Libertarians hit by fresh accusations of plagiarism

In an already difficult week for the government, new planning legislation has implicated a new minister in an ethics scandal according to our political correspondents.

THE Housing, Local Government and Regional Growth Secretary u/Cody5200 has been accused of engaging in “plagiarism” following the introduction of government planning legislation last week. In introducing his General Planning Reform (Amendment) Bill to the House of Commons, the Libertarian minister seemed to lift words straight from the work of Adam Smith Institute fellow Mr Tom Papworth without attribution. Beyond this, the Morning Star can reveal that the Libertarian Party has seemingly engaged in this behaviour for some time now, with even its leader u/Friedmanite19 engaging in the practice himself while simultaneously accusing the Labour Party of this behaviour some months ago during a past debate.

Several of u/Cody5200’s lines were taken specifically from Mr Papworth’s blog post directly without crediting him. A number of phrases match up word-for-word. While the ASI is referenced in terms of the policy, the minister failed to reference the author and article from which his lines were taken in his speech. In a twist however, it may be that the implicated Secretary of State did not even draft the opening speech. After all, when similar planning legislation was introduced to no avail by the LPUK leader, a number of the lines were taken at that point, again with no attribution. It may well be the case that the Deputy Prime Minister drafted the opening speech itself and passed it on to the new minister to use.

Such a situation would not be unprecedented as this isn’t the first run-in that the LPUK has had with this issue, nor even its leader. Within weeks of attacking the then Shadow Home Secretary u/HKNorman for self plagiarism, many in the House of Commons noticed the exact same phenomenon with the introduction of the Interlocking Directories Bill in the last Parliament where the current Deputy Prime Minister ended up recycling his old speech word for word. It is expected that new measures on interlocking directorates are set to be introduced during this term as outlined in the Queen’s Speech, although it is questionable whether or not the Libertarian Party will regurgitate the same lines as it has done in the past. In any case, the opposition is likely to call out the LPUK on this issue as a matter of pointing out a party’s hypocrisy if not its poor ethics.

Perhaps more concerning than the apparent laziness of the government must be the fact that a junior partner is uncritically regurgitating the lines from the ASI. This think tank has long been a fringe free-market pressure group, and one which has dabbled in such things as climate denialism and other widely-debunked ideas. Even Mr Papworth’s report makes a number of spurious and weakly-sourced claims to suggest that urban sprawl is healthy; this is a pattern of behaviour within this institution rather than an isolated incident. The ASI is rated as one of the most financially opaque institutions of its breed in the UK according to the organisation Who Funds You?. While it is perhaps expected among many on the left that the LPUK would at least be influenced by the big fat cats it is stunning to see how blatant it all is, even at the highest levels of government.

These developments only add to a relatively poor week for the junior partner in the current Westminster coalition. The newly-annointed LPUK chairman was unceremoniously ejected from his position of Secretary of State for Wales after outcry over conduct from virtually all quarters except the LPUK itself. While now serving as Transport Secretary, he will be under much more intense scrutiny from now on surely. Likewise, the Education Secretary has had to fight his own battle with several parties on the controversial expansion of grammar schools in England. With more ethical questions raised in a government fraught by resignations it is less a question of if the LPUK will create headaches for its coalition partners and more a question of when they will do so.

This story was produced by the political correspondents at the Morning Star.