The Greensill scandal threatens to engulf ministers and mandarins alike
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The Greensill affair began as an embarrassment for a former Prime Minister, then morphed into a damage limitation exercise by the Government. It has now metastasised into a scandal about conflicts of interest in the senior civil service. It is a complicated story that few outside Whitehall fully understand, but the stink of corruption emitted by this scandal should worry us all.
Boris Johnson has rightly refused to exonerate David Cameron, appointing instead a legal expert to investigate. But the scope of this inquiry is thus far limited to the role of “supply chain finance”, the obscure but highly lucrative business in which Greensill Capital was engaged. However, this remit may have to be widened after the revelation that one of the most important people in Whitehall was working for Greensill while still employed by the Civil Service. Bill Crothers, the Chief Commercial Officer, says that this arrangement was approved by the Cabinet Office and was, moreover, by no means unusual.
Yet it will come as news to most people that supposedly impartial officials are allowed to take on part-time jobs, and be rewarded with share options potentially worth millions, working for the very companies that are lobbying them for public contracts potentially worth billions. This kind of nexus is not only anything but transparent — it is virtually impossible to police. The fact that the Advisory Committee on Business Appointments (ACOBA), the body charged with vetting the appointments of ministers and officials, apparently knew nothing about this practice speaks volumes. The Cabinet Office will now have to provide details of all such arrangements, but even if no evidence of wrongdoing emerges, the abiding impression is that the British Civil Service, admired for its integrity throughout the world, has been compromised.
Cameron himself has said that he regrets conducting what seems to have been a lobbying operation on a grand scale, but he denies that he broke any rules. Nor does the former PM appear to be in the least contrite. He has sought to play down the sums he stood to gain from accessing taxpayers’ money on behalf of a then dubious and now bankrupt firm. A man once entrusted by the country with the highest office in the land evidently thinks that the only thing he has done wrong is to be rumbled.
The truth is, rather, that Cameron is lucky that Greensill collapsed before he was able to profit from its infiltration of Whitehall. The fact that he was left with nothing worse than egg on his face means that he cannot be accused of enriching himself from the public purse. But it was not for want of trying. Even if the inquiry exonerates him, Cameron’s reputation has been tarnished.
The more urgent question raised by the Greensill scandal is whether ministers or mandarins should be permitted to enter into such cosy relationships with commercial interests, either while they are in office or even immediately afterwards. The Crothers case suggests that this horse bolted a long time ago. The price we pay for employing private sector expertise to improve pubic sector efficiency is that the frontier between them is so permeable as to be virtually invisible. This, at least, is what we are being asked to believe. Crothers himself claims that he was granted permission by his colleagues to take on a position at Greensill because he was in the process of “transitioning” back into the private sector, whence he had originally come. No doubt “transitioning” has become a euphemism, well understood in the corridors of power. But mandarins need to know that it is no excuse for turning a blind eye to obvious conflicts of interest.
In dealing with this burgeoning imbroglio, the Prime Minister has so far played a straight bat. He is determined to protect the Chancellor, Rishi Sunak, who was the main target of Greensill’s lobbying operation. Yet the latter is quite capable of defending himself and will in any case have to answer questions in the Commons in due course. The same applies to other ministers involved, including the Health Secretary, Matt Hancock. Now that he has set up an independent review, the PM should let it take its course. Getting to the bottom of Greensill is no longer a job for ministers or mandarins, but for Nigel Boardman, the lawyer appointed to investigate the whole odious affair.
Instead, Boris Johnson should focus on the bigger picture. It is not too soon to ask what lessons have been learned from Greensill. What is at stake here is nothing less than the reputation of British governance. In order to vindicate his colleagues and the officials with whom they work, the Prime Minister — who is also the Minister for the Civil Service — should bring forward reforms of the rules on lobbying and appointments. Given the scale of public spending occasioned by the pandemic, rooting out corruption has become a matter of the utmost urgency. The present system is neither transparent nor accountable. To ensure that it is seen to be both is Boris Johnson’s job.
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