Infected Blood Compensation Scheme (Amendment) Regulations 2026
Baroness Finn Excerpts(5 days, 15 hours ago)
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Baroness Finn (Con)
My Lords, before I speak to the Motion to approve these regulations and to the regret amendment in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, I want to begin by reflecting on the courage and tenacity of all infected and affected victims of the infected blood scandal. They have shown immense strength in the course of their long campaign, and they deserve justice without delay. There is one point that ought to be made at the outset: the previous Minister for the Cabinet Office rightly placed great store by the delivery of infected blood compensation and repeatedly presented it as a central priority. Victims are now entitled to ask where it leaves them. Not only do they have to live with the uncertainty that inevitably accompanies a change of Government but the latest figures demonstrate that the pace and consistency of compensation payments remain well behind where they should be. After everything these families have endured, they should not be expected to endure yet more uncertainty about when justice will finally arrive.
I thank the Minister and the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, both for their time and for putting the victims at the centre of their remarks. Our shared, cross-party objective of delivering justice for the victims is why we are having this debate, and we will continue to work constructively to maintain that consensus across the main parties. As the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, notes in her amendment, we should recognise the progress made by the Government and the Infected Blood Compensation Authority since October 2025. The latest publicly available figures show that 3,358 people have received compensation. While that is welcome, there is still widespread concern about the pace of progress. The Hepatitis C Trust has said that compensation must be delivered faster, and that thousands of victims are still waiting even to be invited to claim compensation, let alone be paid what they are due.
There also remains a striking imbalance in who has received compensation to date. Living infected persons who have never received support comprise just 35 people—1% of the claims paid. A concerningly small number of affected people and those acting on behalf of a deceased infected person have received payments following their claims. When does the Minister anticipate a meaningful increase in the figures for those groups of victims?
On costs and compensation, the previous Government allocated £11.8 billion to fund infected blood compensation, but the National Audit Office now estimates the total expected payout to be £12.8 billion. What contingencies are being put in place to ensure that funds are available to pay compensation to all those who are eligible? Pace is not the only concern. A number of important issues remain unresolved, including but not limited to the disparity between compensation for living and deceased infected people and the injury award for unethical medical testing. I hope the Minister will be able to address those and other concerns when she responds to this debate. In doing so, will she set out what work is being done to support affected and infected people with their applications for compensation? We need a scheme that recognises the complexities of individual cases and takes care to give people tailored support.
I very much pay tribute to my noble friend Lady Davies of Devonport, who spoke so movingly of her experiences and her mother’s story. She and other noble Lords rightly highlighted the challenges faced by many families in obtaining the necessary records. This is another example of the need for tailored support for victims. Do the teams at IBCA have the skills to support families where records are difficult to access? What assessment has been made to ensure that IBCA has the necessary skills in place to deliver the best possible support for all victims? They and their families must come first. We will continue to work constructively with the Government to ensure that rapid progress is made.
Civil Service Pensions
Baroness Finn Excerpts(2 weeks ago)
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Baroness Finn (Con)
My Lords, I apologise to the House and to the Minister for having to wear these glasses today. I am doing so on medical advice.
Before turning to the questions raised by the Statement, I want to express my deepest sympathy with the civil servants and families caught up in this failure. Many of those affected will have given more than four decades of their lives to public service. They have planned their retirement in good faith and, having left work, may now be entirely reliant on their Civil Service pension to meet ordinary household bills and maintain the standard of living for which they have worked and saved. They should not be forced to borrow, depend on relatives or postpone retirement because the state cannot administer the pension it promised them. The damage done to their finances, health and confidence is unprecedented and entirely unacceptable.
I thank the noble Baroness for giving the House the opportunity to question this important Statement. Our first concern must be the people affected, with more than 6,700 pension quotations still outstanding for past retirement dates and more than 4,100 bereavement cases on which Capita can take action. Behind every figure is a retired public servant, a grieving family or a household left in uncertainty. They must remain at the forefront of the Government’s response.
The Paymaster-General has emphasised that the Capita contract was signed in November 2023 under the previous Government. That is a relevant fact, but it cannot be the end of the matter. The Cabinet Office retained institutional responsibility throughout a two-year transition between Governments, and critical decisions on readiness, data migration, contingency planning and the go-live of the contract on 1 December 2025 were taken after repeated warning signs. The issue is not only who originally signed the contract but whether the Cabinet Office acted as a capable and sceptical contracting authority. On these Benches, our concern is not ideological and we remain agnostic about whether a service is delivered in-house or by a contractor. Either way, the Government must remain an intelligent and accountable customer.
The National Audit Office reported in June 2025 that Capita had already missed three of the six transition milestones that were then due, that the Cabinet Office had withheld £9.6 million of payments and that the service planned for launch had been simplified because important functionality would not be ready. It also found there were no fixed innovation or digitalisation milestones against which the promised benefits could be managed. In October, the Public Accounts Committee warned that there was a clear risk that Capita would not be ready to take over as planned and concluded that the Cabinet Office had not shown that it could effectively manage the outsourced administration of the scheme.
