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The UK will set up a new standards regime to fine ministers who breach rules on taking jobs after leaving office, in response to criticism of the current “toothless” watchdog’s approach to vetting.
Ministers will introduce new powers to help claw back severance payments from any ministers found to have breached the rules, the government said on Monday. It will also be empowered to restrict pay-offs to ministers who have been in office for less than six months.
The existing Advisory Committee on Business Appointments will be abolished, with its role now split between the Civil Service Commission and the prime minister’s independent adviser on ministerial standards.
A new Ethics and Integrity Commission, which Labour pledged to create ahead of the general election last year, will play a supervisory and co-ordinating role for the ethics bodies.
Labour officials said the move was partly in response to the career of former prime minister Boris Johnson, who was found to have breached Acoba rules three times without facing penalties.
Former Acoba chair Lord Eric Pickles previously called for more powers for the “essentially toothless” body, noting that its rulings could be ignored by “thick-skinned” individuals.
His remarks echoed deputy prime minister Angela Rayner’s description of Acoba as a “toothless watchdog” in need of a stronger mandate.
Pat McFadden, Cabinet Office minister, said the overhaul set out would “mean there are stronger rules, fewer quangos and clearer lines of accountability”, and that the new EIC would be formed by giving extra powers to the existing Committee on Standards in Public Life.
“The Committee on Standards in Public Life has played an important role in the past three decades. These changes give it a new mandate for the future,” McFadden added. The new regime will take effect in October.
Labour officials pointed to more than £250,000 in pay-offs to Conservative ministers who served for only a matter of weeks under former prime minister Liz Truss and Johnson during a period of upheaval in Westminster in 2022.
These included payments of £16,876 to three former ministers — Sir Brandon Lewis, Shailesh Vara and Greg Clark — who worked as ministers for two months or less during Truss’s 49-day premiership.
Labour officials highlighted three incidences where Johnson had been pulled up by Acoba, including after he signed a contract to become a Telegraph columnist after his resignation as foreign secretary in 2018.
Johnson was reprimanded but not fined for failing to seek advice from Acoba before signing a contract with the Daily Mail in 2023, shortly after leaving Downing Street.
He was also criticised for being “evasive” about an April 2024 meeting set up by hedge fund Merlyn Advisors with Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro.
Pickles, chair of Acoba in 2023, said at the time that Johnson’s failure to seek guidance from the body before signing the Daily Mail contract was a “clear and unambiguous breach” of the rules and showed why “sanctions for non-compliance” were necessary.
Transparency International UK welcomed the changes, but said the government had not done enough to tackle the so-called revolving door between the public and private sectors.
“It is unclear how the new financial penalties will be enforced and there are no changes to the rules on the revolving door, which urgently need strengthening,” the campaign group said.
Sir Keir Starmer won power last year with a pledge to “return politics to public service” after multiple ethics-related rows.
But the prime minister found himself immersed in a “freebies” scandal later in 2024 over the acceptance of free clothing, accommodation and tickets to football matches, leading to accusations of hypocrisy.
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