Our letter on cleaning up politics

The Rt Hon Darren Jones MP
Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister

12th February 2026

Dear Mr Jones,

The scandals around Lord Mandelson and now Lord Doyle are doing huge damage to public confidence in our political system.

We welcome your promise to bring forward measures to clean up politics. These scandals must be the catalyst for major change and a new, robust standards regime.

But to restore trust we need systemic reform - changing things around the edges won’t do any more.

That means reform of the Lords, a cap on political donations, real action on lobbying and clamping down on second jobs.

These are issues we have campaigned on for, in some cases, nearly forty years.

We would welcome the opportunity to meet with you to discuss what can be done to restore trust in our politics.

Yours sincerely,

Tom Brake
CEO

Unlock Democracy