Summary
Here is a quick recap of the main political developments from today:
- MEPs in two key European Parliament committees have voted in favour of the EU-UK trade agreement. There were 108 votes in favour of the agreement, with one against and four abstentions.
- An SNP government will provide funding to companies to pilot a four-day working week, it was announced by Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland’s first minister, as she launched the party’s manifesto.
- Lord Pickles, the chair of the Advisory Committee on Business Appointments, called for urgent reform over “anomalies” that allowed conflicts of interest in Westminster and Whitehall. During the committee meeting this morning, he said had been “considerably worried about what has been going on below Acoba level” for some time.
- The public accounts committee, meanwhile, said it intends to launch an inquiry into supply chain financing, which Greensill Capital was involved in.
- William Wragg, chair of the public administration and constitutional affairs committee, announced a “full inquiry into the topical matters around Greensill”
That’s all from me for today. Our coverage continues on our global coronavirus live blog. It’s here:
Updated
PA Media reports:
Christophe Hansen, from the European parliament’s trade committee, said ratifying the UK-EU deal would increase legal certainty for companies operating in a “difficult environment”.
“Economic Brexit at the beginning of this year has caused real disruption. The Trade and Co-operation Agreement, however imperfect it may be, has worked to cushion the worst impact,” he said.
Approving the deal will also give “legal tools and leverage” for Brussels to push for the “full and pragmatic” implementation of the withdrawal agreement and the Northern Ireland protocol.
Updated
Universities in London have said the government’s “levelling up” agenda has resulted in a funding shortfall that risks pushing three institutions into the red, Rachel Hall, the Guardian’s education reporter writes.
The universities regulator, the Office for Students (OfS), is planning to remove a portion of the state teaching grant that was previously channelled towards institutions in London to reflect the higher costs of delivering education there.
But universities in the capital say this could create more inequalities than it addresses, given the scale of deprivation in the city.
“The secretary of state for education has decided that in support of the national ‘levelling up’ agenda, and despite the exceptionally high costs of operating in London, the capital’s great universities are to be levelled down,” said Prof Paul Curran, the president of City, University of London.
You can read the full story here:
David McAllister, the chair of the European parliament foreign affairs committee, said the committees had backed the deal “with an overwhelming majority”.
He said:
It is the responsibility of both sides to make the best out it. The conclusion just after 10 months of intense negotiations that ran literally until Christmas Eve is unprecedented in many regards. Unfortunately, the agreement is not completely exhaustive. For example, it does not include a chapter on cooperation in foreign policy, security and defence. Therefore, more work will obviously need to be done to broaden and deepen the new EU-UK relationship in the upcoming years.
Updated
Key European parliament committees back EU-UK trade agreement
MEPs in two key European Parliament committees have voted in favour of the EU-UK trade agreement.
The trade and foreign affairs committees voted on Thursday, although a date for a final vote to ratify the deal in a plenary session of the European parliament has not yet been set, as PA Media reports.
MEPs on the committees voted to give their consent to the trade and cooperation agreement, which has been in place provisionally since the start of the year.
There were 108 votes in favour of the agreement, with one against and four abstentions.
NEW: The European Parliament’s Trade and Foreign Affairs committees have consented to EU-UK #Brexit trade deal with an overwhelming majority of 108 votes in favour, with 1 against and 4 abstentions
— Darren McCaffrey (@DarrenGBNews) April 15, 2021
Next stop is a vote among all MEPs to ratify the deal fully
Updated
This is from Zarah Sultana, Labour MP for Coventry South:
Matt Hancock’s former pub landlord WhatsApped him & later secured a £30m Covid contract.
— Zarah Sultana MP (@zarahsultana) April 15, 2021
David Cameron lobbied Rishi Sunak on behalf of Greensill.
Reports that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman lobbied Boris Johnson over the sale of Newcastle United.
All of it stinks.
