Kensington and Bayswater MP Joe Powell: "We Are At A Record-Low For Trust in Government"
Joe Powell MP (Credit: PjrNews / Alamy Stock Photo)
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Labour’s Kensington and Bayswater MP Joe Powell tells Sophie Church the UK must get its house in order to fight corruption
The day after the election, Keir Starmer stood outside Downing Street promising to rebuild trust in politics. But over six months later, Joe Powell, one of Starmer’s newly elected Labour MPs, tells The House corruption is still rife within our political system – and he is determined to root it out.
“The Prime Minister keeps saying: the big issue we have in this country at the moment is trust. If you look at any of the indexes, we are at a record-low for trust in government,” says the Kensington and Bayswater MP.
“I think part of the answer of repairing it is for people to feel like big money, corruption and so on is not distorting our politics. If we get that bit right, I think it can help on everything else.”
Powell, 40, grew up in London’s Queen’s Park, and attended a private day school in Hampstead. His father was a university lecturer; his mother a journalist writing for Time Out. Both were Labour voters and “quite political”.
“My dad was a university lecturer. There were massive funding issues,” says Powell. “We would talk about underfunding of education in general. That obviously changed a lot under the Blair and Brown government, and you could really see the difference.”
Powell remembers leafleting from the age of 13. The 2003 Brent East by-election, which Labour lost to the Liberal Democrats due to anger over the Iraq War, has stayed with him.
“That was a very bitter campaign,” he says. “I was against the Iraq War, and organised my school against it. This is obviously now 20-plus years ago, but it also had a political impact – that we lost that seat and we didn’t recover it for quite a long time.”
I was a candidate for almost two years and I was not even regulated for most of that period
In 2007, Powell graduated from Cambridge, before undertaking a master’s degree at Uganda’s Makerere University. He describes Makerere as “old” and “quite Marxist”: “A lot of post-independence African presidents were educated there, but it was also run down and really in need of investment.”
Still a student, he began working for a magazine in Uganda, writing investigative stories into corruption. Powell’s biggest story – around a Commonwealth heads of government conference in Kampala, which Her late Majesty Queen Elizabeth II attended – made the front page of the magazine.
“There was a CCTV contract that was essentially a rigged contract – a massive payback – and none of it worked,” he says. “We uncovered this whole contracting scandal: the fact that the CCTV was not doing anything, and there were no police monitoring it. It was barely even switched on. The headline was: ‘The Scarecrows of Kampala’.”
On leaving university, Powell joined The One Campaign, which fights for equal economic opportunities in Africa. In 2013, he took up a role at Barack Obama’s the Open Government Partnership, working in Washington DC for almost 10 years.
From across the pond, Powell watched, depressed, as Covid contracts and House of Lords appointments were bestowed on those friendly to the Conservative Party. “I was watching the decline and degradation of our own democracy – the backsliding and corruption,” he says.
Powell describes this as his “turning point”. “I was trying to support lots of countries with emerging democracies to strengthen their governance and democracy and transparency,” he says, “and actually, we had a lot of those same problems.”
Returning to London, his parents and Queen’s Park locals helped on Powell’s campaign, electing him to Kensington and Bayswater with a 2,903 majority.
Now MP for the “most unequal constituency in the country” – where more than 6,000 foreign-owned properties sit street to street with damp and mould-ridden social housing – it seems apt that Powell is fighting to realise justice for the Grenfell Tower disaster victims.
“Grenfell was a story about failures of openness, transparency and accountability, and not listening to residents who repeatedly brought up the exact issues that ended up happening,” he says. Powell is now focused on seeing the local council held accountable.
“The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea failed before, during and after the fire in so many massive ways,” he says. “I am concerned there is not enough accountability for that. I don’t think residents have felt a sufficient change in terms of how the council operates.”
Powell is also trying to expose who owns the 40 per cent of in-trust foreign properties in Kensington and Bayswater.
“I think there’s a very strong argument for including it as open data [in the Register of Overseas Interests], like we do with foreign-owned properties generally,” he says. “My concern is that you create an incentive for people to deploy more and more opaque corporate structures in order to hide the ownership. It’s almost more damaging, in a way.”
