so there can be no room for misinterpretation”.
Greensill Capital, which operated by lending money to firms by buying their invoices at a discount, collapsed in March 2021. Greensill said in an appearance before the Treasury select committee in May that year that his business had made mistakes but defended the business model of supply chain finance. He said he took “complete responsibility” for the company’s collapse.
Crothers told another parliamentary select committee in June: “My intention was to completely follow the rules, in spirit and in form. I was transparent in all that I did and no conflict happened.”
