
The Tory party in the United Kingdom has urged a civil service watchdog group to investigate the so-called “cash for jobs” appointments that happened under the country’s Labor Government.
Recently, the shadow paymaster general, John Glen, wrote a letter to the Civil Service Commission, requesting that the group act.
This comes after former banker Ian Corfield was given a top job in the Treasury after he donated £20,000 to the Labor Party.
Most of the vacant positions in the UK civil service are filled through what’s called “fair and open competition.” Part of this process includes advertising for the open position, though this didn’t happen in Corfield’s instance.
This isn’t the only potentially problematic appointment that has occurred recently, either.
Last week, news broke that a businesswoman was given a top civil service job after her firm donated £67,000 to the Labor Party.
That woman, Emily Middleton, was appointed to be the new director general of the Department for Science and Technology. This appointment came only a few weeks after that donation was declared.
Middleton serves as a partner at the consultancy firm Public Digital, and that company made two separate donations to Peter Kyle, the frontbencher for the Labor Party.
In the letter that Glen sent to the Civil Service Commission recently, he wrote that his concern was that some ministers could be trying to “circumvent” the normal rules about appointments for civil service positions so that they could boost up sympathizers to the party.
As he wrote:
“I fear that these are not isolated cases, and risks a wider pattern of the politicization of the civil service staffing and communications under this administration.”
In response, the government has said that every appointment it has made has been up to the standards of the rules regarding recruitment for civil service positions.
The Labor Party came into power about a month ago, following more than 10 years of being the opposition party. It was a landslide victory at the polls for Labor, following the snap election that was held on July 4.
As a result of those elections, Keir Starmer was officially named the UK’s new prime minister.
It was quite the turnaround for the party, which suffered the largest defeat in nearly a century only about five years ago.
The Labor Party won 412 seats out of the 650 total seats in the House of Commons, with the Conservatives winning only 121.
As Starmer said in a recent speech to some of his supporters:
“A mandate like this comes with a great responsibility.”
He added that the fight to regain the trust of the people after years of being disillusioned with the government “is the battle that defines our age.”
The leader of the Conservative Party, Rishi Sunak, is no longer prime minister of the United Kingdom as a result of those elections. Following the results, he said it was a “sobering verdict.”