Friday briefing: Will Westminster ever clean up its act over lobbying?
Good morning. The fallout from the revelations about Peter Mandelson’s relationship with convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein has already claimed several high-profile scalps, including Keir Starmer’s chief of staff, Morgan McSweeney. As attention turns to whether Starmer can steady his premiership, it is vital not to lose sight of something else that this episode has laid bare: Westminster’s enduring relationship with corporate lobbyists. The files sent a shock wave when they showed Mandelson forwarding highly sensitive emails to Epstein within seconds of receiving them. Far less examined were questions about his former firm, Global Counsel, and its links to Palantir, the US tech company which now boasts major UK government contracts, including with the NHS. Wes Streeting’s decision to publish his WhatsApp messages with Mandelson was intended to draw a line. Instead, it illustrated how seamlessly political and corporate networks overlap. One exchange showed Streeting circulating a US politics briefing that came to him via Jim Murphy, the former Labour cabinet minister who now runs the lobbying firm Arden Strategies. That same firm is under scrutiny for offering corporate clients, including arms companies, access to senior officials for fees reportedly as high as £30,000. To understand why these connections matter, and why lobbying reform so often stalls despite cross-party promises, I spoke to Henry Dyer, the Guardian’s investigations correspondent. That’s after the headlines. Five big stories UK politics | Keir Starmer’s attempt to shake up his top team after the disastrous Peter Mandelson scandal began on Thursday, when he forced out his most senior civil servant with a view to replacing him with Antonia Romeo. UK news | Parents of one of the victims of Vincent Chan have said they live in “constant fear” of the long-term damage the trauma will have on their child, as the paedophile nursery worker was sentenced to 18 years in prison. Epstein files | A top lawyer at Goldman Sachs and former White House counsel to Barack Obama has resigned in the wake of emails showing a close relationship between her and Jeffrey Epstein, whom she referred to as “Uncle Jeffrey”. Education | Primary school-age children who question their gender could be allowed to use different pronouns under long-awaited government guidance to schools on the subject. Media | President Trump’s multibillion dollar lawsuit against the BBC over the editing of one of his speeches has been set for a year’s time. In depth: ‘What’s infuriating is knowing it’s an issue and doing nothing’
Concerns about lobbying are not new. In early 2010, in the aftermath of the MPs’ expenses scandal, David Cameron, then opposition leader, warned that “secret corporate lobbying” would be the “next big scandal”. In his speech, he said: “We all know how it works. The lunches, the hospitality, the quiet word in your ear, the ex-ministers and ex-advisers for hire, helping big business find the right way to get its way.” The irony, Henry Dyer tells me, is that a decade later Cameron himself would face scrutiny after lobbying ministers and senior officials 56 times at the height of the pandemic in what critics described as an increasingly desperate effort to secure government support for Greensill Capital, the finance firm he advised and held shares in. “What it shows is that Westminster has been fully aware that the access of outside private interests [sometimes to] MPs and Lords, but sometimes through MPs and Lords to government and ministers, is there,” Henry explains. “Everyone knows it’s happening.” It is an issue that reaches both chambers of parliament, with Henry having reported doggedly on lobbying and standards in the House of Lords. My colleague Peter Walker produced a comprehensive rundown in 2021 of the lobbying scandals that have plagued Westminster. It is telling that, only five years on, it already feels outdated. Yet, Henry adds, “None of the successive governments of different parties have taken the action necessary to deal with it.”. *** How does lobbying work? Before we delve into the scandals at the heart of government, I asked Henry to explain how lobbying works. “If you and I worked in a company making widgets and wanted regulation changed, we could try to get a meeting with a minister and lobby directly,” he says. The public record may simply note that a meeting occurred, he adds, but it doesn’t have to state that lobbying took place. Lobbying can also be outsourced. “We could hire a consultant lobbyist, perhaps someone with links to the minister. Under the regulations, they would have to declare that we were their client and that they had lobbied on our behalf. There’s slightly more transparency, but it’s not radical transparency,” Henry says. Ministers also routinely accept tickets, travel and event access. These are all declared, but rarely prevented. This was one of the first scandals to dog Labour months after their landslide elections in the summer of 2024, known helpfully, as freebiegate. The Guardian’s political correspondent Pippa Crerar has an excellent run down of how the scandal unfolded and the impact it had on Labour. “Before the Qatar World Cup, more MPs took an interest in Qatar and joined All-Party Parliamentary Groups (APPGs), likely knowing it could mean tickets and travel,” Henry says. “Those are gifts worth thousands of pounds. They are declared, but nothing stops them.” That point is worth emphasising: in many cases there is little evidence that parliamentary rules were technically broken, even when it is clear that ethical lines have been blurred. That gap is precisely why campaigners have long argued for tougher, clearer rules. *** What have Labour done? There has been piecemeal reform on lobbying since 2010. Under the coalition government there was the Lobbying Act, for example, which introduced a threadbare set of regulations on consultant lobbying. When Labour was in opposition, it made a series of promises on lobbying and standards, Henry says, largely