Ms He Ting Ru (Sengkang): Sir, trust between elected officials and public servants on one side, and the public on the other, is important for a well-functioning political system. It is important to maintain and enhance this relationship.
Yet, ties between state and society do not exist in a vacuum. As Singapore becomes an ever more important commercial and financial hub, more money and interests will flow into Singapore. They will have interests to advance and protect. Doing so may involve lobbying. It may involve the appointment of sitting Members of Parliament to boards or the hiring of former Members of Parliament and senior public servants to advise on the shaping of policy and legislation. We often see events by industry associations and others attended by elected officials.
Lobbying happens in all systems. Yet what is important is how a system regulates lobbying to ensure that the proper political process is not circumvented, and there is no undue disadvantage given to different groups in society, especially those with less money, access and voice. To this end, how can we improve oversight on lobbying activities given Singapore’s changing circumstances?
4.45 pm
Specifically, what prevents Singapore from passing legislation on lobbying? Such a law could include publicly available registers of lobbyists, lobbying contact with political appointees, Members of Parliament, and very senior public servants, as well as board memberships of Members of Parliament. Some of this information is already provided by political parties under legislation governing political donations and the recently enacted Foreign Interference (Countermeasures) Act, or FICA.
Some will say that such a move is not foolproof. Nothing is. The perfect cannot become an enemy of the good. Properly regulating lobbying activity and addressing potential conflicts of interest reduces chances of excessive influence by certain groups and a shorting of political processes. It is an improvement on the current absence of formal regulation.
Some may find allowing more public scrutiny onerous. Building public trust in increasingly complex situations also comes with those in positions of authority trusting the public, not just calling on the public to trust authority. This not only must be done but must be seen to be done.
The Minister for Education (Mr Chan Chun Sing): Ms He Ting Ru asked whether our regulations or practices need any updates to ensure that our governance frameworks are not compromised and Mr Louis Chua asked about making assets declarations public for Ministers. I think I have responded to these topics previously, extensively in past Parliamentary replies, but if I may, I will just reiterate a few things.
I think different countries have different rules for their people and organisations and as all of us will agree, no one rule is a panacea to prevent corruption or lobbying.
But what we need to do is to look at the system holistically. What we also need to do is to look at the outcome that we have achieved and ask ourselves what is the scale and magnitude of our problem. Putting in new and more rules does not necessarily solve the problems that we may not even have to start with. Whenever we put in new rules, we must also be careful if it causes any unintended consequences.
For example, I just checked the data that was quoted by some Members about some of the countries that have perhaps adopted some of those rules.
In the Corruption Perceptions Index, Singapore in the last five years has been ranked consistently between number three and number five. But those countries who supposedly have some of these more elaborate rules are actually ranked much lower. For example, the UK was ranked somewhere between 11 and 20.
So, I think when we look at how to make sure that we retain the trust of our people, we must look at it at a system level. If I may reiterate what I have said previously, this must occur at three levels.
First, we must make sure that we select good people with the right values to understand not just the letter of the law, but the spirit of the law and uphold them.
Second, we must work as a system, as a team, to make sure that we look out for one another, check one another’s blind spots, help to prevent one another from falling into a situation where they might be compromised.
And third, we must have layers of checks internally and externally to pick up issues whenever there are problems.
That is how we have managed to keep our system relatively corruption-free, lobby-free all these years. But we will be the first to admit that no system is perfect and the situation is evolving and every time we put in rules, there will be parties out there that will try to go around our rules and we have to keep constantly evolving our own rules to make sure that we are never complacent.
In trying to copy other people’s rules, we must see what they have been able to achieve versus what we have been able to achieve, what problems they have been able to solve versus what problems we are trying to solve. There is no magic answer to this.
And we should also have a care for the confidentiality of the information, the privacy concerns of the senior officers in the Public Service, including the political office holders. Why stop at the Ministers? Why not the Members of Parliament? Why stop at the Permanent Secs? Why not the Directors? I think for every rule that we put in, there are implications that we should consider carefully and ask ourselves whether the price that we pay is commensurate with the problem that we are trying to solve.
Prime Minister’s Office
28 February 2024
https://sprs.parl.gov.sg/search/#/sprs3topic?reportid=budget-2344
Office of the Leader of the Opposition 