Lobbying of Government Committee

Richard Burgon Excerpts

Wednesday 14th April 2021 Commons Chamber

[Richard Burgon (Leeds East) (Lab) [V]]

The scandal of the former Prime Minister lobbying the Government for his new boss has rightly captured the headlines. I must say that it is really a bit rich for some Tory MPs to attempt to ride their high horse in this debate, because the rot runs much deeper. The whole system is rigged in the interests of the super-rich, and the super-rich spend a lot of money making sure that it stays that way. In the Tory party, they have the perfect vehicle for that.

The pandemic has cast more light on some very questionable practices. While there are 37p benefit increases, wage cuts for millions of public sector workers and tax rises for millions, some, on the other hand, have had a very good pandemic indeed. Vast sums have been handed over to Serco and the like—funds that should have gone to our national health service. Companies with connections to top Tories have been 10 times more likely to get covid contracts than those without such connections. The Health Secretary’s mate, the landlord of his former local pub, won a covid test contract worth a small fortune. I could go on. Instead, I will quote the words of the former Government chief scientist, David King, who said that the process of distributing public money to private companies during this pandemic “really smells of corruption”.

But it is not just in a crisis that the Conservatives look to enrich the super-rich. There was the Housing Minister acting unlawfully over a £1 billion property deal that helped the developer to avoid tens of millions in local council charges. He got his approval from the Conservative Government and, two weeks later, donated £12,000 to the Conservative party. What about the Tory MPs raking in small fortunes on top of their salary—as if being an MP is not a full-time job—making many thousands of pounds doing private consultancy work in a second job during this pandemic? It is shameful and, frankly, it should be banned.

One in three of the UK’s billionaires have bankrolled the Conservative party since 2005, and boy, do they get their money’s worth! There have been tens of billions of pounds in corporate giveaways for the rich from the Conservative party. I will end on the words of David Cameron—himself something of an authority on these matters:

“We all know how it works. The lunches, the hospitality, the quiet word in your ear, the ex-ministers and ex-advisers for hire, helping big business find the right way to get its way.”

The stench of corruption has grown ever stronger through this crisis and people across the country are quite rightly fed up to the back teeth of it. People are sick of it. It needs to be stamped out before it does untold damage to our democracy.