The evidence given to parliamentary committees since the collapse is more troubling still. Senior Cabinet Office officials have acknowledged that they relied heavily on assurances from Capita, that there are lessons to learn and that the department is still not fully confident in the quality of Capita’s management information. Independent technical auditors are now being brought in to test the data, systems and assumptions. That is welcome, but it raises the obvious question: why was that independent specialist verification not completed before the system was permitted to go live?
We welcome the withholding of £9.9 million from Capita and the intervention of the pensions recovery task force, but a recovery task force, however necessary, is a remedy for failed contract management. It is not a substitute for proper assurance before launch. Can the Minister therefore tell the House who authorised the go-live decision, what objective go or no-go criteria were applied, which criteria Capita had failed to meet and whether any requirements were waived? Will the Government publish the relevant readiness assessments, assurance reports and risk decisions, subject only to genuinely necessary commercial redactions?
Capita has now missed both its end-of-April and end-of-June recovery milestones. Scheme members should not be asked to rely on another unverified promise. What firm dates have now been set for clearing the overdue retirement quotations and actionable bereavement cases? Have those dates been independently stress-tested by people with the technical and operational expertise to verify that they are deliverable?
There are also wider questions about supplier management across government. Will Capita be referred to the Debarment Review Service or will it continue to be permitted to compete for public contracts without such a review? Why was Capita selected in February as the preferred bidder for the DWP-led Synergy shared services contract while serious concerns about the pension transition were already evident? What cross-government assessment of Capita’s delivery risk was undertaken before that decision was finalised?
Finally, I welcome the provision for interest where full pension benefits are paid more than one month late and the ability to seek redress for other losses through the complaints process. However, compensation delayed can compound the original harm. What service standards will apply to those complaints? How quickly will consequential losses be assessed and paid? How will the Cabinet Office ensure that Capita, not affected pensioners and not the taxpayer, ultimately bears the cost of this failure?
This is a corporate failure by Capita, but it is also a grave failure of public sector commissioning, assurance and contract oversight. Civil servants who have spent their working lives serving the country were entitled to expect the Cabinet Office to test promises, verify systems and manage risk before transferring a service on which their livelihoods depend. The Government must now resolve the individual cases urgently, compensate those who have suffered loss and demonstrate that the machinery of government has learned the fundamental lesson: outsourcing responsibility does not outsource accountability.
Lord Pack (LD)
My Lords, Capita’s failure to meet its end-of-June deadline following the previous end-of-April missed deadline is obviously extremely disappointing, but this is a story not just of corporate failure, missed KPIs or missed calendar dates but of so many individual cases of heartbreaking distress, especially for those whose loved ones died unexpectedly and who are now left in limbo, in uncertainty and, in many cases, facing financial hardship as well.
To be fair, the Government’s rhetoric on this has been fairly robust not only in reminding us of when the original contract was signed but also, for example, in the Minister saying in the Statement:
“I will continue to apply the most stringent commercial levers”.
I note that, in the discussions in the Select Committees’ joint meeting in the House of Commons last week, there was some discussion of the pros and cons, for example, of sacking Capita outright from this contract. But one of the other stringent commercial levers that could be applied, of course, would be to raise the question whether Capita should be placed on the debarment list, if its failures in this case so significantly undermine our confidence in its ability as a company to deliver on its promises that it would not be appropriate to award it any new future contracts. Such a step might help concentrate minds somewhat when it comes to resolving the current problem.
Of course, adding any company to the debarment list—and I think this would be the first company to be so added—is, I appreciate, not a step to be taken lightly, but the scale of repeated failure in this case is quite striking, as is the scale of repeated broken promises. Capita clearly made commitments on technology and then to meet remedial deadlines that it has not met. Those commitments were not just made off the cuff, casually, at a junior level; as the Cabinet Office’s Permanent Secretary set out in her evidence in the House of Commons last week, these were very serious commitments made at senior level that have not been delivered on. Given this record from Capita, can the Minister tell us: will the Government consider commencing the process to review adding Capita to the debarment list?
I turn to the existing contract and its problems. The Cabinet Office has said—and I think this is very welcome—that it is doubling its capacity to deal with pension complaints, which will increase following these many problems. Of course, the Pensions Ombudsman, a little bit further down the track, could expect a surge of complaints working its way through the system as well. Although there have been comments and commitments about how Capita is paying some of the costs of dealing with this mess, I do not think it has been made clear yet, and I hope the Minister can therefore clarify, whether Capita will pay for the extra costs that the Cabinet Office, and in due course the Pensions Ombudsman, will incur for dealing with the complaints arising from this mess.
