How has your summer been? Done anything nice? As MPs prepare to head back to parliament next week, you’ll be relieved to hear that some of the most prominent figures in British politics have been enjoying the season’s cultural highlights – and without paying a penny. MPs throughout the Commons have received £400,000 of “freebies” to concerts, sports matches and other events so far this year, according to the most recent disclosures.
Over the summer alone, Wes Streeting, now the defence secretary, enjoyed the Chelsea flower show thanks to Lloyds Banking Group covering the £1,839 cost, as did the shadow chancellor, Mel Stride. Lucy Powell, who has since become deputy leader of the Labour party and education secretary, accepted £858-worth of tickets to a Harry Styles concert at Wembley from the PRS for Music industry group. Meanwhile, the Conservative leader, Kemi Badenoch, nabbed seats at Wimbledon worth £1,360 from the All England Club.
Totalled up, MPs have been gifted £100,000 more so far this year than in the whole of 2025, with recipients seemingly learning few lessons from Keir Starmer’s “passes for glasses” scandal, in which a Labour peer gifted the then prime minister designer eyewear and clothes before being spotted in Downing Street with a temporary security pass.
Like many of these types of stories, there’s some nuance lurking behind the headlines. MPs quite rightly go to events linked to their constituency or local area. Andy Burnham accepting £3,800 tickets to the Brit awards in Manchester – when he was the regional mayor – to spotlight the city hosting the event for the first time is not the same as Streeting presumably just really wanting to meet Monty Don.
The increase can also partly be explained by the fact MPs have become more consistent about declaring hospitality on the parliamentary register after Starmer changed the rules, while ticket prices are well known to have gone up across the board. And yet, wade through the details of gigs and horse racing and it’s hard not to conclude some MPs are simply practising blatant grifting. Call it a treat for a seat, where our elected officials are enjoying must-see shows as a kind of unofficial bonus.
That much of this stuff was gifted by big business, including gambling firms and banks, makes the whole thing feel considerably grubbier. Why did the betting company Flutter want to shower then local backbencher and now chief whip, Anneliese Midgley, with high-priced tickets to the Grand National and Cheltenham?
Public perception of such luxury perks will be even more unforgiving against a backdrop of an ongoing cost of living crisis. A night at the Ivor Novello awards may not be the duck house-level opulence of 2009’s expenses scandal, but the optics are little better. While much of the population are struggling to pay their electric and food bills, MPs are getting out the fascinators for Ladies’ Day at Aintree.
Politicians, of course, are human. Who among us wouldn’t be tempted by Harry Styles? The electorate, for its part, tends to want leaders to connect with everyday life. There’s a reason why Malcolm Tucker in The Thick of It – based on the rumour Alastair Campbell got Tony Blair clips of EastEnders and reality shows – makes a “zeitgeist tape” to help his useless ministers seem “in touch”. But it would be disingenuous to pretend MPs are driven to accept hospitality gifts as a bid to be down to earth, or that balancing such demands from the public is somehow a complex, grey area. Most people like to see their MP letting loose at a concert – they just want them to have paid for their ticket.
With the standards watchdog due to question Nigel Farage when parliament reopens – an inquiry he temporarily dodged by calling a byelection – the coming weeks will very likely see a renewed focus on what MPs receive and the transparency around it.
On paper, Farage’s gifts are in another league to his colleagues’ freebies: forget a ticket to the tennis, we’re talking £5m from a crypto billionaire and further “financial support” from a convicted fraudster. And yet to a public who have for decades seen front-page stories about politicians’ finances – from expenses and second jobs to tax avoidance – the idea that the Reform UK leader is an outlier worth investigating rather than one of a bad bunch can feel at best a hard sell and, at worst, hypocritical.
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If MPs wish to be able to hold Farage to account with credibility, they will need to show they care about cash and transparency in every form. That means the government looking harder into how some MPs are using their influence to make extra money, not least when it’s linked with the growth of the far right. Just this week it emerged that the Restore leader, Rupert Lowe, is set to earn as much from his – anti-migrant – posts on X as he does from his MP’s salary (which he gives to charity) since Elon Musk took over and financially rewarded some high-reach posts. “Gifts” come in many forms.
Winning public trust will also require MPs to be squeaky-clean themselves and stop accepting hospitality unless it’s linked to their constituency – even if that means watching the Chelsea flower show on iPlayer like the rest of us.
Because every time an MP goes to an event for free, it comes with a hidden cost: a public with ever-decreasing faith in the political class, who are more likely to greet outright corruption or cronyism with a weary shrug. “They’re all the same” is a dangerous public mood for a democracy and one that, once embedded, can be deeply hard to dislodge.
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