Sir Keir Starmer should hold a COBRA-style meeting with his cabinet ministers to decide new rules on donations, a former Labour minister has said.
Baroness Harriet Harman, a host of Sky News’ Electoral Dysfunction podcast, said there needs to be “new rules and processes in place” following the row over the prime minister and his top team accepting freebies.
While Sir Keir yesterday repaid some of the gifts he has received this year, including tickets to Taylor Swift, the Labour peer said the government hasn’t “quite got there yet” and should appoint the new ethics commissioner “to bring this all together”.
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She told the podcast: “I think they ought to have something like a COBRA where you get everybody in the same room, everybody who’s involved, you know, the senior civil servants in the Cabinet Office, the cabinet members who are involved. And you all decide.”
She added: “It’s a bit like when the global financial crisis hit, we were like, we’re not going to wait for the next bank to collapse or the next one. We’re going to jump over and in front of it and actually stabilise the situation.
“And I think that what they need to do is jump over and above this and work it, stabilise it and sort it out rather than respond to each story day by day by day.”
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COBRA – which stands for Cabinet Office Briefing Room A – is often called in times of emergency, such as civil unrest or flooding.
Baroness Harman has previously been critical of Sir Keir’s handling of the freebies row, saying he should watch football on TV to put an end to the media frenzy and that trying to justify his actions is making things worse.
Sky News’ Westminster Accounts project revealed the prime minister has declared more than £100,000 in gifts, benefits and hospitality since becoming Labour leader, including tickets to concerts and football games.
Sir Keir has also been criticised for accepting thousands of pounds worth of clothes from Labour peer Lord Waheed Alli, as well as the use of the businessman’s flat – a gift valued at £20,000 – for his son to study for school exams during the election period.
The party leader has since announced he will no longer accept donations to pay for clothes and that he has repaid £6,000 worth of gifts he has received since taking office, which he said was “right” to do while he sets out a new set of principles for governing donations.
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On football games specifically, the renowned Arsenal fan has said he can’t use his season ticket to sit in the stands for security reasons.
Regarding Lord Alli, who is under investigation by the Lords’ standards watchdog for alleged non-registration of interests, Sir Keir has argued he was motivated to help financially because he wanted Labour to win the general election.
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While there has been no suggestion of rule breaking regarding the freebies row, with the donations properly declared, opposition parties have attacked the Labour leadership for accepting gifts while being tough on the economy, and for damaging trust when they had vowed to “clean up politics” during the election.
Baroness Harman said it is “not rocket science” to put a cap on donations to parties and individuals, as the public do not like seeing “big money involved with politics”.
“I say that as somebody who strongly defends the relationship between the trade unions and the party and also admires Lord Alli’s loyalty to the party,” she said.
“I just think the system needs to change, and I think it could be changed quite quickly.”
She also suggested that Sir Keir should decide what his cabinet ministers pay back, rather than leave it down to the individual’s judgement.
Regarding his own decision to repay some gifts, she said: “There’s a sense that this is an individual decision from the prime minister about what he pays back, but actually he’s the leader of the government, and he needs to make the decision about what other cabinet ministers pay, but not leave it as a personal matter for them to decide.”
