Ministers could be banned from lobbying for up to five years after leaving office and also face possible penalties if they break the rules, the anti-corruption watchdog has said.

Rajeev Syal www.theguardian.com 

Jonathan Evans, the chair of the committee on standards in public life, made the proposal in an emergency review published on Monday in the wake of the Greensill scandal.

The intervention by Lord Evans, a former head of MI5, is a response to claims that the rules continue to be flouted by former ministers, special advisers and senior civil servants once they leave office. His report demands an overhaul of the rules in an attempt to stop the revolving door in Whitehall that allows them to use their contacts and expertise for private gain.

Under current rules, ministers and senior civil servants are in effect banned from lobbying their former colleagues for two years after leaving their post.

The committee has also raised concerns that the system of appointing to public bodies may be leaning towards ministerial patronage and away from “merit”, following rows over Boris Johnson’s attempts to impose the former Daily Mail editor Paul Dacre as the head of Ofcom.

No 10 is expected to wait until the final report from the committee later this year before saying which recommendations it might accept.

The report names David Cameron, the former prime minister under whom Evans served for three years as head of MI5, in concluding that the current rules are inadequate, and says ministers should disclose informal lobbying over WhatsApp and text messages in future.

Cameron texted Rishi Sunak, the chancellor, on behalf of Greensill Capital, a finance firm that employed him as a lobbyist and the collapse of which has put thousands of jobs at risk. He asked the government to change the rules to allow it to receive Covid corporate financing facility loans.

It has since emerged that he subjected Matt Hancock, the health secretary, and other ministers to a deluge of WhatsApp messages and texts, including 56 messages over a single Covid loan scheme.

As there were more than two years between his resignation as prime minister and taking up his role at the failed financial firm, Cameron’s actions were permissible under current rules.

Lex Greensill, an Australian financier, was given access to 11 Whitehall departments, having previously been appointed as an official government adviser without any transparency.

Cameron told MPs last month there was “absolutely no wrongdoing” in his lobbying attempts, but accepted that former prime ministers must “act differently”.

The report forms part of the committee’s “landscape review of standards”.

The committee also proposes: introducing anti-lobbying clauses into the employment contracts of ministers, special advisers and civil servants; designing a system of possible civil penalties for rule-breakers; banning ministers from taking jobs for two years in sectors over which they had direct responsibility in office; and giving the appointments watchdog the power to apply tailored restrictions, including banning ex-ministers from taking certain jobs for up to five years “where appropriate”.

It also calls for new rules so that the government releases details of lobbying every four weeks, rather than quarterly; and regulating the appointment of non-executive directors to Whitehall departments amid fears politicians are appointing “cronies”.

In a foreword to the report, Evans says: “We have found that four areas of standards regulation require significant reform: the ministerial code and the independent adviser on ministers’ interests, the business appointment rules and the advisory committee on business appointments (Acoba), transparency around lobbying, and the regulation of public appointments.”

The report says the powers of the commissioner for public appointments, a position occupied by Peter Riddell, need to be strengthened if the integrity of the process is to be upheld.

“Reforms are necessary to ensure the commissioner has sufficient powers to uphold the integrity of the process by which a list of appointable candidates is produced, from which ministers can make their choice,” it says.

It also criticises the unregulated appointments of non-executive directors (NEDs). Michael Gove was criticised last year after appointing three close Vote Leave allies, Baroness Finn, Henry de Zoete and Gisela Stuart, to roles in the Cabinet Office.

“There is an increasing trend amongst ministers to appoint supporters or political allies as NEDs. This both undermines the ability of NEDs to scrutinise the work of their departments, and has a knock-on effect on the appointments process elsewhere, as NEDs are often used on the assessment panels for other public and senior civil service appointments. The appointment process for NEDs should be regulated,” the report says.

To start, let us remember why “Freedom Day” has been postponed:

Just when you think you’ve got it beat, Covid-19 somehow comes back stronger. Like Arnold Schwarzenegger but without the charm, this Terminator of a virus has an “I’ll be back” menace that risks undoing all the hard work of the UK’s stunning vaccine rollout.

Paul Waugh www.huffingtonpost.co.uk 

The epic battle between the vaccines and the virus certainly has high stakes. Perhaps that’s why Boris Johnson sounded unusually nervous as he announced he would indeed be postponing ‘Freedom Day’ by another four weeks. Instead of the sunshine of Midsummer Merrie England, there was a blizzard of scary charts of projected hospitalisations.

