Starmer says ‘process and procedure matter’ amid cronyism row

Sir Keir Starmer has said “process and procedure and doing things properly matters” to him amid allegations of cronyism.

The Prime Minister is battling the accusations after Lord Alli – who has donated more than £500,000 to Labour over the past 20 years and provided clothing, “multiple pairs of glasses” and accommodation for Sir Keir – was given a pass to Number 10, despite not having a formal job there.

Responding to Sir Keir’s speech in the Downing Street garden on Tuesday, Conservative shadow Treasury minister Laura Trott accused the Labour administration of “hypocrisy on stilts”.

Asked about Lord Alli, a Labour peer since 1998, and allegations of cronyism, the Prime Minister told the press: “These allegations and these accusations are coming from the very people that dragged our country down in the first place, so you’ll forgive me if I take that approach to it.

“We are going to fix the foundations, we’ve got to do it at speed and I’m determined to have the right people in the right places to allow us to get on with that job.

“I’m enormously aware of how big a task this is and how we have to move at pace, and that’s why we’re getting the best people into the best jobs.

“But I’m not really going to take lectures on this from the people who dragged our country so far down in the last few years.”

Sir Keir declined to “publicly discuss individual appointments” but confirmed there would be an “open and transparent” process in future recruitment processes.

He also denied saying “process doesn’t matter” and added: “I am absolutely determined to restore honesty and integrity to Government, because I think that is core to ensuring that people appreciate that politics can be a force for good.

“I think one of the reasons people have been disillusioned – disaffected, if you like – in recent years is because they can’t see politics as a force for good, so that process and procedure and doing things properly matters to me beyond the fact that it, as it were, should be done properly.

“I think it’s core to politics, so I didn’t mean that.

“Look, if you take Lord Alli, he’s a long-term donor and contributor to the Labour Party. He was doing some transition work with us, he had a pass for a short-term time to do that work, and the work finished, and he hasn’t got a pass. That’s the state of affairs.”

Allegations of cronyism have extended to Ian Corfield, who has donated £20,000 to the party over the past decade, including £5,000 to Chancellor Rachel Reeves, before he took a temporary job in the Treasury as its investment director.

The Sunday Times reported at the weekend Mr Corfield had stepped down from his civil service role to become a temporary, unpaid adviser to the department instead.

According to Ms Trott, who was Chief Secretary to the Treasury under former prime minister Rishi Sunak, her former department “is in complete disarray”.

Responding to Sir Keir’s speech, she said: “The Treasury appointments once again appear not to have gone through the normal processes and haven’t been disclosed to Parliament.

“The Chancellor appears to have not only failed to declare that a political appointee to the civil service was a donor, a breach of the ministerial code, but has now circumvented normal processes to promote an ally.

“Hypocrisy on stilts.”

The former minister made this accusation based on the civil service’s “external by default” recruitment policy, to open job applications to candidates outside the civil service, according to a Conservative source, based on answers to MPs’ written questions from Cabinet Office minister Georgia Gould.

Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey did not comment on allegations of cronyism in his response to Tuesday’s speech at Number 10, but said: “Only the out-of-touch Conservative Party will deny the scale of the challenges facing the new Government and the new Parliament.”