At first glance, it looks like an episode of TV’s Yes, Minister or The Thick of It: the government minister in charge of tackling financial corruption and the City of London is under investigation for… alleged corruption. But that is the position today of Tulip Siddiq, who remains the economic secretary to the Treasury.
Ms Siddiq’s aunt, Sheikh Hasina, was an authoritarian prime minister of Bangladesh who was deposed last August after a student-led uprising. Her Awami League party is accused of laundering billions of pounds out of the country, including by buying properties in London.
It has emerged that Ms Siddiq has lived in two homes owned by figures associated with the Awami League and currently rents a third one. She strongly denies any wrongdoing and her allies suggest the charges have been trumped up by her aunt’s political enemies.
The City minister has been named in an investigation by Bangladesh’s anti-corruption commission into claims her family embezzled £3.9bn from infrastructure projects. Although she has distanced herself from her aunt’s party, she was present at the signing ceremony for a Russian-backed nuclear power plant in Bangladesh. During her election campaigns in the UK, Ms Siddiq received support from the league’s UK arm, telling one rally she would not have become a British MP without its help. In a now-deleted section of her website, she said she worked for the league “as part of its UK and EU lobbying unit and election strategy team”.
Such links were well known when Sir Keir Starmer appointed her last July, which made it an odd decision. The revelations about Ms Siddiq keep coming. Muhammad Yunus, who leads an interim government in Bangladesh, told The Sunday Times it appeared that properties used by Ms Hasina’s family in London were the subject of “plain robbery” and should be returned if that is the case. This prompted Kemi Badenoch, the Conservative leader, to call for Ms Siddiq to be sacked.
For now, Sir Keir is standing by his minister, who has referred herself to Sir Laurie Magnus, the independent adviser on ministerial standards, telling him: “I am clear I have done nothing wrong.” But some Labour MPs believe her days as a minister are numbered. They note the apparent contrast between Sir Keir’s treatment of Ms Siddiq, an ally and his parliamentary neighbour as MP for Hampstead and Highgate, and his immediate removal of the soft left transport secretary Louise Haigh – without an inquiry by Sir Laurie – when it emerged she had a conviction for wrongly telling police 10 years earlier her mobile phone had been stolen.
It is hard to see how Ms Siddiq can continue to do her job. Indeed, she pulled out of Rachel Reeves’s visit to China at the weekend – officially, to help Sir Laurie’s initial inquiries as he decides whether a full investigation is warranted. But it is clear her presence would have been another unwanted distraction for the chancellor, already under intense scrutiny over whether her first Budget’s sums add up after the rise in the government’s borrowing costs.
At the very least, The Independent believes Sir Keir should remove anti-corruption work from Ms Siddiq’s brief while she is the subject of an inquiry, which must include whether she made a full declaration to the Cabinet Office on her appointment. A better course would be for her to announce she is standing down as a minister to clear her name. If that happened, she would be a strong candidate to return in a future reshuffle.
Ms Siddiq’s friends will argue she should be regarded as innocent until proven guilty. However, Sir Keir should remember that the ministerial code of conduct says: “Ministers must ensure that no conflict arises, or could reasonably be perceived to arise, between their public duties and their private interests.” In other words, perception matters, and rightly so.
To his credit, Sir Keir has strengthened the code – for example, by giving the ministerial adviser the power to initiate their own investigations and reinstating a specific requirement to abide by international law.
The prime minister has promised to be different to his Tory predecessors by upholding the highest standards in public life. Yet the Saddiq saga feels increasingly like an all-too-familiar story of a minister clinging to office until the moment they bow to the inevitable. Unless Sir Keir lives up to his own rhetoric on standards, he will never achieve his important goal of rebuilding public trust in politics.
