In July, Pat McFadden MP, the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, announced in the House of Commons that the Government would be establishing a new Ethics and Integrity Commission to “strengthen probity in public life”. The Commission, he explained, “will sit at the heart of our standards system. It will promote the Seven Principles of Public Life; support public bodies developing codes of conduct; enable the sharing of best practice across the public sector, and report to government on specific areas in need of improvement.”
Its creation fulfils a Labour manifesto promise and forms part of the wider mission to “restore trust in politics”. Since last year’s election, the Government has published an updated Ministerial Code, enhanced the powers of the Independent Adviser on Ministerial Standards, and created a new register of Ministers’ Gifts and Hospitality — measures which, it claims, “drives up standards in government”. Alongside the Ethics and Integrity Commission announcement, the Government also outlined changes to the arrangements for ministerial severance payments and the Business Appointments Rules.
But what are the key issues at stake with this new Ethics and Integrity Commission? What is its proposed role and scope, and does this justify the creation of yet another oversight body?
The Ethics and Integrity Commission
The concept of a new Ethics and Integrity Commission was first floated by now-Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner MP in November 2021 during a keynote speech at the Institute for Government entitled. However, until last month’s announcement, few details had emerged about its potential remit or powers. As Peter Riddell observed last year, while the direction of change is clear, “there is still considerable uncertainty about how the new EIC will work, what its powers and remit will be, what its relations will be both with the main constitutional watchdogs and, in particular, with the Committee on Standards in Public Life (CSPL).”
On 21 July, the Government provided some of these details.
Firstly, and perhaps most interestingly, rather than setting up an entirely new body, the Government has decided to “strengthen and reform” the CSPL. By way of continuity, the current Chair, Doug Chalmers, will continue his role in the new Ethics and Integrity Commission. The core role of the CSPL — exploring how the ethics system can be strengthened — will be maintained. The new Commission will also continue to provide advice to the government on ethics in public life by conducting broad inquiries into topical issues, which must still be responded to “in a reasonable timeframe”.
But, the role of this new body is also set to expand upon its predecessors. Specifically, the Commission will:
- Report annually to the Prime Minister on ethical standards in the public sector
- Engage regularly with public bodies to advise of ethical standards and the development of codes of conduct
- Convene other ethics and standards bodies from across government and Parliament to share best practice and raise concerns
Although, like the Committee on Standards in Public Life before it, the Commission will not investigate specific cases — a role that will remain with the various ethical regulators and oversight bodies — it appears set to oversee and formalise cooperation between the disparate bodies which make up our current system of propriety and ethics. Essentially, the new Commission will act as an umbrella under which all the specific oversight bodies will operate.
It is worth noting that this falls short of the plans initially outlined by Angela Rayner in 2021. At that time, she pledged that the new commission would “subsume the Independent Advisor on Ministerial Interests” and be placed on a “on a statutory footing” to remove the risk of political interference.
The Government has not yet provided any update on the timescales for establishing the new Commission, and its Terms of Reference and resource allocation have yet to be agreed.
Is the Ethics and Integrity Commission reform likely to succeed?
In 2023, the Ipsos MORI Veracity Index, which measures levels of public trust in different professions, recorded its lowest ever scores for ministers and politicians, with only 10% and 9% of British adults respectively saying they trusted them to tell the truth. After years of Conservative scandal, these figures were perhaps unsurprising, but no less concerning.
It is against this backdrop of dwindling confidence in the British political system that Sir Keir Starmer, while in opposition, made a clear pledge to restore trust in politics — a commitment reaffirmed in Labour’s 2024 manifesto, which promised to “end the chaos of Tory sleaze.” The creation of a reformed Ethics and Integrity Commission was Labour’s flagship reform, intended to help “stop the rot.” Now that its proposed role and remit have been outlined in broad terms, the question must be asked: is the new entity likely to be effective in restoring the UK public’s faith in politics?
