Selflessness, Integrity, Objectivity, Accountability, Openness, Honesty, and Leadership — The Standards Nobody Enforces and Everyone Invokes
In 1995, Britain Wrote Down What Decent Public Behaviour Looked Like. It Has Been Useful Primarily as Evidence.
In 1994, John Major’s government was engulfed by what the tabloids called “sleaze” — a series of revelations about MPs accepting cash for parliamentary questions, ministers conducting affairs while championing Back to Basics family values, and a general impression that the Conservative Party had been in power for fifteen years and had developed the kind of comfortable relationship with ethical shortcuts that prolonged incumbency tends to produce. Major responded by appointing Lord Nolan to chair a Committee on Standards in Public Life. Nolan produced, in 1995, the Seven Principles of Public Life — a set of standards that all holders of public office should uphold.
The principles are: Selflessness (decisions made in the public interest, not personal gain); Integrity (no financial obligations to outside individuals or organisations); Objectivity (decisions based on merit); Accountability (scrutiny accepted and cooperated with); Openness (transparent decision-making); Honesty (truthfulness); and Leadership (promotion of these principles by example). They are admirable. They are widely cited. They are referenced in every ministerial code. They are quoted in every parliamentary standards debate. And they have been violated with sufficient regularity since 1995 to constitute a reasonably comprehensive empirical test of their enforcement mechanisms.
The Ministerial Code: Rules That Apply Until the Prime Minister Decides They Don’t
The Ministerial Code sets out the standards expected of Cabinet ministers and junior ministers — the requirement to be truthful with Parliament, to avoid conflicts of interest, to maintain collective responsibility, and to comply with the Seven Principles. Responsibility for enforcing the Code rests with the Prime Minister, which is the document’s central structural problem: the person responsible for investigating ministerial conduct is the person who appointed the ministers, whose government’s survival may depend on the ministers under investigation, and who has a direct interest in the outcome of any inquiry.
The Ministerial Code is published on the government’s website with the quiet confidence of a document that knows it will not be rigorously applied. The Independent Adviser on Ministers’ Interests — a position created to provide independent oversight — has resigned twice in recent years due to insufficient independence: Alex Allan resigned in 2020 after Boris Johnson declined to accept his finding on Priti Patel’s conduct, and Lord Geidt resigned in 2022 citing concerns about being asked to assess conduct that he believed had already been prejudged. The job of independent adviser in Britain is, structurally, the job of advising someone who has already decided.
Cash for Questions, Expenses, and Partygate: A Highlight Reel of Modern Sleaze
The cash for questions scandal of the 1990s — in which MPs were paid to ask parliamentary questions on behalf of lobbying clients — was the immediate trigger for the Nolan committee. It produced the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards, a Code of Conduct for MPs, and the Register of Members’ Interests. It did not produce a permanent solution to the problem of money and political influence, which continued under different arrangements.
The expenses scandal of 2009 — triggered by the Daily Telegraph‘s publication of MPs’ expense claims obtained under the Freedom of Information Act — revealed a system of allowances that had been used, with varying degrees of creativity, to claim for moat cleaning, duck houses, mortgage interest on properties that had been remortgaged, and the cost of furniture for second homes that were subsequently sold at profit. The public reaction was intense. Several MPs resigned. A small number were prosecuted. The Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority was created to administer MPs’ pay and expenses independently. The underlying incentive structures were not fundamentally altered.
Partygate — the revelation that No. 10 Downing Street had held multiple gatherings in breach of COVID lockdown rules that the same government had imposed on the rest of the country — was the most symbolically damaging scandal of recent years not because the individual violations were uniquely serious but because they occurred simultaneously with the enforcement of rules that prevented ordinary people from visiting dying relatives, attending funerals, and holding wakes. The Metropolitan Police issued 126 fixed penalty notices. The Sue Gray Report documented a culture of behaviour that the report described with measured civil service understatement as “not appropriate.” Boris Johnson resigned. His resignation honours list subsequently nominated people who had been present at the gatherings for peerages. The nominations were referred to the House of Lords Appointments Commission.
The Lobbying Industry: Influence, Revolving Doors, and the Art of the Informal Conversation
Lobbying — the organised attempt to influence government policy — is a legitimate and necessary feature of democratic governance. Every democracy has it. Every democracy struggles with the difference between legitimate representation of interests and the purchase of access that is unavailable to citizens without the budget for a public affairs consultancy.
The UK’s lobbying register, established by the Transparency of Lobbying, Non-Party Campaigning and Trade Union Administration Act 2014, covers only consultant lobbyists — those paid to lobby on behalf of third parties — and excludes in-house lobbyists, trade associations, and other organisations that spend significant resources influencing government policy. The Register of Consultant Lobbyists is accordingly somewhat limited as a transparency tool, registering a fraction of the actual lobbying activity directed at Westminster.
The revolving door — senior civil servants and ministers moving to private sector positions in industries they previously regulated — is managed by the Advisory Committee on Business Appointments, which issues guidance that recipients are under no legal obligation to follow and which has described its own enforcement powers as inadequate. David Cameron lobbied government ministers on behalf of Greensill Capital — a financial services firm — in 2020, in a manner that the Boardman Review found had exploited “the access that his status and personal relationships gave him.” Cameron subsequently became Foreign Secretary, which confirmed that in British public life, significant reputational damage is a temporary condition.
The Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards: Scrutiny at the Pace of the Scrutinised
The Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards investigates complaints about MPs’ conduct. The Commissioner’s recommendations then go to the Committee on Standards, which can recommend sanctions including suspension. In 2021, the Owen Paterson case — in which the Commissioner found Paterson had engaged in paid advocacy in breach of the rules — produced a government attempt to reform the standards system before Paterson’s punishment was applied, a manoeuvre so transparently self-serving that it was reversed within forty-eight hours under sustained public pressure, but not before demonstrating the persistent temptation of parliamentary majorities to treat conduct rules as obstacles rather than constraints.
The standards system has been described by its defenders as rigorous and by its critics as slow, inconsistently enforced, and structurally inclined toward protecting the institution over the public interest. Both descriptions have evidence in their favour. The institution and the public interest are not always the same thing, and in British politics, when they diverge, the institution has a considerable structural advantage.
Auf Wiedersehen, amigo!
The Seven Principles of Public Life — known as the Nolan Principles — were established by Lord Nolan’s Committee on Standards in Public Life in 1995, following the cash for questions scandal. They cover selflessness, integrity, objectivity, accountability, openness, honesty, and leadership. The Ministerial Code sets out standards for ministers, enforced by the Prime Minister. The Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority administers MPs’ pay and expenses following the 2009 expenses scandal. The Transparency of Lobbying Act 2014 established a register of consultant lobbyists. The Advisory Committee on Business Appointments oversees the revolving door between government and private sector. The Sue Gray Report (2022) documented conduct at No. 10 during COVID lockdown restrictions.
Alan Nafzger was born in Lubbock, Texas, the son Swiss immigrants. He grew up on a dairy in Windthorst, north central Texas. He earned degrees from Midwestern State University (B.A. 1985) and Texas State University (M.A. 1987). University College Dublin (Ph.D. 1991). Dr. Nafzger has entertained and educated young people in Texas colleges for 37 years. Nafzger is best known for his dark novels and experimental screenwriting. His best know scripts to date are Lenin’s Body, produced in Russia by A-Media and Sea and Sky produced in The Philippines in the Tagalog language. In 1986, Nafzger wrote the iconic feminist western novel, Gina of Quitaque. He currently lives in Holloway, North London. Contact: [email protected]
In British comedy, the prat is the character who makes us laugh because they remind us of our own capacity for foolishness.