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Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar has had his say on the SNP manifesto launch today. Torcuil Crichton reports for the Daily Record that Sarwar criticised the proposed programme for offering big targets for a decade from now, but no immediate solutions. Sarwar said:
Nicola Sturgeon is making bold promises and commitments around big numbers and targets for the next ten years. Will people have to wait 25 years for progress under the SNP? We can do things in the here and now. There are no big ideas in the manifesto. The big ideas have come from us, in terms of the largest job creation scheme in the history of the Scottish Parliament, the largest economic stimulus package to get people out in the high streets and restart our tourism industry. No big ideas around that from the SNP.
He also criticised other parties for campaigning on old ideas and arguments, rather than accepting that “Covid has changed the world.”
He said “Covid has changed Scotland, but it seems the Tories and the SNP don’t think our politics has to change as a result. They’re both wrong. Let’s focus not on those old arguments, let’s focus on our national recovery”
If you missed it earlier, here’s the video clip of Eric Pickles talking to the media. The head of the advisory committee on business appointments (Acoba) said he did not anticipate “anything like Greensill”, but had been warning of a scandal from lack of checks on civil servants holding roles outside the government.
Acoba revealed that Bill Crothers, the government’s former chief procurement officer, worked as a part-time adviser at Greensill while still a civil servant. Pickles said it was not unusual for civil servants to have second jobs, but “certainly not at this level.”
On the day that the UK is joining a co-ordinated effort with the US and Nato allies to push back against what they claim are Russian cybersecurity attacks [see 14.41], a Tory former defence minister has warned that cutbacks to the UK military will be seen as a sign of weakness by the “dictatorial bully” Vladimir Putin, and that Britain is “not to be taken seriously”,
Conservative peer and ex-SAS officer Lord Robathan levelled his criticism at the Government’s planned reduction in the number of service personnel as concerns were raised at Westminster over the massive build-up of Russian forces along the border with neighbouring Ukraine.
It was announced in the defence review last month that the size of the British Army will be reduced by 10,000 to 72,500 soldiers by 2025. Speaking in Parliament, PA report Lord Robathan said: “President Putin is an authoritarian and dictatorial bully, and like all bullies he senses weakness.”
He added: “He senses weakness when the United Kingdom reduces its armed forces, its aircraft, its ships and above all the size of its army at this time. Will the minister go back to the Foreign Secretary and get him to argue in Cabinet that to reduce the armed forces at the moment is a signal to bullies that we are not really to be taken seriously?”
Labour’s MP for Aberavon and shadow minister for the Asia & Pacific region Stephen Kinnock has also just raised the issue on Twitter, comparing troops strengths under the current government unfavourably with the levels under previous Labour administrations – albeit with a somewhat misleading vertical axis.
From watering down the National Security and Investment Bill to cutting the strength of our army, the Tories are weakening Britain's defences. pic.twitter.com/FhkladZxB9
— Stephen Kinnock (@SKinnock) April 15, 2021
Saudi crown prince asked Boris Johnson to intervene in Newcastle United bid
The Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, warned Boris Johnson in a text message that UK-Saudi Arabian relations would be damaged if the British government failed to intervene to “correct” the Premier League’s “wrong” decision not to allow a £300m takeover of Newcastle United last year.
Johnson asked Edward Lister, his special envoy for the Gulf, to take up the issue, and Lord Lister reportedly told the prime minister: “I’m on the case. I will investigate.”
The message stemmed from an attempt by a consortium led by the sovereign wealth fund, the Saudi Public Investment Fund, to buy Newcastle from its current owner, Mike Ashley.
A deal was agreed in April last year, which was then scrutinised by the Premier League under its owners’ and directors’ test, because the league had doubts about the independence of the bid team from the Saudi government. In July the consortium, which described itself as an “autonomous and purely commercial investor”, withdrew from the deal, blaming an “unforeseeably prolonged process”.
