British minister may face a five-year lobbying ban after leaving office

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Anti-corruption regulators say that ministers may be prohibited from lobbying for up to five years after leaving office, and they may face penalties if they violate the regulations.

Jonathan Evans, chairman of the Public Living Standards Committee, made this proposal in an emergency review report released on Monday. Greenhill scandal.

The intervention of Lord Evans, the former head of MI5, was a response to claims that former ministers, special counsels and senior civil servants continued to violate the rules after leaving their posts. His report called for a thorough revision of the rules to try to stop the revolving door in Whitehall and allow them to use their connections and expertise for personal gain.

According to current regulations, ministers and senior civil servants are effectively prohibited from lobbying their former colleagues for two years after leaving their posts.

The committee also worried that after Boris Johnson tried to impose the former Daily Mail editor Paul Dacre as the head of Ofcom, the system for appointing public institutions might favor ministerial sponsorship. And stay away from “contributions.”

It is expected that No 10 will wait until the committee’s final report later this year before stating which recommendations it may accept.

The report lists the former Prime Minister David Cameron (David Cameron), who served as the head of MI5 by Evans for three years, as the conclusion that the current rules are not sufficient, and that ministers should disclose informal information. Lobbying WhatsApp and SMS in the future.

Cameron sent a text message to the Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak on behalf of Greensill Capital. Greensill Capital was a financial company that hired him as a lobbyist. The company’s collapse put thousands of jobs at risk. He asked the government to change the rules to allow it to obtain Covid corporate financing facilities loans.

It was later discovered that he had allowed Health Minister Matt Hancock and other ministers to receive a large number of WhatsApp messages and text messages, including 56 messages sent through a single Covid loan program.

Since there was more than two years between his resignation as the prime minister and his position in the failed financial company, according to the current rules, Cameron’s behavior is allowed.

Australian financier Lex Greensill was allowed to enter the 11 departments of Whitehall, after he was appointed as an official government adviser without any transparency.

Cameron told members of Congress last month that his lobbying attempt was “absolutely free of wrongdoing”, but admitted that the former prime minister must “take different actions.”

This report forms part of the committee’s “standard landscape review”.

The committee also proposed to include anti-lobby clauses in the employment contracts of ministers, special advisers and civil servants; design a system that may impose civil penalties on violations of the rules; prohibit ministers from serving for two years in the departments directly responsible for them; and give the appointment of supervisory agencies The power to apply custom restrictions, including “where appropriate” prohibiting former ministers from holding certain jobs for up to five years.

It also called for new rules so that the government would release details of lobbying every four weeks rather than quarterly; and regulate the appointment of non-executive directors of the Whitehall department in the case of concerns about politicians appointing “confidants.”

In the foreword of the report, Evans said: “We found that four areas of standard regulation require major reforms: the Minister’s Code and the Independent Advisor for Minister’s Interests, Business Appointment Rules and the Business Appointment Advisory Committee (Acoba), transparency in lobbying, and Regulation of public appointments.”

According to the report, if the integrity of the procedure is to be maintained, the power of the public to appoint commissioners needs to be strengthened, which is held by Peter Riddell.

“Reforms are necessary to ensure that the commissioner has sufficient power to maintain the integrity of the process of generating the list of appointable candidates, and ministers can choose from it,” it said.

It also criticized the unregulated appointment of non-executive directors (NED). Michael Gove was criticized last year after appointing three close voting false allies, Baroness Finn, Henry De Zotte and Gisela Stuart to cabinet office positions.

“Ministers are increasingly inclined to appoint supporters or political allies as NEDs. This has weakened the NED’s ability to review the work of its departments and has had a knock-on effect on the appointment process elsewhere, as NEDs are often used by other public and senior officials. The evaluation team appointed by civil servants should standardize the NED appointment procedures,” the report said.

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