Britain’s trust problem starts at the top
Britain’s overtures to patriotism fall short without a new national anthem: transparency.
Boris Johnson’s government is one of lavish expenses. Two currencies pay for its appetites: political capital for impunity, pound sterling for secrecy.
Matt Hancock cashes out of both. After a court ruling that the health secretary broke transparency laws by failing to publish details of multi-billion pound government contracts for personal protective equipment, he ascends scot-free to the club for whom allegiance to the Prime Minister excuses conduct. Dominic Cummings and Priti Patel can give him the tour.
The list of contracts awarded without public tender, bringing dubious return on investment, grows longer by the news cycle. The latest: a £23.5m deal for US data analytics firm Palantir to run the NHS datastore. Once funded by the CIA’s venture capital arm, Palantir is best-known for its work with US defence and intelligence agencies and has provided data mining and location tracking capabilities to the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
The deal follows months of Palantir lobbying NHS officials, and redactions in the contract obscure the datasets the firm will access. With no public consultation on the project or guarantees that it upholds the privacy rights of NHS users, the government faces another lawsuit over transparency.
Secrecy and undue influence taint more aspects of British governance. Money laundering costs the UK more than £100bn annually; a figure Chancellor Rishi Sunak should consider when “levelling” with the nation on the pandemic’s economic toll. The UK recently upgraded the risk level of money laundering and terrorist financing in the property sector, where an estimated £100bn worth of properties are owned anonymously by companies registered in tax havens.
In recent years, Britain has introduced multiple regulations to combat money laundering and tax avoidance. Since 2016, UK firms have been legally required to publish ownership information; still, roughly 10% of British companies won’t identify their beneficial owner. A look at Companies House, which accepts without verification companies registered to unintelligible strings of text, might hint why.
As its COVID contracts suggest, Britain is no mere bystander to flows of dark money. Britain’s overseas territories and crown dependencies account for four of the Tax Justice Network’s ten tax havens most corrosive to the global economy; combined, its network is the world’s most permissive structure for tax avoidance.
Selective due diligence now also infringes on press freedom. openDemocracy recently exposed a secret clearance unit in Michael Gove’s Cabinet Office that screens Freedom of Information (FOI) requests, blocks the release of “sensitive” information, and compiles blacklists of journalists and campaigners. This is in clear violation of the “applicant-blind” FOI Act.
Such dishonesty means trust is in short supply. Of the 27 nations in Edelman’s 2021 Trust Barometer, the UK reported the third-lowest score of institutional trust. From the latest British Social Attitudes survey: only 20% of the public think Britain’s wealth differences are fair, and just 39% believe that people in Britain get what they deserve.
The Conservatives enjoy a boost in the polls thanks to Britain’s vaccine success, but distrust creates disengagement. Throughout 2020, the Reuters Institute found a significant increase in people who thought the government was a source of misinformation on COVID-19. It’s little surprise, therefore, that Britain has become fertile ground for QAnon and anti-vaccination conspiracies.
While the government explores new technologies to fight disinformation, it may find the battleground close to home. As long as Boris Johnson’s ‘blitz spirit’ amounts to holding the flag in one hand and crossing fingers with the other, this is a Britain that’s hard to believe in.
