This chapter examines party-funding . The radical reform inherent in the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000 quickly proved inadequate to the challenges of regulating an area so central to party competition. The founding legislation was not sufficiently clear about donor transparency, and the Electoral Commission was uncertain about how to calibrate regulatory burdens, and how to allocate its resources across the complex nature of its mission. This brought the Commission into tension with its original architect, the CSPL, and underlined the difficulty faced by the Commission as it struggled to sustain necessary political support from Parliament and from the parties. The new system, unquestionably a major advance over what went before in terms of transparency, nevertheless in several respects actually stimulated greater controversy, with compliance issues becoming particularly controversial where previously they had not existed.

This chapter places the management of public ethics in the context of the dilemmas arising in any regulatory system: how to achieve proportionality, how to avoid reputational risks for the regulator in calibrating that regulatory burden too lightly or too heavily, how to avoid regulatory capture, and how to reconcile the conflicting demands of regulator independence and regulator accountability. The chapter takes the reader through this complexity, distinguishing also between various categories of impropriety. It analyses the regulatory framework of public integrity systems in terms of principles and values, and of formal procedures and institutions.

This chapter analyses the overall consequences of two decades of ethical regulation. The assessment is based on the operational experience of the regulators themselves. It analyses the initial thinking by the political authorities, the CSPL, and the regulatory agencies about which models are appropriate for each particular public-life context and how this thinking has evolved. The chapter draws the themes of the book together to answer a series of questions . Has what has been built led to a better public understanding of what works? Is there evidence of regulatory mission-creep, either on the part of the authorities in designing ethical regulation, or the regulators in implementing it? Have regulatory agencies themselves learned to foster cooperative working relationships with those actors over whom they have regulatory authority, and with those actors to whom they are themselves accountable? What lessons if any should we draw from the experience of the last twenty years?

The chapter examines the ethical systems in place for regulating the civil service. It analyses a range of linked issues about the politicization of civil-service appointments and it explores the situation of special advisers, and the growth of ethical regulations affecting them

This chapter explores the different arrangements for ethical regulation in the devolved governments of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Initially, these arrangements were provided for in the devolution legislation but over time the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh and Northern Ireland Assemblies have developed and refined their own machinery in the light of experience. Although the three different jurisdictions differ in their approach to the regulation of standards, all have been giving increasing attention to the problem of ethical issues. In Scotland an early lobbying scandal (“lobbygate”) swiftly led to the establishment of a Code of Conduct and stronger regulatory machinery. Recent initiatives have produced a new approach to regulating lobbyists. Wales has also refined its standards machinery since devolution was introduced. Northern Ireland continues to lag behind the other two areas , although has learned from experience in Scotland and is catching up with improvements to its integrity arrangeemnts. The chapter analyses the distinctive features of the three systems and identifies continuing differences both from each other and the rest of the UK.

This chapter analyses the response expenses scandal of 2009 and the experience of the new external regulator, the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority. The chapter analyses how the speed with which IPSA’s design emerged and the early difficulties of implementation contributed to an environment of deep antagonism between the new regulator and MPs themselves.

The chapter examines the Ministerial Code and its antecedents, and explores recent efforts to shift aspects of the Code away from the Prime Minister’s exclusive hands: towards Parliament for content, and towards an independent adviser, for cases of alleged Ministerial impropriety. The role of the Prime Minister’s Adviser on Ministerial Interests has not, in practice, developed significantly towards meaningful independence, and clearly - given majority discipline in a parliamentary legislature - it suits governments to retain accountability on these matters under Parliament’s usually supportive majority. The chapter concludes, from the cases which have arisen to date, that the political implications of more independent regulation of all but the most serious cases of alleged Ministerial impropriety would probably make independent regulation unworkable, however desirable it might be.

This chapter shows how the House of Lords was initially reluctant to follow the House of Commons in strengthening its regulatory machinery. One constraint was the absence of sanctions for misconduct but peers generally preferred to rely on an honour system. Gradually opinion shifted and more formal machinery was introduced. The chapter assesses the reforms and analyses the extent to which the House of Lords remains vulnerable to abuse.

The chapter examines the case of English local government and the experience of the Standards Board for England. The model chosen was an ambitious one, superficially built on a clear and authoritative structure of external, independent, statute-based regulatory authority. In practice, as the eventual demise of the SBE demonstrated, the model was badly conceived and badly implemented, the fault lying mostly at central-government level. Despite its decision to impose external regulation, the Labour government was unsure of how far it wanted to take this principle, and delayed its eventual decision in ways that seriously overburdened the SBE, and cost it dearly in terms of credibility, loss of allies within local government, and at Westminster. Eventually a more satisfactory balance between local and centralized regulation was established, and important modifications were made to the model Code of Conduct, allowing a lighter-touch form of strategic regulation. This shift came too late to save the model established by the Local Government Act 2000, however, and the fatal loss of credibility and institutional allies left the SBE as a relatively soft target for a new mood of light-touch regulation which informed the approach of the Coalition government elected in 2010.

The chapter set the contemporary debate about public ethics in historical context by tracing the approach to integrity questions broadly defined from the late nineteenth century. It suggests that the early tackling of such problems as electoral corruption and patronage may have blinded elites to new and continuing integrity issues and that even though the 19th and 20th century record threw up scandals there was a tendency to deal with them in a limited and incremental manner. With the formation of the Committee on Standards in Public Life in 1994 this approach changed and a much more systematic consideration of ethical issues now occurs.

This chapter provides background to the emerging debate about integrity issues in British politics, and provides an overview of the regulatory machinery established to deal with it. The chapter deals in detail with the role and impact of the Committee since the 1990s, and its distinctive approach: in particular its avoidance of areas involving the hard-law of corruption, its focus on sub-standard but not illegal behaviour, and its strong commitment to a combination of codes, self-policing, and external accountability of essentially internal regulators. The chapter distinguishes between the early period of the Committee’s existence and the later more controversial period. It argues that after 2000 the Committee’s role changed from setting out principles, codes, and recommendations for new regulatory machinery, to that of review and meta-supervision of the agencies it had helped create.