By John Pickard
There is a line in the old BBC series, Yes Minister, in which the cynical civil servant, Sir Humphrey Appleby, advises the minister, “Never look into anything you don’t have to, and never set up an inquiry unless you know in advance what its findings will be”.
That has clearly been taken to heart by this Tory government, supporting a public inquiry into its own handling of the Covid pandemic…but not until 2022.
Hardly a week goes by now, without some new revelation of Tory sleaze. We have heard in detail how former Tory Prime Minister, David Cameron, bombarded ministers, including Rishi Sunak, Michael Gove and Matt Hancock, with text messages, even sending them to top civil servants, as he desperately tried to get tax-payers money behind his employer, Greensill Capital. He sent over sixty messages to top government figures, shamelessly heaping praise and good wishes on them and often signing them with “love, DC”.
Looting the public purse
Astonishingly, Cameron does not believe he has broken any ‘codes of conduct’ for former ministers. He is more than likely correct in that regard, because there are effectively no guidelines and no enforceable codes of conduct for the sleazy work of private businesses looting the public purse.
The latest example of Tory snouts in the trough was revealed in the Financial Times (May 12) – hardly a left-wing journal – and it involves a former chair of the Conservative party, Andrew Feldman, who had an ‘advisory role’ in the UK health department at the beginning of the Covid pandemic.
According to emails seen by the Financial Times, he used the role as an adviser to trigger a juicy contract for a client of his lobbying company. “Feldman was quietly given an unpaid job advising health minister Lord James Bethell from March 24 to May 15 last year” the Financial Times reports, “despite potential conflicts of interest with clients of Tulchan, the lobbying and PR firm he has run since 2019”.
Feldman used his position to get a £22m PPE contract for Bunzl, a client of his lobbying firm. According to the FT, Bunzl managed to wangle three more contracts, all without any competitive tendering. The Good Law Project, which has issued a number of legal challenges over the government’s sleazy procurement practices, have revealed how Feldman linked Bunzl with the government.
“Chivvying officials to speed up a contract”
Jo Maugham, the director of the Project, explained in simple terms what happened: “An ex-Conservative party chair, who now runs a huge PR agency, walked into a role at the heart of this vast procurement process without any formal process,” he said. “He then spent his days chivvying officials to speed up a contract for a firm his agency represents.”
As if we didn’t already have scandal enough, this raises – yet again – the issue of government ‘advisers’ and civil servants who are supposed to work in the public interest, but who, in reality, are doing paid work for some business employer. This so-called “double-hatting” is apparently common at the top levels of the civil service and show the integration of government and business, to the benefit of the latter.
Astonishingly, Feldman has also defended his actions, claiming to the FT that he was answering a “national crisis” during which his “sole motivation” was “protecting medical staff and saving the lives of patients.” You could be forgiven for laughing out loud at such bare-faced hypocrisy, but tens of millions of tax-payers’ money isn’t funny.
Time to cover their tracks…
Now Boris Johnson has decided that there will be an inquiry in the government’s handling of the pandemic, but not until 2022. It is outrageous that the government is waiting so long. In a YouGov poll of over 4,000, YouGov found that 34% if respondents thought, “There should be an inquiry and it should begin immediately”. There is only one only reason for the delay, and that is to allow the friends of ministers and Tory Party donors to cover their tracks and hope that memories are dimmed over the next twelve months. There is not even any clear indication from the government about the terms of the inquiry and how ‘independent’ it will be.
It has to be said that the Tories have got away with looting the public purse of billions of pounds only because the Labour Party ‘opposition’ in parliament has been so weak. Keir Starmer reflects none of the outrage or anger felt by ordinary workers over the sleaze and corruption of this government. Instead of ringing denunciations of snouts in the trough, we are treated to Starmer’s ‘temperate’ and ‘forensic’ criticisms of Johnson and Hancock.
Instead of meekly tail-ending the Tory pandemic strategy, at the very least the Labour front bench ought to be demanding that all the books are fully opened, that all contracts are revealed and opened to scrutiny. Legal sanctions and if necessary, prosecutions should be pursued where it is clear that political connections have been at the root of multi-million-pound contracts. On this one issue alone – Tory sleaze and corruption – Labour should be winning elections and looking confidently forward to kicking the Tory sleaze-mongers out of office.