In August, Johnson, aware of how popular the bid had been with some football fans in north-east England, wrote to members of the Newcastle United Supporters Trust: “I appreciate many Newcastle fans were hoping this takeover bid would go ahead and can understand their sense of disappointment. I have seen the recent email sent to Newcastle fans from the Independent Football Ombudsman and agree with their conclusion that the Premier League should make a statement on this case.”
Freedom of information requests show the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport bombarded the Premier League in June 2020 with updates on how the decision on the bid was going. The DCMS said the Foreign Office’s Saudi desk was involved in responding to the decision, showing the political sensitivity of the issue for the UK government.
The DCMS argues that the emails do not represent pressure, merely requests to keep the culture secretary, Oliver Dowden, abreast of the decisions.
Read more of Patrick Wintour’s report here: Saudi crown prince asked Boris Johnson to intervene in Newcastle United bid
It’s worth noting that while Boris Johnson was speaking to reporters in Dartmouth earlier, he was asked about NHS hospital waiting lists in England being at their longest since records began. The prime minister said:
This a real priority now for our country - 4.7 million people on waiting lists. Of course, it’s been exacerbated, it’s been made worse, by Covid. People, I don’t think, have been going to hospital, haven’t been going to use medical facilities in the way that they might have been throughout the pandemic. We do need people to take up their appointments and to get the treatment that they need.
And we’re going to make sure that we give the NHS all the funding that it needs, as we have done throughout the pandemic, to beat the backlog. We’ve put about 92 billion pounds already extra into the NHS this year and we’re going to do whatever it takes. But the NHS has done an incredible job so far. I’ve no doubt that they’re going to be able to tackle this as well.
The foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, has just announced that, in a not unexpected move, the UK is following the US in “calling out Russia for carrying out the SolarWinds” hacking attack. A government statement describes it as “part of a wider pattern of activities by the Russian Intelligence Services against the UK and our allies”.
The UK and US are today exposing Russia for carrying out the SolarWinds cyber-attack. We will continue to call out Russia’s malign and destabilising behaviour. https://t.co/lcafeGXOXn
— Dominic Raab (@DominicRaab) April 15, 2021
The statement says GCHQ’s National Cyber Security Centre assesses that it is “highly likely” that Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service was responsible for gaining unauthorised access to SolarWinds Orion software in the attack. Raab says:
We see what Russia is doing to undermine our democracies. The UK and US are calling out Russia’s malicious behaviour, to enable our international partners and businesses at home to better defend and prepare themselves against this kind of action. The UK will continue to work with allies to call out Russia’s malign behaviour where we see it.
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Reacting to the SNP’s four-day working week announcement (see earlier post), Joe Ryle, a campaigner with the 4 Day Week Campaign, said:
It’s fantastic to see the SNP laying the foundations for Scotland to move to a four-day working week. The four-day, 32-hour week with no reduction in pay is the policy we need coming out of the pandemic to create a better future where work is shared more equally across the economy and everyone benefits from a much healthier work-life balance. This announcement is great news for workers, great news for business and great news for the environment.
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Boris Johnson has said he agrees with Eric Pickles that reforms are required around the monitoring of the link between the private sector and the civil service.
Speaking to broadcasters at Dartmouth College in Devon, the prime minister said:
I think the most important thing is for us to get to the bottom of it properly and I want all ministers and civil servants to be making the information that needs to be known known to Mr Boardman and let’s see what he has to say. You’re absolutely right, we need to understand what’s gone on here. I agree thoroughly with Lord Pickles.
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This insight from Matt Honeycombe-Foster, UK policy editor at Politico Europe and author of the weekly London Influence newsletter on campaigning, lobbying and influence in Westminster:
Treasury says it released the Sunak messages in interest of transparency, like it was a generous gift to us all. In reality, law makes clear FOI covers *all recorded information in any form* if about official business. So good chance it would have been pushed.
— Matt Honeycombe-Foster (@matt_hfoster) April 15, 2021
Updated
Public accounts committee to launch inquiry into supply chain financing
The public accounts committee has said it intends to launch an inquiry into supply chain financing, which Greensill Capital was involved in.
