The UK’s public sector needs a “robust ethical culture” to ensure people feel safe speaking up about poor behavior, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s standards watchdog warned following a string of allegations of impropriety across government.
(Bloomberg) — The UK’s public sector needs a “robust ethical culture” to ensure people feel safe speaking up about poor behavior, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s standards watchdog warned following a string of allegations of impropriety across government.
Senior leaders, including in the government and police, often wait for a crisis to take action rather than identifying problem areas beforehand. That dynamic can lead to scandal and a negative impact on public trust early, a report from the independent body that advises Sunak on arrangements for upholding ethical standards of conduct across public life, found.
The review was commissioned last year, in the midst of the so-called Partygate scandal for breaking Covid-19 rules, claims of irregularities in how contracts were awarded during the pandemic, an attempt to help a Conservative MP evade an ethics probe and questions over how the refurbishment of then-Premier Boris Johnson’s Downing Street apartment was paid for.
Since then, more allegations of impropriety in public office have emerged, with two separate probes into Conservative Party Chairman Nadhim Zahawi’s tax affairs and the appointment of BBC Chairman Richard Sharp being launched this week alone. Beyond government, public confidence in the police was rocked after a serving Metropolitan Police officer was unmasked as one of the UK’s most prolific sex offenders.
A government spokesperson said it “takes propriety and ethics in public life very seriously.”
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There should be “zero tolerance of poor behavior” among leaders, Jonathan Evans, Chair of the UK’s Committee on Standards in Public Life, said in the report. People working in the public sector “doubt that action will be taken if they raise a concern and fear that if they do, it will impact negatively on their career,” he said.
His committee pointed to the absence of a single ethics program in government, with senior civil servants in each department bearing responsibility for its culture. The government’s Propriety and Ethics Team, which provides advice across central government, is trying to be more proactive but is small and therefore limited in how much they are able to do, it found.
Evans called for the development of stronger guidance on ethical issues across departmental boards and warned that an imperative to deliver decisions quickly doesn’t absolve individuals from their responsibility to avoid conflicts of interest and act only in the public interest.
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