Powell became chair of the Anti-Corruption and Responsible Tax All-Party Parliamentary Group just a few months into life as an MP. He is now urging the government to found a new regulator focused solely on fighting money laundering in the UK.
“If you’re an accountant [or similar], the vast majority of people working in these industries don’t want to be handling dirty money, but they’re also trying to do a million other things,” he says.
“What we’re saying is: you can simplify and make your life easier if you take the money laundering responsibility away from all of these small professional bodies who compete with each other, and create a professional, small regulator to sit alongside HMRC and the FCA.”
But will the government create another regulator after having declared war against red tape?
“It’s not one of those examples where we’re adding on or taking away decision making from departments,” Powell says. “It’s actually building on the expertise that exists, making it more consistent. That’s why [trade association] UK Finance is supporting it.”
Powell is due to meet with City minister Emma Reynolds in the coming weeks to discuss this suggestion. “I know that officials think that this option is doable,” he says.
“Having business backing for it is really important, because obviously from the Treasury perspective, they’re looking for growth investments. This can help with those goals, and at the same time help keep dirty money out the system.”
Powell is also battling to secure £2bn from the sale of Chelsea FC to spend as aid in Ukraine. While The Guardian reported ministers are preparing to take Roman Abramovich to court in attempt to free up the funds, Powell says he “has not heard anything”.
“I just find it extraordinary that he can do a deal with the British government and exit with the original investment into Chelsea, and somehow manage to tie us in knots about how we’ll spend the profit, when the agreement was explicitly that he could leave and take his capital in order that that money could go to Ukraine,” he says. “And now three years later nothing’s moved.”
While the government is at loggerheads with a Russian oligarch, it is also keeping a wary eye on Elon Musk. Fears Musk could donate $100m to Reform UK before the next election have prompted Labour to consider a cap on the amount foreign donors can give political parties in the UK. But according to Powell, the tech billionaire could exploit a loophole in these plans.
“People have floated £100,000 or £10,000 [in donations]. But you have to be clear what that’s for – it could be for a candidate,” he points out.
The Electoral Commission requires candidates to adhere to spending limits during the long and short election campaigns, when they are officially recognised as the party’s runners for Parliament.
But with candidates increasingly being selected by parties before the long campaign begins, donors can funnel money through them and onwards to their parties without it being declared. If a candidate is not elected, the money they receive will go untracked.
“I was a candidate for almost two years and I was not even regulated for most of that period,” Powell says. “All parties are doing this now. Very few people are selected six weeks before an election – it’s just not reality.”
Could Musk use this loophole to donate to Reform UK?
“For sure,” says Powell. “This idea of a short campaign, long campaign, especially with digital spend, is really hard to enforce. I personally think that whole system needs to be looked at. I just don’t think practically it’s delivering.”
“Essentially, you’re asking people to play by the rules and hoping that they will do the right thing. I’m not sure that’s sustainable,” he adds.
According to data shared exclusively with The House by anti-corruption group Transparency International, four donors gave more than or equal to £5m in 2023 to political parties, and 25 donors donated more than £500k in 2023, totalling £60.7m from private sources. Between 2019 and 2023, donations over £500k totalled £203.8m from private sources.
While introducing a cap on donations may not plug all the leaks, Powell is supportive of the government’s plans.
“Ideally you would try and build a cross-party consensus around doing something like this,” he says. “It’s about protecting democracy. It’s not about partisan funds. But I do think it’s unhealthy to have so few people providing such an overwhelming amount of the party finance.”
Powell is hoping his concerns on political financing will be addressed in the new Elections Bill – which he thinks will appear in the next parliamentary session – as well as votes at 16, automatic voter registration and Electoral Commission independence.
With so much to get done, the arrival of twins six weeks before becoming an MP has forced Powell to be “very efficient” with his time.
“We were literally in Hammersmith hospital for a check-up when Rishi Sunak walked out in the rain, and couldn’t quite believe it,” he says. “I’ve got a three-year-old as well, so life is pretty full on!”