in response to the PPE procurement scandal. During the pandemic, nearly £4.1bn of public money went to suppliers with political connections, many through so-called “VIP” or “high priority” lanes that fast-tracked firms referred by ministers and MPs, often without adequate due diligence. Readers may recall figures such as Michelle Mone, whose company supplied unusable PPE and who has been ordered by a court to repay £122m, and Owen Paterson, whom a parliamentary watchdog found had made 14 lobbying approaches in an “egregious” breach of the rules that brought parliament into disrepute. Labour was vocal in opposition, but what have they managed to do while in government? There have been some notable tweaks. The government has a register of lobbyists it interacts with that used to be published quarterly, which Labour described as ridiculous in opposition. “In power, they changed it to monthly declarations on gifts and hospitality, but not meetings,” Henry says. A 2024 parliamentary committee report called for contact made via WhatsApp and other instant messaging platforms to be included in the lobbying register. The messages published by Wes Streeting show exactly why that matters, yet there has been little sign of movement on implementing the change. The government also announced that they would restrict payments for ministers leaving office following a serious breach of the ministerial code. And last October, Labour created the Ethics and Integrity Commission, which was central to Starmer’s promised robust new approach to government and to any ministerial misdeeds. The commission took over the previous committee, which was described by critics as fundamentally toothless. Will this make a difference? Henry isn’t convinced. “It’s effectively the Committee on Standards in Public Life with a new title,” he says. “It has no new powers. It can make recommendations, but the government can ignore them.” He adds that the government introduced the Representation of the People Bill yesterday, which proposes a limit on foreign gifts of £2,230. “That’s a very high threshold. If you or I accepted a £2,230 gift related to our work, there would be serious questions. For MPs, it’s still seen as fine. That speaks to a culture that hasn’t changed.” There are individual MPs who go further, Henry says, pointing to Sian Berry who publishes a list of everyone she meets and more frequently than the government does. Other MPs refuse gifts. “But the culture in Westminster remains that accepting gifts worth more than £2,000 is fine and electors won’t think it’s an issue,” he says. Earlier this week, Darren Jones, the chief secretary to the prime minister, delivered a speech on reviewing standards in public life, arguing that “Peter Mandelson’s disgraceful behaviour” raised questions about whether the current system is robust enough to catch those who seek to break the rules. Henry listened closely. There were warm words about reform, he says, but little in the way of concrete change. *** Why has there been so little change? Lobbying as an issue in politics has been cropping up since the first world war. So why have successive parties been unable to fix it? “Because politicians find it useful to be given briefings,” Henry says. A report by Rowena Mason, the Guardian’s Whitehall editor, published during the 2024 general election illustrates this point. More than a dozen private-sector lobbyists and consultants were embedded in Labour’s shadow cabinet teams after the party sought business help to shape policy, particularly in complex areas such as AI. Faculty AI told staff, in a leaked memo, that it had amended its ethics policy to allow an employee to work with Labour one to two days a week. What politicians are failing to grasp, Henry says, is that “repeated failures to clean up politics are more damaging than the individual scandals,” adding that people accept there will be politicians who break the rules. “What’s infuriating is knowing it’s an issue and doing nothing.” The reports on the possible impact of lobbyists in the heart of government continue to come out in drips. A big area now is AI, Henry explains, which the government is keen to be seen embracing. “One big company is Palantir,” Henry says, which has tremendous access to the British state. Since 2023, Palantir has secured more than £500m in contracts with the NHS and the Ministry of Defence (MoD). “Starmer visited its offices in the US while Mandelson was ambassador,” Henry says. “Palantir was a client of Global Counsel, Mandelson’s lobbying firm. He still held shares.” He pointed to a recent report in the Times reporting a party hosted by Palantir to celebrate a large contract with the MoD. The invite list included MoD employees, journalists and others in the defence industry. “That is the gifts and hospitality culture Cameron warned about in 2010 happening again,” Henry says. What else we’ve been reading
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The Upside A bit of good news to remind you that the world’s not all bad
Watching the sun set over Bolivian salt flats. Living without screens. Having no sense of what time or day it was. Since April 2022, Andreas Graf has lived a life of freedom. After building a career in engineering, the then 31-year-old Norwegian got too “hungry for adventure” he decided to literally get on his bike. Four years later, he’s been cycling around the world, visiting everywhere from Turkmenistan to Nepal and Australia to Ecuador (with the help of a few ferries and flights, of course). Now back home, Graf tells Rachel Dixon he worries slightly about readjusting to what most of us call normality. “I haven’t looked into a computer screen in almost four years, so it just feels so wrong,” he says. “I want to go out and look at a tree! On the weekend, I’m going to take my tent and disappear in the forest for a little while.” Sign up here for a weekly roundup of The Upside, sent to you every Sunday Bored at work? And finally, the Guardian’s puzzles are here to keep you entertained throughout the day. Until tomorrow. Quick crossword Cryptic crossword Wordiply
