LONDON — Britain faces a “ticking bomb” revolving door scandal unless the government toughens up rules to stop companies poaching officials with inside knowledge, the country’s outgoing anti-sleaze watchdog warned.
Eric Pickles, a former Conservative Cabinet minister whose term as head of the Advisory Committee on Business Appointments (Acoba) is shortly coming to an end, said the unregulated movement of civil servants from procurement and commercial roles into industry positions is a scandal waiting to happen.
“I thought the last government was extraordinarily fortunate for it not to blow up in their faces,” he said in an interview for POLITICO’s London Influence newsletter. “It’s a ticking bomb, and I think basically, they’ve just been overwhelmed by the numbers of people and that churn.”
Under the current rules, only former government ministers and the most senior civil servants are required to seek advice from the watchdog about any role they plan to take up within two years of leaving office. They must comply with Acoba restrictions which range from delaying their start date in a new job to time-limited lobbying bans.
But that means potentially hundreds of civil servants who fall outside the watchdog’s remit face no restrictions on their ability to take up jobs in the private sector each year — despite their experience in sensitive commercial roles.
Despite repeated warnings from Pickles since he took up the job in early 2020, the Acoba boss said Whitehall departments had failed to take action to alleviate the potential risk of companies buying influence.
“I volunteered that we’d do some training for departments,” he explained. “We said we’d do an audit for them. They said they’d do it themselves — but they’ve done the square root of nothing.”
Much media attention is paid to big name former government ministers taking up industry jobs after leaving office. But Pickles argued that firms looking to exert influence over government policy “couldn’t care less” about making box office hires.
“I certainly wouldn’t give a threepenny damn about ministers,” he said. “I would be interested in the people that actually did the job, the people that put together the contracts, the people that had the commercial links, and there’s anecdotal evidence that people are doing that.”
With an estimate of around 300 such moves each year — around one a week for each government department — the former Tory cabinet minister insisted Whitehall departments had “no excuse” for failing to train up small teams to implement revolving door safeguards.
Call for more powers
As he comes to the end of his outspoken five-year tenure as chair of the watchdog, whose instructions are merely advisory thanks to the terms set by the British government, Pickles expressed wider frustration with U.K.’s revolving door system. He said Acoba’s lack of sanctioning power was undermining public trust.
Currently, Acoba is limited to publishing letters admonishing rule breaches, something which Pickles argues should urgently be replaced with an ability to impose fixed financial penalties in the most serious cases.
“[It wouldn’t be] for filling in the forms with the wrong biro color,” he said of the financial deterrent. “Nothing trivial and nothing that might be described as just straightforward forgetfulness and confusion.
“It would have to be an egregious breach of something that was very important.”
The post UK’s revolving door watchdog says ‘ticking bomb’ ethics scandal is coming appeared first on Politico.
