Ministers are to be forced to declare the value of all the gifts and hospitality they receive after a Labour MP announced she was quitting the party amid the row over clothes given to the Prime Minister by a party donor.
The rule change was confirmed after Rosie Duffield, MP for Canterbury, quit the Labour Party, accusing Sir Keir Starmer of “hypocrisy” for accepting more than £100,000 in gifts before the election.
A Government source told i: “Keir is committed to restoring trust in politics. We will be more open and transparent in government than the last government.
“We will rewrite the ministerial code to remove the loophole introduced by David Cameron which meant that ministers could avoid declaring value of hospitality they received.
“Under the last government, Labour frontbenchers who went to events could end up sitting next to their Tory counterparts. They had to declare details on MP register including cost, while the Tory ministers did not.”
Commons Leader Lucy Powell first revealed the plans to i earlier this month, and they were confirmed by Pat McFadden, Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, on Sunday morning. Speaking to the BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg programme he promised to “close the loophole”.
It came within hours of Ms Duffield’s announcement she was leaving the Labour Party which she accused of pursuing “cruel and unnecessary” policies by cutting winter fuel payments and refusing to end the two-child benefit cap.
In her resignation letter, she told Keir Starmer she was “so ashamed of what you and your inner circle have done to tarnish and humiliate our once proud party”.
Ministers have been fighting to defend the Prime Minister after it was revealed he accepted more than £100,000 in freebies – more than any other MP since 2019 – while he was leader of the opposition.
His MP register of interests shows Starmer was given free tickets to over two dozen football games, over £20,000 in free accommodation for his son and tickets to see Taylor Swift and Coldplay. Among the most controversial gifts was more than £30,000 of clothes funded by Labour donor Lord Waheed Alli.
The revelations have sparked widespread anger from many in the party as many of the gifts were given shortly before the new Government announced it was cutting winter fuel payments for pensioners.
Until the rule change, any gifts or event tickets given to an MP had to be declared on their register of interests, but ministers did not have to declare hospitality they received in the course of their Government duties.
This had been the case since 2015 following a rule change by David Cameron, meaning many Conservative ministers were not required to declare gifts if they were linked to their job.
There is also a much bigger delay between MP and ministerial declarations – MPs must register any interests with in 28 days, while ministerial interests are published on a quarterly basis.
One time this discrepancy came under scrutiny was in 2021 when Priti Patel, the home secretary at the time, received tickets to the premier of the James Bond film No Time To Die but did not declare it on her MP register.
It was eventually declared on her ministerial register, and the Government said the event linked to her Home Office role as the hospitality had been provided by the Jamaica Tourist Board and she was “invited as the home secretary”.
The Government faced scrutiny, however, over whether this hospitality should have been declared on her MP register of interests after it was revealed Liz Truss, then the foreign secretary, was also invited to the premier.