Fluffing his lines, the PM referred to “the adults of this company” (he meant “country”) and then wrongly declared the new unlocking date was July 29th (correcting it later to July 19th). Polling shows most of the public are relaxed about a delay, but Johnson is acutely aware that the 24% who are unhappy include several of his own backbenchers, and it showed.

Nowhere was this more telling than in his repeated reassurance that the Freedom Day Mk II was the real deal. He was “pretty confident” that July 19 will be “the terminus date” (he said “terminal date” too). June 21 was always a “‘not before’ date”, whereas this was much firmer, he suggested. This was not a defeat for lockdown sceptics, it was a victory, he seemed to imply.

That spin may or may not work on Tory MPs, but it could paint the PM into a corner for the first time in months. Ever since he bowed to Chris Whitty and Patrick Vallance’s plan for a cautious roadmap, he has been able to fall back on their insistence that all four tests have to be met (the new variant test was particularly shrewd) and that “data not dates” will drive his decisions.

But now with talk of “terminal” and fixed timelines, it feels like dates not data is the new approach. Steve Baker, Mark Harper and Sir Charles Walker, who will probably vote against the delay, have much more concrete evidence of a breach of faith should that July 19 date somehow slip again.

Whitty and Vallance gave the PM invaluable backing at the press conference. The chief medical officer in particular pointed out that even without the Indian variant, the very restoration of unrestricted indoor mixing of “households that are unrelated” was always going to lead to an uptick in cases. He added there had to come a point where fatalities switched from “deaths averted” to deaths delayed”, as with flu.

Patrick Vallance even suggested that locking down beyond July 19 would be counter-productive. And he made the case for that date containing the Goldilocks calculation of just how hot or cold to make the roadmap porridge. Giving over-18s their first jab and pushing unlockdown closer to the school holidays certainly added some sugar, as did a lifting of the cap on wedding numbers.

Still, for Keir Starmer, the talk of 19 July as a “terminal” date is an opportunity for a Judgement Day on Johnson’s competence. If the vaccination programme can’t sufficiently flatten the Delta variant spike, he is sure to step up his own attack line that Johnson’s failure to stop flights from India is the real culprit. Already today, the Labour leader hardened his rhetoric to say it was a “pathetic” border policy that had postponed freedoms.

Starmer’s clear aim is to drive a big wedge between the excellence of the NHS vaccine rollout and the government’s wider failures. It’s unclear whether it was the PM’s desire to keep alive post-Brexit trade talks with Narendra Modi that prompted his inaction, but the suggestion that he recklessly undermined both the NHS’s programme and public sacrifices is a toxic one.

Today’s failure to offer extra financial support to businesses added extra political risk too. Those firms which were hanging on by their fingertips will now face having to pay their share of furlough bills, with no extra income to fund them. Add in the self-employed already upset and an Opposition that was pro-enterprise could make inroads.

To oversee one Covid wave is a misfortune, to allow two begins to look like carelessness. But to trigger a third wave, squandering all the good work of your own vaccine success story, could be seen as unforgivable by a public which has to date been incredibly forgiving of its prime minister.

Story goes national.

Police have issued a stark warning to visitors after they were forced to throw 100 drunken yobs off a beach in Devon.

Lorraine King www.mirror.co.uk 

Officers from Exmouth Police were called to Orcombe Point following complaints of anti-social behaviour on Saturday.

The rowdy mob were then dispersed, and police are now warning others to behave when visiting the area during high temperatures, Devon Live reports.

In a statement on their Facebook, a spokesperson for Exmouth Police said: ”On Saturday late afternoon, around 100 drunken youths were seen causing a disturbance on the beach below Orcombe Point. Police officers attended and youths were dispersed.

”Exmouth currently has a public space protection order (PSPO) in parts of the town.

”East Devon District Council are currently running a consultation process to extend the PSPO to cover the beach and seafront. The PSPO restricts certain activities linked to anti-social behaviour […]

”We welcome all visitors to the town but would like to remind people to behave appropriately.

”We don’t want to stop people from having fun but please take your litter home, use the toilets provided and drink responsibly.”

A spokesperson for Devon and Cornwall Police added: ”A Section 35 Dispersal Order of the Antisocial Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act was authorised for Exmouth seafront, following concerns of the anti-social behaviour.”

Police were called to Exmouth beach amid reports of a large group of ‘drunken youths’ causing a disturbance.

They found roughly 100 youngsters behaving anti-socially and took action to disperse them. No one was arrested, officers said.