The statement said:
The public accounts committee intends to launch an inquiry focused on the broader issue of supply chain financing, and also on the operation of the Covid corporate financing facilities. The committee intends to invite former prime minster David Cameron to appear before this inquiry.
Two other Commons committees – the Treasury committee and the public administration and constitutional affairs committee – have already said they are to examine issues arising from the collapse of Greensill Capital. The Guardian reported on this earlier:
Updated
No 10 has confirmed that there are no similar plans to the idea of a four-day week in Scotland on the cards for England.
Downing Street said today: “There are no plans for a four-day week.”
Updated
Here is a helpful visual guide on what to expect in the upcoming parliamentary elections in Scotland, which will take place on 6 May to elect 129 MSPs to Holyrood:
SNP government to fund four-day working week pilot
An SNP government will provide funding to companies to pilot a four-day working week, it was announced by Nicola Sturgeon as she launched the party’s manifesto.
She said:
Before the pandemic struck, many people were already worried about work-life balance. We want to do more to support people to achieve a better balance and help businesses employ as many people as possible. As part of that, we will establish a £10m fund to support willing companies to explore and pilot the benefits of a four-day working week.
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This is from Sky News’ Joe Pike:
NEW: INQUIRY NUMBER *SEVEN*
— Joe Pike (@joepike) April 15, 2021
Public Accounts Committee is launching an inquiry into supply chain financing and COVID corporate financing facilities.
David Cameron will be invited to appear.
Brandon Lewis, the Northern Ireland secretary, and Lord Frost have met with the Irish foreign affairs minister, Simon Coveney, “as part of regular bilateral engagement”, Downing Street has confirmed.
The foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, will meet with Coveney this afternoon, according to officials.
Frost is expected to meet the vice-president of the European commission, Maros Sefcovic, in Brussels on Thursday evening, PA Media reports.
“The meeting is part of an ongoing process with the EU to resolve outstanding differences on the Northern Ireland Protocol,” No 10 said.
Updated
PA Media reports:
Jacob Rees-Mogg praised David Cameron as a “very successful prime minister” and warned against people rushing to make judgments.
SNP chief whip Owen Thompson said: “I’ve raised on previous occasions issues around transparency and we’ve seen again this week with the investigation now under way into lobbying actions of David Cameron and the circumstances surrounding the appointment of Lex Greensill as an adviser that there are clearly further challenges that still need to be addressed.
“Can (Rees-Mogg) give a commitment to the House that he’ll ensure within his powers everything possible is done to ensure that any reviews undertaken will go far enough in order to call any questions of the effectiveness of existing legislation are taken full account of and that we put in place any necessary measures to ensure that such instances cannot and should not happen in the future?”
Rees-Mogg responded: “Obviously committees of this house can make what inquiries that they wish and can set their own terms of reference. But I think it’s a mistake to rush to judgment, particularly in relation to David Cameron who was a very successful prime minister who succeeded in getting the nation’s finances back on order.
“And rushing to judgment is I think not a proper way for this house to operate. We need to have the reviews and consider them and that is what is happening.”
Updated
The government has defended delaying universities’ full reopening until 17 May on grounds that the mass migration of up to 500,000 students could repeat the coronavirus outbreaks seen at the beginning of the autumn term.
Responding to questions in parliament, the universities minister, Michelle Donelan, said “public health was at the heart of the decision” to postpone the return to campus for about 1 million students who are not studying on practical courses.
As well as potentially delaying the government’s roadmap out of lockdown, a spate of coronavirus outbreaks following the formation of new households by thousands of returning students from across the UK could result in periods of self-isolation that might jeopardise their grades, she said.
Donelan fended off criticism that Westminster’s hardship offer for students in England fell below that of the devolved governments.
The additional £15m announced on 13 April was “targeted at those who are most in need rather than a blanket payment which would have diluted support”, she said.