Given the dependency on Capita for getting the McCloud remedy cases resolved, and indeed the extra pressure of legal deadlines in those cases, what extra steps are the Government now taking, given Capita’s failure to deliver on that end-of-June deadline and the obvious doubts that therefore arise about its ability to deliver what it has promised in other key areas? That question also applies to Capita’s recently won synergy contract.
Finally, to return to the main pensions fiasco, the Minister in the Commons said the Government are imminently expecting a new update and a new set of promises from Capita. Given that we will shortly go into recess, can the Minister also update us on what the Government’s intentions are to ensure that Parliament is fully updated on those new plans before recess commences?
Political Party Finance and the Electoral Commission
Baroness Finn Excerpts(3 weeks, 4 days ago)
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Baroness Finn (Con)
My Lords, I too thank the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, for bringing forward this important debate and for giving me the opportunity to discuss some of the issues beforehand.
There is a simple constitutional caution at the heart of this matter. A Government should not direct the power of the state to undercut the lawful flow of funds to their political opponents. Once that line is crossed, it is not easily uncrossed. It invites reprisal when power changes hands, and it weakens public confidence that electoral law is being made in the national interest rather than in the interests of the party temporarily in office. Party finance law is not ordinary lawmaking; it is the law by which the competitors in our democracy agree on the rules of the contest. The Government of the day are the trustee of those rules, not the proprietor.
The previous Government were right to be tough on hostile state activity. They passed the National Security Act 2023, creating the statutory framework for the foreign influence registration scheme. No one in this House should be complacent about foreign interference, but the existence of that threat does not justify Ministers blurring the distinction between foreign interference and lawful donations made by registered electors or genuine UK businesses. This side of the House has been consistent: changes to the rules should be made through proper cross-party consultation. That is a long-honoured constitutional custom, an argument so eloquently put forward by my noble friend Lord Maude of Horsham.
In its 2016 report, the House of Lords Select Committee on Trade Union Political Funds and Political Party Funding, chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Burns, recorded the importance of cross-party consensus on matters affecting the interests of rival parties. The committee quoted Sir Winston Churchill, to whom my noble friend Lord Maude referred today. In the other place on 16 February 1948, he said:
“It has become a well-established custom that matters affecting the interests of rival parties should not be settled by the imposition of the will of one side over the other, but by an agreement reached either between the leaders of the main parties or by conferences under the impartial guidance of Mr. Speaker”.—[Official Report, Commons, 16/2/1948; col. 859-60.]
That was the right principle in 1948 and it remains the right principle today. It is striking that one of the witnesses who repeated Churchill’s words to the committee was the then general secretary of the Labour Party, now the noble Lord, Lord McNicol of West Kilbride. He described that custom as a “principle of fairness”. I therefore simply ask the Minister: what has changed?
Sir Nick Clegg warned that issues of money and power in British politics should be dealt with on a cross-party basis. Jack Straw said that, in this area, the Government of the day act as a trustee for our democratic system. They were both right. Following Sir Hayden Phillips’s report, commissioned by Sir Tony Blair, cross-party talks were convened. In 2011, Sir Nick Clegg again convened cross-party talks on party funding and donations. In 2013, an unofficial cross-party working group published a draft Bill.
If cross-party consensus was already a well- established custom in 1948 then by 2026 it is more than a passing courtesy. Whether or not one calls it a full constitutional convention, it is plainly an established democratic restraint. The Burns committee ultimately concluded that
“while there is no formal convention that all reform of party funding must take place by consensus, history shows that governments of both main parties have acted with a degree of restraint; and indeed it is desirable to seek consensus. If any government were to use its majority unilaterally to inflict significant damage on the finances of opposition parties, it would risk starting a tit-for-tat conflict which could harm parliamentary democracy”.
That warning could hardly be clearer. Whatever party is in power, it would be detrimental for conventions to break down and to open the door to US-style hyper-partisan legislation. As Sir Nick Clegg warned the committee in 2016, if a Government acted unilaterally, they would
“rue the day … because one day the boot will be on the other foot”.
That is why the Government’s handling of the Rycroft review and the Representation of the People Bill is so troubling. I do not here criticise Sir Philip Rycroft’s review, nor do I deny that there are legitimate questions about transparency, enforcement and the resilience of our political finance system. However, an independent review commissioned by Ministers is not a substitute for proper cross-party talks led by Ministers.
The Labour manifesto contained a broad statement that the Government would
“protect democracy by strengthening the rules around donations to political parties”.
That sentence does not give Ministers carte blanche to rewrite the financial rules of political competition unilaterally. Ministers have said that officials have engaged with political parties through the Parliamentary Parties Panel on technical aspects of reform—that is not enough. Technical consultation with party professionals is not the same as cross-party political agreement. A review by officials or by an independent reviewer is not the same as party leaders, Ministers and opposition parties sitting down to agree rules that affect them all. The Government have now chosen to take forward some of the Rycroft recommendations, but not all of them, through the Representation of the People Bill. That selective approach is precisely why trust is so important. If Ministers cherry-pick from a review in a way that happens to disadvantage their political opponents, they should expect the closest possible scrutiny from this House.
