Monday, September 23, 2024
Freebie Rollercoaster
The paper has carried out a trawl of what, to my mind, are pretty difficult spreadsheets on the Parliamentaru website, to establish that more than £700,000 worth of free gifts and hospitality was received by MPs in the past year for everything from Taylor Swift tickets to a helicopter ride.
These figures are based on data from the MPs’ register of interests between September 2023 and August 2024, and come during a growing furore around the acceptance of gifts by the prime minister and his inner circle:
On Friday, the prime minister pledged that he, Rachel Reeves and Angela Rayner will not accept any more free clothes from donors in an effort to draw a line under the debacle.
The Conservatives have been critical of the number of gifts received by senior Labour figures and called for a full investigation into Starmer’s potential breaches of the rules.
But Conservative MPs have also significantly benefited in gifts from wealthy benefactors – 141 Tory MPs received £359,891 in free gifts, including tickets paid for by the water industry and thousands of pounds of clay-pigeon shoots and helicopter rides from wealthy donors, according to Observer analysis. In the same period, 118 Labour MPs netted £298,151 worth of gifts.
Nearly £80,000 of the total amount of freebies was given to MPs since the election in July, mostly to newly elected MPs.
One of the biggest categories of freebies was football tickets or gigs hosted at football stadiums, which came to £96,000 in the last year.
Free tickets have largely come from the Premier League and its football club members, many of whom are lobbying against Labour’s plans for a new independent regulator for the sport.
Starmer himself has received thousands of pounds of corporate hospitality tickets to watch Arsenal games in the last year, a move he said was necessary due to security concerns about him sitting in the stands.
One of the other significant spenders, the gambling industry, spent more than £20,000 on gifts for MPs over the last year.
While corporate hospitality passes to football games, golf tournaments and tennis matches were common, 11 MPs also received more than £17,000 worth of free tickets to Taylor Swift’s Eras tour.
The standard defence being trotted out by Labour ministers is that the acceptance of all this largesse is within the rules. I am not sure that this reasoning resonates at all with the average voter.
If these politicians can't see how this looks to pensioners who have been denied their winter fuel allowance and are struggling to heat their home, a single mother with more tha two children who has been denied child benefit, or to the tens of millions of workers in this country whose pay has not kept up with inflation and are reliant on in-work benefits, then they don't deserve to be sitting in the House of Commons in the first place.
Donors are largely after influence, which is why many of them give these gifts in the first place. Is that really an appropriate way to conduct our public affairs?
Many would have no problem with donations to individuals and political parties to help pay for election and campaign expenses, because the alternative would either be state funding or confining representative politics to the filthy rich, but there is no justification for all these gifts and corporate hospitality. The rules should be changed, and soon.
Donors are largely after influence, which is why many of them give these gifts in the first place. Is that really an appropriate way to conduct our public affairs?
Many would have no problem with donations to individuals and political parties to help pay for election and campaign expenses, because the alternative would either be state funding or confining representative politics to the filthy rich, but there is no justification for all these gifts and corporate hospitality. The rules should be changed, and soon.