She also ruled out automatic rebates on £9,250 tuition fees in England on grounds that students are continuing to receive the same “quantity and quality” of teaching, albeit partially online.
If students do not think they have received this they should raise a complaint with their university and if they remain unsatisfied they can approach the Office of the Independent Adjudicator, she said.
Asked for her opinion on a recent controversial decision by Hull University to no longer require a high-level written proficiency in English on grounds it could hold back the progress of students from disadvantaged educational backgrounds, Donelan condemned the policy as “misguided” and “dumbing down standards”.
Updated
YouGov has published the results of a comprehensive poll of Labour members. Two-thirds of members say Starmer is doing well, with almost half (48%) saying his leadership has changed the party for the better. You can read the full findings here.
LABOUR MEMBERS POLL – today we’re publishing the results of a big poll of the party membership across four articles. See the rest of the thread for a data extravaganza!
— YouGov (@YouGov) April 15, 2021
Updated
Keir Starmer has expressed concern that vaccine passports could lead to discrimination against those who have not had a Covid vaccine.
He said:
There are clearly legal and ethical and practical issues with vaccine passports, and that’s probably why the government is backing away from its own proposals on this. Do we want to see as many people vaccinated as possible? Yes. That means rolling out the existing programme as quickly as possible, and actually closing the gap so that where people are asked to self-isolate they’ve got the financial wherewithal to do so. Statutory sick pay is too low, the £500 payment the government’s put in place doesn’t apply to most people. So roll out the vaccine as soon as possible, and close the gap in the defences.
Updated
No 'moral justification' to refuse referendum if there is pro-independence majority- Sturgeon
During the SNP manifesto launch, Nicola Sturgeon said:
After this election, if there is a simple, democratic majority in the Scottish Parliament for an independence referendum, there will be no democratic, electoral or moral justification whatsoever for Boris Johnson or anyone else to block the right of people in Scotland to decide their own future. I believe passionately that with the powers of independence we can do so much more for Scotland.
I do not propose holding an independence referendum while we are still grappling with the Covid crisis. That would be a dereliction of my duty as first minister to dedicate all of my energies to leading us through the crisis. But it would also be a dereliction of my duty as first minister – my duty to this and future generations – to let Westminster take Scotland so far in the wrong direction that we no longer have the option to change course. So it is my judgment that the people of Scotland should decide Scotland’s future through an independence referendum in the next term of parliament.
Updated
Starmer said Labour had “very strict rules in place” to ensure his own shadow cabinet ministers declared meetings with businesses and unions, PA Media reports.
He said:
We’ve got very strict rules in place for the shadow cabinet with declarations being made. What we’re talking about here is lobbying of government for massive procurement contracts involving millions, sometimes billions, of pounds. Increasingly we’re seeing a murkier and murkier picture, whether it’s the way contracts are handed out, the lack of due process, or the lobbying which is not a revolving door but now an open door into government.
Asked if ministers should expect to be sacked if they failed to declare meetings with lobbyists, Starmer added: “I think it’s absolutely a sackable offence not to declare such meetings.”
Updated
Keir Starmer has said the government’s voting down of Labour’s plans for a parliamentary inquiry into lobbying was the “wrong thing to do”.
Speaking during a visit to Gower, south Wales, he said:
We need more and stronger lobbying rules. What we’ve got is lobbying rules that obviously aren’t working. Last night we called a vote to say there should be a transparent, independent inquiry into the increasing sleaze that’s going on in government. The government voted that down and blocked it. That was the wrong thing to do.
Sturgeon has also announced that over the next parliamentary term the SNP will increase health spending by £2.5bn if re-elected. The increase would be at least 20%, she said.
Scotland’s first minister said:
This will deliver an additional £2.5bn for frontline health services – almost double what an inflation-only increase would amount to. Of course we cannot remobilise the NHS without the extraordinary commitment of all those who work in it.
