Why The Tories’ Press Briefing Room Won’t ‘Increase Transparency’
These recent examples of the Conservatives’ transparency issues show engagement with the press isn’t one of them.
A Freedom of Information request by PA Media yesterday revealed that Downing Street spent over £2.6m refurbishing No 9 with a new press briefing room, leading Boris Johnson’s Cabinet Office to defend the decision as a move towards “transparency and accountability”.
The news emerged just hours after the backlash over a 1% pay rise for NHS staff hit headlines, resulting in comparisons by politicians, journalists, and the public between the value and urgency of the two decisions.
Labour has called the renovation a “vanity project”. The Cabinet Office response claimed their decision to kit out a ‘White House style’ briefing room was in the public interest:
“…as the new broadcasting of lobby briefings will increase public accountability and transparency about the work of this Government now and in the future.”
An assurance to the public of increased “accountability and transparency” comes after significant and long-standing criticism of the government for ‘cronyism’. The timing of this revelation alongside the news about meagre pay rises for long-battered NHS staff certainly won’t help.
Yet if the Tories intend to address these fears at all, the comparison to the White House briefing room is a particularly cynical and, ultimately, lazy one: for the last 4 years that particular room has been used as a space to berate reporters, misdirect attention with false claims, and actively misinform the public with absurd, dangerous ideas later brushed off as “sarcasm”.
Over the past few weeks focus has returned to the Conservative government’s lack of transparency concerning COVID contracts after a high court ruled last month that they broke the law.
The ruling concerned a failure to publish details of its COVID contracts within 30 days, not whether or not contracts were awarded fairly. However, the public could be forgiven for mistakenly thinking this, given the National Audit Office has reported a failure by the government to disclose its conflicts of interest.
*Update Mar 7*: a High Court order shows that 100 of 708 relevant contracts remain unpublished, and stated that the Prime Minister had misled Parliament when he said that contracts were “there on the record for everybody to see.”
Over the last year Byline Times has released several stories on the government's COVID contracts, and on March 4 wrote that a total of £900m had so far been given to firms of Tory donors:
“…a firm with links to Hancock’s family was awarded a £5.5 million contract for COVID-19 mobile testing units, while a family friend of Hancock was awarded a £14.4 million deal for the supply of personal protective equipment (PPE).
As acknowledged by the National Audit Office (NAO), this process has eroded the public’s confidence in the Government’s procurement system. The spending watchdog explained in tworeports last November how Hancock’s department had failed to record basic conflicts of interest or the reasons why certain suppliers were selected.”
Sophie E. Hill’s interactive ‘My Little Crony’ project recently crunched data from investigative reporting done on this issue, mapping connections between Conservative politicians and those who receive their contracts.
So while information can be found by the few investigative journalists newsrooms can afford, and the government does publish details publicly — albeit late, and in the depths of the labyrinthine GOV.uk site — issues around its transparency remain complex at best. But the larger, and far more pernicious issue is this government’s lack of accountability.
Boris Johnson was one of the figureheads of the Vote Leave campaign that promised NHS workers and the taxpayer £350m per week. He has repeatedly made the claim, before and after the referendum, that the Brexit he led would circulate “billions” back into the UK economy.
Matt Hancock is happy to appear on Good Morning Britain to discuss his delight at the passing of the school meals bill he voted against because he knows he won’t be held accountable, in any real terms, when he refuses to answer questions about it.
Then, of course, there’s Dominic Cummings.
This lack of accountability is global, and both a cause and a symptom of the concentration of power and money. It results not only in politicians and other wealthy individuals’ increased power to obscure and dodge, but the public’s decreased power to even think about how to resist, let alone act.
After all the performative applause for NHS workers during the economy’s slide into the deepest recession for almost a century, transparency would look like Boris publicly and very specifically accounting for that £350m a week. Following that, redirecting some of Jeff Bezos’ $9m per hour salary, for example, might be the next step in common sense.
Real accountability won’t be found in a multi-million-pound press briefing room. It will be found when the journalists in and out of that room are properly funded. It will look like action taken against politicians who break the law; £350m a week to the NHS; a windfall tax; an ongoing wealth tax. It will only be achieved with a recalibration of power in our private institutions, and a return of a strengthened democracy to our public ones.