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LONDON — Keir Starmer and his staff accepted tickets to attend concerts, football matches and horse-racing gifted by Big Tech companies and racecourse operators as lobbyists target potential players in the next U.K. government.
The Labour leader, whose party is leading in the opinion polls ahead of a possible 2024 election, received football tickets worth more than £12,000 since May last year from a range of sources including football clubs, the Football Association and grocery delivery firm Getir.
He also accepted the hospitality of Arena Racing and Google Ireland, which paid for a meal for two worth £380 at the elite Davos summit in Switzerland this year.
Eight members of his staff received gifts ranging from tickets to a Harry Styles concert, the BRITs music awards and Doncaster Races from Google UK, YouTube, Arena Racing, the Premier League and several music industry lobbying outfits, according to the register of interests of MPs’ staff.
Shadow Culture Secretary Lucy Powell, Starmer’s lead on the aforementioned policy areas, accepted gifts from Google UK, the Jockey Club, and Camelot, the operator of the National Lottery. Shadow Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds bagged several football match tickets donated by the Football Association.
A Labour Party spokesperson said: “Everything has been declared in [the] correct way and this has absolutely no impact on our policies.”
‘Lavishing them with gifts’
Conservative MPs long have been criticized for accepting donations from gambling firms, with one recently suspended from the party for offering to lobby on behalf of a fictitious company.
Parliamentary records suggest senior Labour MPs and their staff also are peppered with freebies as the odds shorten on Starmer taking power next year.
Starmer, Powell and Reynolds all received more donations in 2022-23 than they did in the previous year, official records show. All the gifts were declared in accordance with the rules.
The tech and entertainment sectors are currently at the center of fierce debates in Westminster over how closely they can or should be regulated.
Tighter gambling controls are expected as the government moves forward with a white paper proposing the biggest shake-up of regulation in nearly 20 years, while scrutiny of the controversial Online Safety Bill continues amid signs that Labour is rowing back on softening its stance on Big Tech.
At the same time, the government is preparing to to regulate the way football governance under the football white paper, which has attracted some opposition from the Premier League.
Links between the biggest opposition party and industries are well-established and rival those on the Conservative side of the aisle. The U.K.’s main industry body for gambling — the Betting and Gaming Council — is headed by a former Labour MP, Michael Dugher, while Google’s head of government affairs used to work for a Labour frontbencher.
Matt Zarb-Cousin, a former adviser to Jeremy Corbyn and director of Clean Up Gambling, said: “Spending thousands of pounds on hospitality is a sign the sector knows it can’t win the policy argument, so has to resort to neutralizing politicians by lavishing them with gifts.”
He added that Labour’s front bench has been “behind the curve” on this issue “in spite of Labour MPs overall backing significant reform.”
A Labour Party official, who asked not to be identified as they are not authorized to speak publicly, disputed this, saying the party has called consistently for regulation of online safety, gambling and football, adding amendments to the Online Safety Bill including placing criminal liability on senior managers at firms such as Google who fail to make their platforms safe.
The official highlighted an intervention by Starmer, Powell and the footballer and commentator Gary Neville at the party’s conference last year, pressing for action on football governance, saying Labour demanded the government goes further and faster in tightening regulation of gambling.