Updated
The SNP has pledged to abolish NHS dentistry charges if re-elected, Nicola Sturgeon has said as she launched the party’s manifesto.
Almost 4,000 people in the past year attended A&E for dental issues, the first minister said.
“This will ensure that cost is not a barrier to accessing health care,” Sturgeon said of the policy plan.
“And it will complete an SNP mission – to restore all of Scotland’s NHS to its founding principle – universal healthcare, provided free at the point of need.”
Updated
The Pacac hearing has just come to an end. Pickles has said the hearing had been a “very good” chance to “vent”, comparing the experience to being “almost like a therapy session”.
Updated
This is from the Telegraph’s deputy political editor Lucy Fisher:
A reminder that the PM is still yet to appoint a new Independent Advisor on Ministerial Interests...
— Lucy Fisher (@LOS_Fisher) April 15, 2021
It's now four months since former incumbent Sir Alex Allan resigned over the Priti Patel inquiry into bullying allegations.
This is from Sam Tarry, the shadow transport secretary:
The #GreensillScandal has exposed a revolving door of sleaze at the heart of this Government.
— Sam Tarry MP (@SamTarry) April 15, 2021
Back channel conversations and multimillion-pound contracts that are awarded to Tory backers has an overwhelming stench of cronyism and corruption.
It’s time for that culture to stop. pic.twitter.com/NYEyXi4R7e
Pickles claims most people do obey the rules, as he says it is only a “tiny minority” who cause problems.
“There’s perhaps a danger that we spend an enormous sum of money in trying to slay a paper tiger or a paper dragon,” he says.
“Most people obey the law, most people obey the rules, most people just get on with it, and it’s only a tiny minority who cause a problem. I think you need to build a robust system that doesn’t involve putting other great layers of bureaucracy on the top without any material gain.”
Updated
Pickles stresses how vital transparency is. He says: “There is nothing wrong with lobbyists. What is wrong is with unregulated lobbying, secret lobbying – people getting an undue advantage.
“Our entire political careers have been built by lobbying of some sort. But where it becomes wrong is where it is not properly regulated and transparent.”
Updated
Pickles says he did not feel he needed to alert the prime minister to his concerns about appointments as the “machine was responding towards” his requests.
Asked why he did not speak to Boris Johnson or another cabinet minister, he says: “I’m very cognisant that we are in the middle of a pandemic – hopefully it will be over soon – and I was just getting on with doing it. Given that the machine was responding actually quite well to me and I was reasonably impressed by the reaction of ministers, I didn’t feel the need to go.”
He adds: “If I had found the machine wasn’t responsive, then I would have wandered down and spoken to a secretary of state or the prime minister.”
Updated
Pickles suggests the “revolving door” of civil servants joining business has created the assumption among them that they will be “looked after”.
He says that culture has produced an “entitlement whereby the existing cohort looked after the cohort that just left, in assumption that the cohort coming up would look after them”.
“What we need to demonstrate is that if you break the rules there are consequences, and there are a number of consequences without going to thermo-nuclear option.”
Acoba chair Sir Eric Pickles rejecting suggestions there should be proper regulation/sanctions/penalties to punish those breaking government-business revolving door rules, because it would cost too much. #PACAC
— Arj Singh (@singharj) April 15, 2021
Updated
Pickles declares there is “no evidence” that anyone has been made a consultant rather than a special adviser to avoid scrutiny.
Responding to a suggestion that this may have been the case, the Acoba chair says it was “an interesting thought”, adding that it “would be a very serious thing that would have happened and quite a short-sighted thing”.
He says: “I have no evidence to suggest that has taken place.”
Updated
This is from Bloomberg’s Emily Ashton:
Good line from ACOBA chair Eric Pickles raising concerns that senior officials not taking 'revolving door' seriously - a "cohort entitlement whereby the existing cohort looked after the cohort that just left, in assumption that the cohort coming up would look after them"
— Emily Ashton (@elashton) April 15, 2021
Still addressing MPs on the committee, Pickles says the public have a right to know the arrangements for second roles being approved by the Cabinet Office.
