03 October 2024 , 12:41
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Sarah Jones suggests PM believes he should be held to higher standards now he is in government
Keir Starmer has repaid thousands of pounds in freebies to restore trust in politics, a minister has said as she ruled out accepting more hospitality.
Sarah Jones, the industry minister, said the prime minister’s motivation for repaying the money was “to do more to make people trust politicians”.
Starmer has repaid £6,000 worth of gifts and hospitality he received since entering No 10, including Taylor Swift tickets and rented clothing for his wife, after a row over the value of donations he has accepted over the years.
Asked how much damage the controversy had done to the government, Jones told Sky News: “We’re a new government. We are always worried and Keir’s main item in the speech that he made at conference is the lack of trust people have in politics.
“We need to do more to make people trust politicians because politics can be a force for good. That is the whole driving value of what Keir Starmer is about, and that’s what he’s going to do.”
Jones said the prime minister wanted “a new set of principles on gifts and hospitality, and showing leadership on that is the right thing to do.”
She suggested that Starmer repaid the donations he received since becoming prime minister because he believed he should be held to higher standards now. “The prime minister is saying there’s a difference between what you do as a government and what you do in opposition,” she told Times Radio.
She stressed that no rules had been broken and that it was up to individual ministers and MPs whether to repay donations or accept more.
Jones said she had received free tickets on three occasions over seven years as an MP and that she was investigating whether she could pay back a free ticket to the BBC Proms. She said she would not accept further free tickets.
“Was I kind of out and about all the time taking freebies? Was I getting anything, you know, was I giving anybody anything for these things? It was all completely above board,” Jones said of the hospitality she accepted.
“But if I look at it through the lens that the public is now looking at it, and the question that we’re talking about, what purpose am I going to those events? I’m not going to go to another event like that that I’m invited to,” she told Times Radio.
Downing Street sources stressed that Starmer was not setting a precedent that no ministers should ever be able to accept hospitality in future, but that paying back the sums was the right thing to do while the rules around hospitality were drawn up.
The government has formed a cross-party modernisation committee to examine and update the standards and procedures in parliament.
The prime minister’s decision to repay £6,000 came after weeks of criticism over him accepting more than £100,000 in hospitality and free gifts since December 2019. This includes £32,000 of workwear, multiple pairs of glasses worth £2,400 and use of a £18m penthouse from the Labour donor and peer Waheed Alli.
Starmer along with his deputy, Angela Rayner, and the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, have all said after the controversy they will not accept any more free clothing.