Generally, the Government’s announcement has been well received by key stakeholders. Spotlight on Corruptiondescribed the move as the “first step in a more ambitious upgrade of standards regulation that independent experts have long called for”. Similarly, the Institute for Government welcomed the move, stating, “today’s announcement is progress’ and praised the Government for taking ‘some important steps to improving the system that governs behaviour in public life”.
It’s also worth mentioning that the Government appears to have been receptive to concerns raised by the Committee on Standards in Public Life during the policy formation stage. In 2021, the CSPL concluded that the creation of a new all-consuming Ethics and Integrity Commission should not be pursued, arguing that:
A single commission would amass significant unelected power over the workings of government. If created as a merger of existing standards regulators, such a body would have the ability to oversee the work of ministers, civil servants, and special advisers, as well as the processes of public appointments, business appointments, appointments to the House of Lords, and lobbying. The concentration of such power to a body without an elected mandate, and without the checks, balances and accountabilities of elected politicians, seems disproportionate and does not sit well in our democratic system.
As we now know, rather than merging the menagerie into a single ethics commission, the Government has chosen to reform the Committee itself while retaining the various other ethical bodies that perform oversight functions. This approach avoids concentrating power in a single unelected body, reflecting the Committee’s previous warning.
By serving as a as a “‘one-stop shop” for members of the public seeking information on standards in public life”, the Commission could enhance transparency, raise awareness of ethical regulators, and, in turn, contribute to restoring trust in politics and political institutions. However, the decision to create an “umbrella body”, rather than a single Commission, might not be radical enough to signal a decisive break from previous administrations. As Spotlight on Corruption noted in their briefing paper, the approach “may not be a sufficient level of change to restore public trust in a broken regulatory system”.
Linked to this, concerns have also been raised relating to the composition of the Commission. Michael Gordon, for example, highlights grey areas about the composition and structure of the Committee — such as the number of members, the length of their appointments and their qualifications/professional background. From a democratic perspective, it is also key to ask: who will appoint members of the Commission? If the Prime Minister appoints individuals, then their independence may be undermined. Given how vital independence and transparency are in this context, should, then, Parliament play a role in the appointments process or should this be left to a separate body à la the Judicial Appointments Committee? The Government is yet to confirm any of these details.
Also notably absent from the Government’s announcement was any intention to introduce primary legislation to embed these changes. Among others, Spotlight on Corruption have been critical of the omission, noting that it falls below original promises to introduce reforms on a statutory footing. They argue that without statutory backing “the current proposals for the Commission are based on more of the same ‘good chaps’ approach to regulating ethics in government”.
Indeed, the absence of a legislative backstop fails to signal, symbolically, that the Government is genuinely committed to changing parliamentary culture for the better and restoring trust in politics. In a context where public trust in politicians is clearly fragile, formal legislative sanctions are needed against ministers who undermine ethical standards. Rather than rebuilding trust, the current lack of statutory backing risks eroding it further. On this front, therefore, the Government ought to reconsider. If, as the Prime Minster has repeatedly suggested, he is serious about upholding the highest ethical standards in government, there is no reason to resist placing the Ethics and Integrity Commission on a statutory footing.
Ultimately, time will tell how successful the new Ethics and Integrity Commission will be in meeting Labour’s stated aim of “restoring trust in politics”. The announcement of the Commission is welcome, but the announcement alone will not be enough to rebuild public confidence. Cultural change inevitably takes time, yet key issues — such as the passage of primary legislation and the composition and structure of the Commission — must be addressed from the outset. As Pat McFadden stated, “the public will in the end judge politicians and government by how they do their jobs and how they fulfil the principles of public service”. For that reason, the creation of the Commission must deliver real, visible change if the Government is ultimately to secure a favourable judgment from the public.
Kate Dewsnip.
Kate is a Graduate Teaching Fellow and PhD candidate at the University of Liverpool School of Law and Social Justice. She is a contributing writer for the Constitution Society.
The Constitution Society is committed to the promotion of informed debate and is politically impartial. Any views expressed in this article are the personal views of the author and not those of The Constitution Society.