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The line between public service and private gain is shamefully blurred

<span>Photograph: Hannah McKay/PA</span>
Photograph: Hannah McKay/PA

After the dust settles over the Greensill affair, I suspect we will find that the lack of judgment over David Cameron’s approaches to ministers is less important than the general failure to address what has become a casual approach to conflicts of interest amongst many in government and politics.

My respected predecessor as chair of the public administration select committee, former MP Tony Wright, and I both produced a series of reports over 15 years about the failure of successive governments to manage the relationships between business and government in a more transparent way. There is nothing wrong with a private citizen wanting to make money, but we have a system that has allowed the lines between public service and private gain to become blurred. This is both shameful, and unfairly shaming of the majority in public office and in politics who do have good values and attitudes, but who are all tarred by the same brush. Much of the wrongdoing is exaggerated, but the worst instances of people using public positions to enrich themselves are utterly corrosive of public trust in government. This must end. This crisis presents an opportunity for a reset in politics and Whitehall, which could begin to restore public confidence.

This should matter to Boris Johnson. He does not need to pretend to be a saint, but his “red wall” voters, who gave him his majority, will dismiss him unless he can show he is more open, more transparent and very different from the out-of-touch elite he defeated in the 2016 referendum and ousted from government.

This does not just concern “lobbyists”, who are outside government and much more difficult to regulate or to control. Of much more concern are those in public office who are being lobbied, and whose control over funding of outside organisations, and over contracts and regulation, the outsiders are seeking to influence. All can now see the general inability of the various codes and systems of oversight, such as the toothless advisory committee on business appointments, to provide sufficient transparency and accountability, which is why even its chair, Lord Pickles, wants reform.

There are of course high-minded principles set out, and there are rules, but what matters most is not whether someone under scrutiny can say, “I have not broken any rules” but whether they are demonstrating integrity, honesty, selflessness and openness in all they do in their life of public service.

Tougher rules and stronger regulation may help, but people do not adopt better values if they are just dodging rules. We teach our children values when bringing them up. The best organisations continue to train and teach the best values and attitudes to their people, as part of creating a positive ethos in their work. The armed forces, the security services, most professions such as the law or medicine, do this. A senior civil servant confirmed to me this week that “the civil service used to do this”, but it all ended with Francis Maude’s shortsighted decision to abolish the National School of Government. That decision is slowly being reversed.

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In the meantime, the government can establish not so much new rules but new processes and education, which encourage more of the proper conversations about values, integrity, ethics and how to behave when there might be potential, or even just perceived, conflicts of interest. We have workshops on unconscious bias training, and on bullying and harassment. Managing ministers’ and officials’ conflicts of interest should be on the curriculum too, and more broadly, every MP and civil servant should have the opportunity every year for a day of personal and collective reflection about how the public would like their leaders to live the government’s Seven Principles of Public Life.

Some complain that this is patronising, or preaching, or even just setting up our leaders for yet more intensive and unfair scrutiny of matters that are necessarily complicated and difficult to explain, or that there is not enough time, or that we will all get it in the neck from the public anyway. In fact, leaders are empowered and can lead more effectively if they are confident in how to set the right example, and how to help others navigate these difficult issues.

There is understandable demand for more rules and punishment, but real learning from this crisis and improving public leaders’ understanding and support for the right values and attitudes is far more important.