21 September 2024 , 17:43
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Furore over freebies like tickets to Taylor Swift concerts and football games has led to calls for reform to MPs’ gift declarations and an overhaul of the ministerial code
More than £700,000 worth of free gifts and hospitality has been received by MPs in the past year for everything from Taylor Swift tickets to helicopter rides, new analysis reveals.
The figures, based on data from the MPs’ register of interests between September 2023 and August 2024, comes during a growing furore around the acceptance of gifts by the prime minister and his inner circle.
According to his parliamentary register of interests, the Labour leader received more than £65,000 in gifts in the last year, including new clothes and accommodation funded by millionaire Labour peer Waheed Alli. The total value of what he has received is more than any other MP.
On Friday, the prime minister pledged that he, Rachel Reeves and Angela Rayner will not accept any more free clothes from donors in an effort to draw a line under the debacle.
The Conservatives have been critical of the number of gifts received by senior Labour figures and called for a “full investigation” into Starmer’s potential breaches of the rules.
But Conservative MPs have also significantly benefited from gifts by wealthy benefactors – 141 Tory MPs received £359,891 in free gifts, including tickets paid for by the water industry and thousands of pounds of clay-pigeon shoots and helicopter rides from wealthy donors, according to Observer analysis. In the same period, 118 Labour MPs netted £298,151 worth of gifts.
Nearly £80,000 of the total amount of freebies was given to MPs since the election in July, mostly to newly elected MPs.
One of the biggest categories of freebies was football game tickets or gigs hosted at football stadiums, which came to £96,000 in the last year.
Free tickets have largely come from the Premier League and its football club members, many of whom are lobbying against Labour’s plans for a new independent football regulator.
Starmer himself has received thousands of pounds of corporate hospitality tickets to watch Arsenal games in the last year, a move he said was necessary due to security concerns about him sitting in the stands.
One of the other significant spenders, the gambling industry, spent more than £20,000 on gifts for MPs over the last year.
While corporate hospitality passes to football games, golf tournaments and tennis matches were common, 11 MPs also received more than £17,000 worth of free tickets to Taylor Swift’s Eras tour.
There are growing calls for reforms to the way MP gift declarations work and for an overhaul of the ministerial code.
On Friday, former shadow chancellor John McDonnell argued in a piece for the Guardian that scandals like that over Starmer’s acceptance of free clothes have helped show the party leadership’s “crushingly disappointing response” to being in power.
Meanwhile Susan Hawley, executive director of Spotlight on Corruption, told the Times the scandal was “a good example of the Westminster bubble, where everyone is doing it without really thinking through how it looks to the wider public”.
“The country is at a bad time, everyone is going to have to make sacrifices,” she added. “It does not look right if politicians making some of the decisions are having nice freebies.”