In his first speech to the new parliament, Sir Keir Starmer told MPs: “The fight for trust is the battle that defines our political era.” It was a powerful call to attention. It was also wholly justified. Trust in politics, parliament and government has long been in decline, but slumped to new depths in the last parliament. Without decisive remedial action, the credibility of our democratic system remains at risk. Politics must clean up its act.
Labour has come to power promising changes and using ambitious rhetoric. The manifesto called for “a reset in our public life, a clean-up that ensures the highest standards of integrity and honesty”. It offered the pledge that “Labour will restore confidence in government”. Last week’s king’s speech contained some more detailed commitments. These included an element of House of Lords reform, a duty of candour requirement for public officials, tightened rules on lobbying by MPs and modernisation of parliamentary procedure.
The last two were debated and adopted by MPs on Thursday. The changes proposed by Lucy Powell, the Commons leader, are progressive as far as they go. It will no longer be possible for MPs to give paid advice to outside organisations about “public policy and current affairs” or the workings of parliament, curbs that would have stopped the lobbying scandal that forced Owen Paterson out of parliament in 2021. A new modernisation select committee of MPs will also make proposals on Commons business, MPs’ standards and working practices.
These changes do not go far enough. They are also piecemeal. The changes on paid advice, for example, leave many questions about MPs’ second incomes unaddressed. MPs will also still be able to earn money from journalism, books and speeches. The modernisation committee will be dominated by its Labour majority, and no opposition parties except the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats will be represented, a clear unfairness to the smaller parties, particularly those from Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
In theory, there may be a case for retaining some leeway for MPs to earn extra income. Writing a novel or article should not be a punishable offence. But the “two jobs” charge has become horribly toxic for MPs as a whole. By retaining the right for MPs to make paid speeches, Ms Powell is sanctioning a practice that enabled Boris Johnson, while still an MP, to earn £2.4m in the months following his resignation as prime minister. The false belief that all MPs are only in politics for what they can get out of it stems from individual greed like this.
However worthy Labour’s changes may be, they do too little to address the wider collapse in public trust that threatens politics and government as a whole. Labour will respond that it has inherited an appalling situation. It will say that it has just won a mandate for its changes. It will say that the best response to public mistrust is for Labour’s government “of service” to prove the sceptics wrong. There is some truth in all that.
Yet what is good for Labour is not always the same thing as what is good for parliament or the country. The government should be less top-down about these reforms. It should open the windows and explore the citizen involvement that the Demos thinktank has proposed this week. It should be more holistic and more pluralistic. The surest way to rescue trust in politics is not just to govern better, but to be seen to do so.
