How open is the UK government? The UK Open Governance Scorecard provides a comprehensive review of the UK’s legal framework for transparency participation and oversight. Critically it also indicates how the system is working in practice.

Our research finds that the UK’s open governance regime is stronger in practice than in law. The UK government has developed its open governance framework – particularly in proactive disclosure transparency and participation – largely through a patchwork of policy initiatives and procedural guidance. With a few notable exceptions, the UK has not developed legislated rights for citizens to access or engage in government, nor created general obligations on public authorities to proactively disclose information or proactively consult. The UK also has a patchwork of different codes of conduct and obligations governing the control and oversight regime at different levels of government.

This approach has strengths. However, there are good reasons to conclude that a light-touch framework, where rights are not enshrined, is not ideal. A policy-driven approach leaves citizens’ vulnerable to changing political winds and to discretion within the public sector about whether and how to commit to openness. Under a policy-driven approach, it is difficult to audit the open data work of public bodies, improve bad practice or achieve consistency where necessary. If an authority wishes to suppress data or access to decision-making, there is little the public or regulators can do to stop it and it would be difficult to find out whether such suppression was happening or not.

This scorecard builds on the ‘in-law’ scorecard, published by TI-UK in March 2014, with an ‘in-practice’ assessment. Together, the report tests the UK against 459 research questions, across 35 standards of open governance. The result is a comprehensive view of strengths and weaknesses in the UK and allows stakeholders to identify particular issues of concern.

At present UK citizens have little opportunity to understand who is lobbying whom, for what purpose and with what funds.

Lifting the Lid on Lobbying  analyses lobbying policies and practices across UK political institutions, evaluating the gaps in the rules that allow hidden lobbying and open the door to corruption.

The research – which looks at Westminster, the Scottish Parliament, and the Assemblies in Wales and Northern Ireland – reveals that in many recent lobbying scandals, the rules have not been broken. Our research identified 39 examples of lobbying loopholes across the UK where rules allow behaviour that can open the door to corrupt activity and lobbying abuses.

The findings indicate that there is much to be learned, in different ways, from good practice across the UK.

The term ‘revolving door’ refers to the movement of individuals between positions of public office and jobs in the private sector, in either direction. Such movements have become much more common because Ministers and crown servants often leave public office at a younger age than used to be the case. Those in public service have also become more eager to learn from corporate experience.

Moving through the revolving door can be beneficial to both sides, improving understanding and communication between public officials and business. However, the revolving door also undermines trust in government, because of the potential for conflicts of interest. This is evident from a recent survey of public perceptions of the most corrupt sections of British public life carried out for Transparency International UK in 2010. Political parties ranked as the most corrupt sector, with Parliament and the legislature ranking third most corrupt after sport. The same survey also revealed that the revolving door comes a close second in the public’s ranking of potentially corrupt activities. A peerage for a businessman who has been a large political party donor was ranked first.

Transparency International UK’s conclusion, based on the research in this report, is that the current system of regulating the revolving door is not working and needs fixing. Recent changes are welcome, but they do not go far enough and are unlikely to restore public confidence. Urgent and comprehensive reforms are needed to reduce the risk of conflicts of interest and make the revolving door work to the benefit of the government, the private sector and UK society more broadly. We present fifteen recommendations for how the system can be improved.