He said: “I would expect it to be recorded in a register. I would have expected that register to be transparent. I would have expected the rules to be known. So far as I know, the rules have never been published. Therefore, I have asked them to publish the rules – this is not a satisfactory situation.
“And I think, not only you are entitled to know or I am entitled to know, I think the wider public are entitled to know what these arrangements are, how they apply, what criteria is raised, what checks are raised, what conditions are made on an arrangement to do so.”
Updated
This is from freelance journalist Henry Dyer:
Pickles tells PACAC that ACOBA has come into an arrangement with Cabinet Office where anyone in breach of the rules is reported to the Cab Office and if they are in receipt of an honour, the breach “will be taken into consideration”.
— Henry Dyer (@Direthoughts) April 15, 2021
In a Commons hearing when he got the Acoba role, Pickles said: “I do think it’s important for us to reassure the public that people do not personally get financial remuneration on the basis of privileged information they’ve obtained.”
William Wragg asks Pickles where he believed the scandal would come from.
“There are some departments like the Ministry of Defence that have a very clear system and pretty well established. There are others that are less well established.”
Pickles adds that there needs to be “proper procedures” introduced for the sake of “consistency”.
Updated
'Not for one moment did I anticipate anything like Greensill'- Pickles
Pickles says that he has been warning of a scandal for some time “but this is not where I expected it to come from”.
The Acoba chair says there are “not loopholes” but areas that are not covered by the body across government, which should “fall within an umbrella of some kind”.
John McDonnell, the former shadow chancellor under Jeremy Corbyn, asks who has raised these matters with him, to which Pickles replies “the proper channels”.
Pickles says that “not for one moment did I anticipate anything like Greensill”, but admits he had been “considerably worried about what has been going on below Acoba level” for some time.
Updated
This is from the Mirror’s political correspondent Lizzy Buchan:
Lord Pickles tells he's "really unhappy" with gaps in the ethics system and has been "warning of the possibility of a scandal" for some time. He says there are "anomalies not covered by the ethics regime"
— Lizzy Buchan (@LizzyBuchan) April 15, 2021
This just in from the FT’s Sebastian Payne:
Incredible stat from @EricPickles: 34,000 people left the civil service in 2020. Just 108 appointments were overseen by Acoba - the committee that advises on post-government appointments.
— Sebastian Payne (@SebastianEPayne) April 15, 2021
Pickles says he is worried about further scandals at junior levels in the civil service
Acoba, which is tasked with considering new job applications made by former ministers, senior civil servants and other crown servants, has been criticised by MPs in the past for being a “toothless watchdog”.
Asked “what is the point” of the body he leads, Pickles replies: “The point of Acoba is to put together conditions and delays to ensure the integrity of government is protected. But there is a misunderstanding, which I find deeply irritating. Acoba is not a watchdog, not a regulator. It has a very limited and defined role.”
Updated
Pickles has said there were “anomalies” in the system that needed “immediate address”.
Pickles, a former Tory cabinet minister, adds: “Part of the problem we have got is that it has not been clear where the boundaries lay. In fact, I hope this does not seem rude – there does not seem to have been any boundaries at all.”
Updated
Pickles claims that attention should be more on outsiders coming in rather than “civil servants going out to get experience”, telling MPs that the “kind of constraints we put on them” should be considered carefully.
He says: “Every government for the past 20-25 years – it is true of Lady Thatcher, true of Major, certainly true of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown – were all seeking to get people into civil service with business experience. So I understand how we got to these circumstances, but I don’t think it excuses the final result.”
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Asked by David Jones about the “very glaring conflict of interest” about Crother’s dual employment, Pickles says: “My eyebrows did raise a full quarter inch,” adding “I haven’t really come across anything quite like this before”.