I turn to the proposed cap on donations from overseas electors. I shall make one point absolutely clear: there is a fundamental distinction between foreign interference and a lawful donation from a British citizen who is registered to vote. I take note of what the noble Lord, Lord Frost, said about being a British citizen. There is a long-standing principle, originally recommended by the Committee on Standards in Public Life, that permissible donors should include those on the UK electoral register. Prior to 2022, British citizens overseas could already vote in UK parliamentary elections and make donations, subject to the 15-year time limit. In response to the comments made by the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, the Elections Act did not invent that principle; it removed the arbitrary 15-year cut-off. The Government propose a £100,000 annual cap on donations and regulated transactions by overseas electors, with retrospective effect from the date of announcement. We do not support that arbitrary cap or its retrospective application. All this should not happen without cross-party agreement.
I turn next to corporate donations, a matter so effectively addressed by my noble friend Lord Massey. If Ministers intend to adopt a post-tax profit test, they should first publish a full impact assessment showing how it would affect donors across all parties, including donations accepted by the governing party itself. They should explain how the rule would apply to start-ups, investment-heavy businesses, social enterprises, companies in volatile sectors and firms with uneven earnings. They should also explain why a profit test is preferable to a genuine business test backed by stronger due diligence and enforcement. The Government should not smuggle through a major restriction on corporate political giving under the banner of antiinterference.
The noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, has rightly drawn attention to the important role of the Electoral Commission. We agree that it needs operational independence and sufficient resources to perform its functions effectively and command the confidence of the British people. The Murrell case is a salutary reminder that the improper use of party funds is not a technicality; it strikes at trust in political life. But that case also illustrates the point. The answer to wrongdoing is the effective enforcement of the law, as my noble friend Lord Johnson of Lainston made clear—it is not the partisan remaking of political finance rules in a way that burdens lawful opponents.
The Government’s present approach risks confusing two very different things. One is the legitimate need to protect our democracy from foreign interference and financial abuse. The other is the temptation for a Government to tilt the rules of political competition in their favour. This House should be vigilant in resisting the second while supporting the first.
We are ready to engage seriously on transparency, enforcement and the protection of our democracy, but we will not accept unilateral, retrospective and partisan changes to party finance law. We will not accept the conflation of British overseas voters with foreign actors. We will not accept broad restrictions on genuine UK businesses without proper evidence, proper scrutiny and proper cross-party agreement.
The Government should change course. They should withdraw from unilateralism, convene proper cross-party talks and return to the constitutional restraint that has served our parliamentary democracy so well. Above all, Ministers should remember that in this field they are not merely legislators—they are trustees of the democratic system itself.
Civil Service Pension Scheme
Baroness Finn Excerpts(3 weeks, 6 days ago)
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Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent (Lab)
My noble friend raises a very important issue. While there are contractual issues at play, the reality is that behind each and every one of the statistics that we will undoubtedly discuss today there is an individual and a family who are struggling. We have heard many harrowing and heartbreaking stories. We previously set out two recovery targets, including an end-of-June milestone by which we expected a return to standard, contractually required levels. The end of June deadline has now arrived, and Capita has completely failed to meet this milestone for all services, as well as missing its initial April target. Since its explicit personal assurances have not been met and core outputs are deficient, we are deploying a unified package of escalating measures, including independent technical audits and an on-the-ground remedial adviser to hold it ruthlessly to account. I look forward to discussing the detail of this after my right honourable friend the Paymaster-General has made a Statement to Members of the other place in the coming days.
Baroness Finn (Con)
My Lords, Capita’s failures are unacceptable, but this also raises serious questions about the Cabinet Office’s own contract management. Given the warnings before handover, what further interventions are Ministers prepared to make if service levels are not restored? What lessons have been learned to ensure that this saga is not repeated, and will the Minister commit to including the actions taken as a result of those lessons learned in the update in the coming days?
Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent (Lab)
My Lords, I gently remind the noble Baroness that this contract and its details were signed by the previous Government. We are now trying to fix, and seek assurances for, a contract that has failed many people.
On the detail and the actions of the Cabinet Office, we have established a pension recovery task force led by Angela MacDonald, the Second Permanent Secretary at HMRC. There are 140 surge staff, the costs of which Capita confirmed in a letter to the Cabinet Office in April it will be funding. Capita has surged its number of support staff as well; 500 people are working on the contract, which is a 50% per cent increase on the previous contract. Clearly, however, too many individuals are waiting.
