GSD Sets Out Proposed Conflicts Of Interest Changes
The GSD has outlined proposed changes to conflicts of interest rules, including measures relating to the Chief Minister and public contracts.
A statement from the GSD follows below:
Leader of the Opposition, Keith Azopardi said: “We need to learn the lessons of the last few years. The commitments I have made today emphasise how we would run things in a very different way to this GSLP leadership. A Chief Minister has a special role that can exercise influence and power well beyond other Ministers. It is right that there should be higher commitments attached to that role to ensure better democratic protections now and always.”
Overall
If the lessons of the McGrail Inquiry are truly to be learned then there needs to be a change in the way things have been done. That means clear commitments that start from the Office of the Chief Minister and anyone aspiring to hold that role. Today we set out clear commitments from the GSD that would be binding on a GSD Chief Minister and Ministers.
Real change will only come by electing a GSD Government. You will not get change when the baton is passed from Fabian Picardo to Gemma Arias-Vasquez given her integral support for Mr Picardo’s improper action or attempts to interfere in a criminal investigation that were described in the Openshaw Report and the disgraceful attack on the previous Principal Auditor. Equally she is mired in the same conflicts. All you will get is more of the same in a repackaged form.
Mr Picardo has been a partner on sabbatical of Hassans over the last 15 years. Ms Arias-Vasquez has been a partner on sabbatical of Hassans for the last three years and will now clearly take the role of GSLP leader soon and presumably immediately as Chief Minister. The conflicts that exist today and have existed by virtue of those links will remain.
The Context: The Insidious Conflicts
The Report of Sir Peter Openshaw after the McGrail Inquiry was shocking. People were right to have been taken aback not just by the evidence they heard during the live-streamed Inquiry hearings in 2024 but by the insidious conflicts of interest revealed by the evidence that affected the GSLP/Libs Government.
At the heart of the original criminal investigation opened by the Police was an entity (36 North) in which the Chief Minister through his partnership in his law firm (Hassans) had a beneficial interest. 36 North had been vying for a lucrative public contract. It is now well-known that Sir Peter Openshaw considered that on a number of occasions Fabian Picardo acted in a grossly improper way and attempted to interfere in a criminal investigation which impacted on his friend and mentor and senior partner of the law firm.
The Inquiry gave people a glimpse into the conflicts of interest of the GSLP Government and how they were not properly managed. They laid bare the desperate need for real and lasting change to ensure systems to prevent abuses of power are in place.
However, the McGrail Inquiry only determined the circumstances that led to the retirement of Ian McGrail. It did not – for example –provide an opinion on the propriety of the Chief Minister (or any other Minister) holding beneficial interests in 36 North or into the circumstances in which that company was interested in securing a lucrative £1M public contract. Nor did the McGrail Inquiry address anything beyond its strict remit. This was, at times, made clear by its Chairman.
McGrail Inquiry – The Tip of the Iceberg
We have always said that when the dust settled after the McGrail Inquiry it was important to reflect on it in a wider context and learn lessons – not just of the facts found in it but of the wider things going on in Gibraltar. Because the McGrail Inquiry findings are just the tip of the iceberg.
The GSD has been campaigning for some years on the need to ensure that reforms are put in place to deliver transparency, value for money and standards. Our specific commitments in those areas in relation to the eligibility to apply for public contracts and on the award and supervision of these have been there since 2019. We have said for a long time that there were poor controls that lend themselves to waste, abuse and corruption and these needed strengthening.
Over the last couple of years we have seen defining Principal Auditor Reports that have, again, kicked up very serious issues of financial waste and abuse as well as poor governance systems and opacity with the use of taxpayers’ monies or savers monies.
Against that backdrop we have also seen the award of contracts or payments to persons politically close to the GSLP with Government Ministers even refusing to recognise that some of those situations gave rise to any conflicts at all.
The Need for Wider Reforms
As such if comprehensive lessons are to be learned from the McGrail Inquiry the findings must be set against the wider need for reforms to provide further safeguards well beyond the McGrail Inquiry recommendations. Firstly the recommendations themselves must be implemented fully and not in an insufficient or half-hearted way. We have already made clear our concerns in relation to the proposed GSLP Conflicts of Interest
legislation which is simply a toothless monster of bureaucracy that will not properly control conflicts or abuses. It will have the reverse effect and hamper controls. Different legislation is needed.
Secondly we must recognise that we must go beyond McGrail with a deeper and wider set of reforms not picked up by that Inquiry (because of its constrained remit) but which are absolutely essential if we are going to put in place systems that do not allow similar instances of abuse to happen again.
The GSD will have a clear blueprint of action on these issues at the next election. That blueprint will be wide-ranging capturing many of the themes and issues we have set out before as well as new ideas to respond to further challenges.
But we start today with a set of commitments that will impact on the leadership of the Government and Ministers and that marks the difference between the approach of a future GSD administration and the current GSLP/Libs administration.
Some of these first commitments recognise the special role of the Office of the Chief Minister because of the sheer influence it can exercise across the work of Government and well beyond other Ministers. With that in mind Keith Azopardi will commit himself to restrictions that do not currently exist and are not applied by this Government to the Chief Minister’s role. Given the special position of Chief Minister those restrictions (which would be voluntary until the time that a GSD Conflicts of Interest law is passed) would be stronger and immediate in the case of the Office of Chief Minister because we believe they should be as a matter of principle and to send a clear signal of our approach in Government. As such:
1. If the GSD is elected to Government at the next election Keith Azopardi as the new GSD Chief Minister would sever his ties with his law firm. He would divest himself of any partnership interests and retire or resign from the partnership and law firm. His pay as a lawyer would cease. He would not take a sabbatical from the partnership or law firm while he was in office. He would therefore no longer hold any professional ties with any law firm while he was Chief Minister.
2. Additionally, we re-state the long-standing commitment that the next GSD Chief Minister would serve a maximum of two terms or 8 years in office as Chief Minister. To give that commitment more than just political form we will embody that in statutory or constitutional change. That will act as an important trigger for necessary political regeneration in the future as well as an important restriction on length of tenure which will be good for democracy.
3. Further we consider it wrong as a matter of principle that any Minister should have any beneficial interest in any company that seeks the award of or benefits from a public contract. We reaffirm our commitment that Ministers as well as other individuals closely connected to the Party in power and close family members to Ministers will be prohibited from the award of public contracts. Those prohibitions would be made clear in a law that a GSD Government would introduce, There will be another category of more remote restricted (but not prohibited) individuals that would also be defined in statute.
Mr Azopardi continued:
“You can either be in Government or in business with the Government but not both. We have been campaigning for a very long time on the need for robust controls on waste, abuse and corruption. The various examples over the last couple of years ranging from issues raised in the Principal Auditor Reports to the McGrail Inquiry Report to the award of a number of other contracts once again magnify the need for real changes. We will have a very extensive programme on anti-corruption at the next election because it is clear that this Government simply doesn’t have the commitment to act when it often doesn’t even recognise the conflicts or worse still condones misconduct like it did in the case of the Openshaw findings.
The first set of changes unveiled today marks a distinct approach by the GSD as to how we would intend to run a very different form of Government that is more robust on conflicts, more accountable to you and more committed to govern in a different way.”
