You might remember a secondary controversy in relation to Gordon Brown's "cancellation" of the General Election on 6th October, 2007. Political Betting ran a story analysing how in the few hours before Brown went public, the market moved dramatically against there being an Autumn election. Largely lost in the storm - admittedly the largest political story of the year - was the suspicion of there having been what in the City is called "insider trading", in other words those in the know - in this case, special advisers, civil servants and even the politicians themselves - making money out of knowledge that is held by only a small number of people, before it has become public information.
Surprisingly in my view, given how much the present Government has added to regulation of the City, there are no specific regulations against the political classes benefitting from inside information. I asked about this in Parliament and was surpised to find that there are only general rules relating to "misuse of your official position".
The Code the Minister referred to - the Civil Service Code - was written in the days before political betting really took off. Nevertheless, this is no excuse - if the same thing had happened in the City in the hours before an important announcement, Labour MPs in particualr would be clamouring for more regulation. It seems that the political world must start to practice what it preaches.
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