Regarding the details that the noble Baroness has requested, obviously a Statement is coming. If they are not included in that, I know she will make sure that I write to her with the details as and when we get to that point.
Democratic Institutions: Threats
Baroness Finn Excerpts(1 month ago)
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Baroness Finn (Con)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, for tabling this Motion.
Within living memory, almost every public telephone call in this country travelled across a network owned by a state monopoly. Almost every letter was carried by another. Almost all televisual information reached the public through four channels. Even the printed press was concentrated in the hands of a small club of proprietors. Public opinion was essentially managed by a small, controlling class, mainly appointed by, licensed by or dependent on the state.
Fortunately, as my noble friend Lord Howell of Guildford made clear, technology has broken that arrangement. Satellite television, mobile telephony, the internet, podcasts, independent publishers and social media have loosened the state’s grip on the flow of news and opinion. That development has brought dangers, which this debate is right to consider, but it has also brought freedom. As my noble friend Lord Hannan of Kingsclere so brilliantly argued, we should be very careful that, in the name of fighting disinformation, we do not accidentally rebuild the old machinery of control.
Public trust is essential to democratic government, but trust cannot be restored by merely commanding the public to trust state institutions. It must be earned by conduct: by honesty, competence, impartiality and accountability. That applies not only to elected bodies but to all the institutions whose decisions shape public life: broadcasters and newspapers, the permanent Civil Service, the law and the judiciary, regulators, the Bank of England and indeed your Lordships’ House.
That is why the Mandelson affair has done such damage. When a Prime Minister appoints a Labour grandee to one of the most sensitive diplomatic posts, despite obvious and widely known reputational risks, the public are entitled to ask: who was protecting the national interest? The papers released after the humble Address have not calmed those concerns. They have deepened them. We have seen redactions, missing messages, disappearing communications and a Government who are apparently more interested in limiting embarrassment than in giving Parliament a complete account. It is not enough for Ministers to say that officials followed a process if the process produces an indefensible result. Can the Minister explain why a complete schedule of documents has not been provided in a form that Parliament can scrutinise? Can she tell us whether the incoming Labour Administration will commit to ending the casual use of private channels for serious government business?
This problem is not confined to Ministers. The permanent Civil Service is supposed to be one of the great stabilising institutions of the constitution. It is permanent precisely because it is meant to be impartial. Yet too often the public see a Civil Service that speaks the language of neutrality while indulging the instincts of activism. The Civil Service Code is not a decorative plaque. It is a condition of public confidence. Officials cannot be neutral between political parties in the office and partisan campaigners outside it if the public are not reasonably to conclude that the same instincts are shaping advice, implementation and enforcement.
There are also the problems of delivery, so ably articulated by my noble friend Lord Gascoigne. Most voters are not driven by ideology. They want to go to work, raise their family, send their children to good schools and take home as much as possible of what they work hard to earn. In return, they expect their public services to be decent, effective and accessible.
There is now a wider problem, as the noble Baroness, Lady Featherstone, made so clear, of institutional self-protection. In too many public bodies, failures are met with reviews. Reviews are met with action plans. Action plans are met with yet another layer of training, and nobody is ever plainly accountable. The British public can see the pattern. They are asked to pay more tax for worse services while being lectured by institutions that seem very good at protecting themselves and very bad at serving the country.
The same standard must apply to our broadcasters, especially the BBC. As my noble friend Lady Stowell of Beeston made very clear, the BBC is not just another media outlet; it is a compulsorily funded national institution with a privileged place in the life of the country. That privilege carries duties. Too often, the corporation behaves as though criticism is evidence of bad faith, rather than a warning that it has lost contact with large parts of the public who it claims to serve. We have had the resignation of senior BBC leaders and, as the noble Lord, Lord Frost, pointed out, serious questions about the handling of contested issues from Gaza to sex and gender. The BBC Arabic concerns, including the comparative handling of Hamas hostages, have only reinforced the suspicion that impartiality can vary by service, audience and internal culture.
The BBC must not merely avoid bias; it must avoid the appearance of belonging to a class, a faction, a world-view or a cause. At present, it too often fails that test. Editorial decisions rightly fall beyond the ambit of Ministers, but public trust in the BBC is a constitutional matter as well as a broadcasting matter. Will the Government support the strongest transparency on corrections, complaints, commissioning decisions and conflicts of interest? Will Ministers accept that the licence fee settlement cannot be discussed as though the BBC has a divine right to public money regardless of public confidence?
None of this means that we should be naive about the online world. The promise of greater freedom brought by social media has never been uncomplicated. The harms to children are real. My noble friends Lord Nash and Lady Barran showed great leadership in this House on child protection, and the leader of the Opposition, Kemi Badenoch, has been clear that social media is not for children. The Government, as usual, arrived late, copied the Conservative homework and then tried to claim the idea as their own. Whatever the route, we need serious protection for children.