Updated
Lex Greensill does not seem to have been a special adviser, Pickles says. The financier had a business card describing himself as a No 10 adviser, but if he had been a special adviser he would have been covered by the remit of Acoba.
Updated
Pickles says it is not uncommon for a civil servant to have a second job, though it is not normally at this level or paid.
“The level that Mr Crothers was, the kind of way the system would have been used would have been to allow them to say offer them advice, to say Citizens Advice or some other voluntary organisation, to sit on the board of a housing association or local authority,” he says.
Pickles says the watchdog’s “only involvement” on the subject is with Bill Crothers, though he feels “slightly embarrassed” as “most of the fuss” came after he wrote to the former civil servant about why he did not seek advice. He adds that it appears “he was not isolated in that position”.
Updated
Full inquiry into Greensill by the Pacac committee, chairman announces
William Wragg has called to order the Pacac committee, which is hearing from Eric Pickles. The Tory MP confirms the committee will start an inquiry “into the topical matters around Greensill”.
Updated
This just in from Michael Savage, the Observer’s policy editor:
NEW: Full inquiry into Greensill by the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee, says Tory chair William Wragg.
— Michael Savage (@michaelsavage) April 15, 2021
Updated
Here is a concise summary of what is a quite complex story by the Guardian’s political correspondent Peter Walker:
David Cameron and Rishi Sunak will be among senior politicians called to give evidence at a growing number of inquiries into the Greensill lobbying scandal, after two committees of MPs said they would begin their own investigations, Jessica Elgot, the Guardian’s deputy political editor writes. Here is the full story:
Good morning everyone. I will be running the blog today so feel free to drop me a message on Twitter with any story tips.
Eric Pickles, head of the Advisory Committee on Business Appointments, is giving evidence to the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee at 9.30 am.
Pickles, a Conservative peer, was said to be furious with Cabinet Office permanent secretary Alex Chisholm this week over the decision to allow civil servants to take second jobs with external companies while still working in Whitehall.
Cabinet Office sources were said to be “deeply concerned” at the disclosure that official approval was granted for Bill Crothers to begin advising Greensill in September 2015 while still employed in the civil service.
In a stinging letter to Chisholm, Pickles wrote: “The lack of transparency around this part-time employment with Greensill may have left the misleading impression that Mr Crothers had wilfully ignored the obligation to seek advice.”
In reference to the Crothers situation, the former Home Office permanent secretary Sir David Normington told the Today programme:
We’re not just talking here about any old civil servant. We’re talking about someone who was responsible for commercial dealings in government and had oversight of relations with a large number of major contractors and the handling of lots of public money. Therefore, it’s essential that people like that, when they leave the civil service, are subject to scrutiny and are subject to rules which mean that they can’t take up appointments immediately.
“It’s essential that the Advisory Committee on Business Appointments is allowed to scrutinise those appointments and give its advice,” he added.
Crothers has said he had been taken on by Greensill in a “transparent” way and has denied any wrongdoing.
Yesterday, Boris Johnson declined to rule out the possibility that more officials could have been connected to the collapsed finance firm set up by the Australian financier Lex Greensill.
Tory MPs voted en masse to block a broader inquiry into the Greensill scandal, as Labour claimed there was now evidence of sleaze at the heart of government.
During a heated PMQs, the Labour leader, Keir Starmer challenged the prime minister to back the opposition motion on Wednesday afternoon, which calls for a cross-party select committee of MPs to investigate the lobbying allegations.
Johnson, however, has insisted that Nigel Boardman, the lawyer he appointed this week to carry out a review of the affair, will lead a “proper” inquiry, adding that the Tories had been “consistently tough on lobbying”.
We will bring you all the latest Greensill developments throughout the day.
Here is the agenda for today:
09:30am: Acoba chair Lord Pickles before the Pacac
10:30am: Universities minister Michelle Donelan will reply for the government to an urgent question on return date for university students
11:00am: Nicola Sturgeon to launch SNP election manifesto
11:30am: SNP leader will hold a virtual press conference
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