The Cabinet Office has been urged to tighten up civil service rules around gifts and hospitality, after a National Audit Office report questioned whether the receiving of sports tickets, champagne and iPads by some senior officials was appropriate.
Since 2009, government has published the hospitality records of all civil servants at director-general level and above, with the rules extended to director level from 2015-16. The returns are published every quarter on GOV.UK.
In its latest report, the NAO spending watchdog said the publication of those records had helped “to promote public accountability”, but warned that while “most cases of gifts and hospitality appeared to be reasonable” — with dinner the most frequent kind of hospitality accepted — some “fell short of good practice”.
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The NAO said: “We recognise that, with a principles-based approach, decisions on whether to accept gifts and hospitality depend on context and personal judgement.
“Most of the hospitality and many of the gifts accepted seemed reasonable and consistent with the principles, including nominal-value items such as calendars, refreshments and sandwich lunches.
“However, in our review of the registers and transparency data, we identified some concerns. These included: tickets to professional sports and cultural events, sometimes accompanied by a spouse and/or children; bottles of champagne; wine for a team’s Christmas lunch; and iPads.”
Overall, the watchdog found that senior officials in 17 departments had accepted around £29,000 of gifts and hospitality in the 2014-15, with the picture varying “significantly” across government departments.
For example, the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) recorded 718 instances of top officials receiving hospitality over the period, while the Department for International Development (DfID) recorded just 20.
The NAO put some of this disparity down to “differences in completeness of reporting between the departments”.
Under current rules managing the acceptance of gifts and hospitality, permanent secretaries are responsible for ensuring the right systems are in place.
But the watchdog said some departments, including BIS and the Ministry of Defence (MoD) “did not collate records centrally”, making it difficult for them to spot where potential conflicts of interest or lobbying attempts were being made.
Some departments had also published their returns data “much later” than the dates previously required by the centre of the government, the NAO noted, while it said the Cabinet Office could do more to ensure government-wide oversight of gifts and hospitality received by departmental officials.
“We consider that the Cabinet Office as part of its leadership role has a responsibility to support departments implementing the principles within its guidance, including providing advice when departments have difficulty resolving issues themselves,” the report said.
“The Cabinet Office has some contact with departments, most often the permanent secretaries’ private offices. Departments tend to seek advice on transparency requirements and on specific issues where a department is unsure where an individual case sits against the wider principles.
“Some staff responsible for setting and overseeing gifts and hospitality rules and policies in the case study departments would though welcome more engagement with the Cabinet Office, particularly in providing advice and facilitating the sharing of best practice.”
"Risk of conflicts of interest"
Across government, the NAO found that the City of London Corporation, consultancy firm PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), the Confederation of British Industry business lobby group, and accountancy firm Deloitte were the most frequent providers of hospitality.
And the watchdog also took a detailed look at three government departments, BIS, HM Revenue and Customs, and MoD buying agency Defence Equipment and Support (DE&S). Lunch was the most common form of hospitality accepted by all three departments.
If found that BIS officials accepted hospitality from around 580 different organisations, with some of the most frequent providers those “with an interest in the department’s policy objectives” — although BIS partner organisations and executive agencies also made up much of the list.
Top providers of hospitality and gifts to BIS were Airbus Group (47 instances), the European Space Agency (40 instances) and the Satellite Applications Catapult (31 times). Twenty-five instances of gifts or hospitality from the Chinese Government were also recorded by BIS between 2014-15.
Meanwhile, DE&S officials accepted hospitality from around 600 organisations, with major defence contractors topping the list. More than 580 instances of hospitality from BAE Systems were recorded over the period, followed by 298 from Finmeccanica and 280 from the Thales Group.
The French government was the most frequent provider of hospitality (19 times) to HMRC officials between 2014-15, the NAO found, with the tax authority providing returns covering 400 separate organisations over the period.
Tech supplier CapGemini, which runs the department’s Aspire IT project, was second on the list with 18 instances, while 1st Locate, a debt collection agency used by HMRC, provided 17 instances of gifts and hospitality. Major accountancy firms PricewaterhouseCoopers (17 instances), Deloitte (13) and KPMG (8), also all made the list of most frequent providers.
Launching the report, National Audit Office head Amyas Morse said: “Public officials are sometimes offered gifts and hospitality by external stakeholders which it is reasonable for them to accept.
“This can, however, present a risk of actual or perceived conflicts of interest, and undermine value for money or affect government’s reputation. While most, but not all, cases declared by officials appear on the face of it to be justifiable in the normal course of business, we found some weaknesses in the oversight and control of gifts and hospitality. This needs to be addressed by the Cabinet Office and departments.”
The Cabinet Office welcomed the watchdog’s report, saying it demonstrated that the existing system was “working well, with offers of hospitality being recorded and properly acted upon”.
A spokesperson added: “Clear and well understood principles governing the acceptance of gifts and hospitality are in place for all civil servants.
“This government is the most transparent ever and publishes an unprecedented range of information about gifts and hospitality received by ministers, special advisers and senior civil servants.”