At the same time, adults in a free society must be allowed to argue, offend, persuade and be wrong. The answer to disinformation cannot be a truth ministry staffed by the same institutions that have helped to lose trust in the first place. The state should be very strong against fraud, hostile state interference, impersonation and threats. It should also be very cautious before deciding that robust dissent is a harm to be managed.
Foreign interference, as mentioned by many noble Lords, is a real and growing threat. Reports of Iranian-linked social media activity amplifying Scottish separatism show the kind of low-cost, deniable operation that hostile states now use to inflame division inside democratic countries. Russia, Iran and China do not need to invent every argument; as my noble friend Lord Risby argued, they simply find our sore points and press on them.
What assessment have the Government made of the number of foreign-operated bot or sock puppet accounts targeting UK audiences? What work is being done with Ofcom, the Electoral Commission and the intelligence agencies to identify co-ordinated inauthentic behaviour before election campaigns are polluted by it? Are Ministers examining how artificial intelligence can be used not to censor legitimate opinion but to detect networks, trace amplification patterns and expose foreign direction?
The previous Conservative Government created the foreign influence registration scheme, which came into force last year. Russia and Iran are rightly included in the enhanced tier, but China is not. If the enhanced tier is for serious state threats, why is China absent? Can the Minister set out what lessons have been learned from including Russia and Iran, and what test China has failed to meet or, more accurately, what political courage the Government have failed to find?
It would not be right for this House to debate trust without looking to ourselves. Those in the media, the Civil Service and public bodies could fairly tell politicians, “Physician, heal thyself”. Your Lordships’ House is at its best when it is serious, courteous, expert and independent minded. Our debates on defence, security and constitutional matters show this House doing what it exists to do: testing government, improving legislation and bringing experience to bear. But breaches of our own standards damage the whole institution. We cannot demand accountability elsewhere while excusing it here.
We should therefore recommit ourselves to the disciplines that make this House valuable: courtesy, restraint, accuracy and scrutiny without grandstanding. We should also resist any attempt to use civility as a muzzle. In response to the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, democracy is noisy. The public are entitled to be angry when institutions fail. It is our job to give them institutions worthy of respect.
The old world of controlled communication has gone, and we should be grateful for that. The public no longer need permission from a Minister, a mandarin, a BBC editor or a newspaper proprietor to hear an argument, and that is a democratic gain. The task now is not to rebuild the gatekeepers under the modern language of safety and resilience; it is to make our institutions trustworthy enough to survive scrutiny. That means Ministers who keep records and tell the truth, civil servants who remember that impartiality in delivery is their constitutional bargain, a BBC that serves the whole country rather than its own internal culture, platforms that protect children and expose foreign manipulation, and a Government with the courage to name hostile states, including China, when the evidence requires it. Public trust will not be restored by controlling what people may know; it will be restored when those in power stop behaving as though they have something to hide.
Social Media: Use of X by Government Departments
Baroness Finn Excerpts(1 month ago)
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Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent (Lab)
The noble Lord is absolutely right. Everything that every Member of your Lordships’ House does every day is to promote British values and ensure that they are protected. That is why we have the Defending Democracy Taskforce and why we have just had the Rycroft review; it is also why, in the most recent by-election, the Joint Election Security Preparedness Unit was set up to try to tackle some of these issues. Although I am a huge advocate of freedom of expression—I ran Index on Censorship until the general election—it is about making sure that, within the prism of freedom of speech, we are protecting the values that we hold most dear. That is why we have given powers to Ofcom; obviously, we will continue to review those powers, and, if they do not work, we will need to do more.
Baroness Finn (Con)
My Lords, in October last year, the Government indicated their intention to relax the rules on civil servants speaking publicly, including to the media and stakeholders. Can the Minister confirm when the formal guidance will be published? Will it include guidance on social media use?
Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent (Lab)
The noble Baroness makes an interesting point. I should have anticipated a question on that; I thought that she might ask about the Civil Service’s principles on social media, as opposed to anything more substantive. I will write to her with an update on the issue she raises, but I assure all Members of your Lordships’ House that the Civil Service has to operate with impartiality, regardless of which platform it is using.
Foreign Interference in UK Democratic Processes
Baroness Finn Excerpts(1 month, 1 week ago)
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Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent (Lab)
I thank my noble friend for so many things, but I am not sure that our colleagues who are currently campaigning in by-elections up and down the country will necessarily join me in doing so. My noble friend raises an important point about ensuring that people have confidence in the election results. That is why we have the Joint Election Security and Preparedness Unit, which was operational during the recent elections and is operational again during the current by-elections to make sure that we can all have confidence in the democratic process.
Baroness Finn (Con)
My Lords, the news of Russian state actors behind the arson attacks at sites linked to the Prime Minister is, as other noble Lords have pointed out, extremely concerning. Yesterday’s incident with the frigate “Admiral Grigorovich” shows that Russia has become increasingly reckless. Have similar trends been seen in Russian foreign interference operations online, including through the use of bots? What practical steps are Ministers taking to tackle this?
Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent (Lab)
I think that we can all agree, not least after marking last week that the Ukraine war is longer than the First World War, that we are dealing with a bad-faith and outrageous actor with the Russian state, which has also been operating in the online space. Since October 2024, the Government have exposed and sanctioned 38 individuals and organisations responsible for delivering Russian information warfare. I appreciate, as will noble Lords, that there is still some way to go, but we are working every day to keep both our online and our offline spaces safe.
Lord Mandelson Humble Address
Baroness Finn Excerpts(1 month, 2 weeks ago)
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Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent (Lab)
My Lords, I shall start with the noble Lord’s second point. This was an official-led process. There were no politicians involved in the determination of what was and was not published. About 1,500 documents were published only a week ago. With regard to any correspondence relating to the Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister, the Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister proactively disclosed to the other House twice last week that he had exchanged messages with Peter Mandelson, but they were no longer available to him to disclose as part of the humble Address. As he stated in the other place, if he continued to have access to those messages, he would have disclosed them as part of his return. He does not have access to the messages.
Baroness Finn (Con)
My Lords, given the miraculous emergence of the Darren Jones texts, can the Minister give assurances that there are no other withheld ministerial communications that will emerge? Also, given that confidence in this process has been shaken, as my noble friend Lord Harper said, can she now commit to publishing the schedule identifying exactly what material is being withheld at the request of the Metropolitan Police?
Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent (Lab)
As I have said many times and very clearly from this Dispatch Box—I think this might be my fourth outing on the humble Address, which will make it also the noble Baroness’s fourth outing on the humble Address—we have published everything that is available to us and that this was an official-led process that has been done in kind. We are adamant, and the officials are adamant, that we have fully complied with the humble Address. With regard to a schedule of documents, as I have discussed with the noble Baroness, Lady Finn, I shall be very clear: there are three buckets of information, which I have said on record before, about categories of information that will not be published. This small number of documents relate to national security, vetting material, conflict of interest process material and internal correspondence with Peter Mandelson. As and when the Met Police believe it is appropriate to do so, they, too, will be published.
Cabinet Manual: Guidelines for Government Formation
Baroness Finn Excerpts(1 month, 3 weeks ago)
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Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent (Lab)
My Lords, given that the current manual is being redrafted as we speak, it would be inappropriate for me to comment on the detail. However, to reassure Members of your Lordships’ House, we have asked both the Lords Constitution Committee and PACAC in the other place for their assistance on the consultation with parliamentarians across both Houses. How they choose to do so will be a matter for them.
Baroness Finn (Con)
My Lords, the Cabinet Manual, or possibly more correctly, the Cabinet Office manual, is not a written constitution, nor is it binding on Ministers. The Government intend to update this source of guidance and information. Can the Minister confirm whether this update will be simply to reflect changes in legislation and practice since 2011, or will it be done in a more maximalist way to embody additional conventions and practices? Will it seek to amend any existing conventions where legislation has not changed since 2011? Will she also confirm that, since the manual is owned by the Cabinet, it will not be published without its explicit endorsement?
Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent (Lab)
Let me take those questions in order—if I miss one, I will come back to the noble Baroness. First, yes, I expect the document to be endorsed by the Cabinet. Secondly, no, I do not expect it to cover any additional precedents that are not already there. We are not changing precedent. This is a living, breathing document about how we operate—about having one place with our established precedents and conventions. I forget the third question, so I will write to the noble Baroness.
Lord Mandelson Humble Address: Government Response
Baroness Finn Excerpts(1 month, 3 weeks ago)
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Baroness Finn (Con)
My Lords, this scandal began with the Prime Minister’s decision to appoint Peter Mandelson as His Majesty’s ambassador to Washington. Mandelson is a man whose relationship with Jeffrey Epstein was already known to be a profound reputational risk and whose later published record included cash payments and benefits from Epstein, including travel.
At the core of this story is not merely a failure of process; it is a failure of judgment. It is the Prime Minister’s failure, and it shows a callous disregard for the victims of one of the most notorious sex offenders of modern times.
In truth, we have learned little that is surprising from what is actually in these documents. It is no surprise that Lord Mandelson displayed contempt for the Prime Minister, for cabinet government and for officials and advisers alike, despite his public utterances. He described No. 10 as “beleaguered and bereft”, said it needed a “complete revamp” and claimed that senior people in Downing Street did not know what the Prime Minister wanted; indeed, that most of them did not think that the Prime Minister knew what he wanted.
Of equal concern is that, clearly, Ministers spent a lot of time discussing party politics with a supposedly politically impartial official. Can the Minister confirm that that failure to uphold the impartiality of the Civil Service is in contravention of the Ministerial Code?
What is most revealing is not what the documents contain; it is what they do not contain. Nowhere is there candid written submission, whether from officials or political advisers, saying, “Prime Minister, this appointment is unwise. This candidate carries unacceptable reputational risk. This office demands a higher standard”. We have not been shown a written decision from the Prime Minister or the Foreign Secretary authorising the appointment on the merits. Instead, we are given peripheral documents: process, risk, choreography, vetting, and announcement handling. One chain says simply that
“a political appointment has been agreed”.
The Cabinet Secretary later records that earlier advice explained the Prime Minister’s right to
“make such an appointment and the process for doing so but did not give specific advice on candidates”.
So, for all the Prime Minister’s talk of leadership, the record before us suggests that not one person serving him felt able or willing to advise him candidly in writing that this appointment was folly. That is a remarkable indictment of the culture at the centre of government.
It is also deeply ironic. This is a Prime Minister who has staked much of his moral authority on the Hillsborough law and a statutory duty of candour. He has said that such a duty is needed so that the truth is not optional and cover-ups are impossible and that the law would change the balance of power so that the state can never hide from the people it should serve. Those are admirable sentiments. They arise from hard and bitter experience: Hillsborough, infected blood, Covid—all where families were forced to fight the state, not only for justice but for records, evidence and truth.
Perhaps the one person in government who did, in private, take the duty of candour seriously was Pat McFadden, who told Lord Mandelson:
“Every meeting I have is: ‘Who can we tax in order to pay benefits to others?’ They’re asking the wrong questions”.
What a shame that he felt that that duty did not extend to the electorate.
Does the Minister appreciate how surreal it is for a Government to preach candour in public office while, in relation to one of the gravest scandals in British diplomatic history, they appear assiduously to have avoided creating clear records of advice and decision? Candour is not merely what Ministers say at a Dispatch Box after the event. Candour is what advisers write down when the powerful are about to make a grave mistake.
There is a further problem. The Government acknowledge that material has been withheld so as not to prejudice an ongoing Metropolitan Police investigation, and say that further publication may follow. But where is the schedule? How many relevant documents have been withheld? What categories do they fall into? Who authored them? What dates do they cover? What broad subjects do they concern? I ask the noble Baroness to undertake that the Government will provide the House with a clear account of what has been withheld and why.
Finally, responsibility cannot be outsourced to officials, advisers or process. The responsibility lies with the Prime Minister. If further confirmation were needed of Lord Mandelson’s total unsuitability, it is found in the extraordinary discovery that after his appointment had been publicly announced, he still planned to participate in UBS’s Greater China Conference in Shanghai in his Global Counsel capacity, and that he would be paid for it. Officials further recorded that he asked to start on the FCDO payroll in order to facilitate that private engagement. This was a man with no proper regard for propriety, ethics or the dignity of public office, and he has been driven from office and from public life. The remaining question is how long the Prime Minister who appointed him can credibly remain.
Lord Pack (LD)
My Lords, when discussing such matters we should always start with remembering and honouring the bravery of the women and girls who came forward to tell the truth, revealing the grim reality of the behaviour they and others had been subject to. Their commitment to truth stands in stark contrast, sadly, with Peter Mandelson’s decision to withhold key information from the papers we are discussing today.
However, turning to what we do have, and starting on a positive note, the Government’s new guidance on direct ministerial appointments published alongside the humble Address now says—and it is very welcome:
“Where security vetting procedures are necessary, these should be undertaken and completed before an appointment is confirmed and announced”.
I have raised before the rather bizarre, back-to-front nature of appointing somebody first and only then checking whether they are suitable, so that is a very welcome change and should be acknowledged as such.
On a possibly less positive note, I see that the terms of reference for the vetting review have also been published alongside this tranche of documents. I have previously expressed concerns about how the results of Peter Mandelson’s vetting were reported to others through a daisy chain of verbal briefings, such that in the end the Prime Minister was hearing the outcome of the vetting process third hand, without sight of the relevant outcome documents. Whatever we think about the judgments made in that process, that is clearly a very brittle process, prone to error and lack of accountability. Can the Minister therefore confirm that the vetting review will include not just how vetting is done, which is clearly within scope, but how its results are reported to others, including looking at the merits of replacing that culture of verbal briefings with a clear, documented paper trail?
Moving on to what is definitely not, I am afraid, a positive note, the messages that we now can see from inside government show a clear and widespread embedding of the culture of government by WhatsApp. I have previously asked about the promised review of the Cabinet Office’s guidance on the use of WhatsApp, which still, at the bottom of the page on GOV.UK, states:
“This guidance will be reviewed on or before 31 December 2025”.
Last month, when I queried when the review will be completed, the Minister told me:
“I expect it to be before your Lordships’ House imminently for us to discuss the detail”.—[Official Report, 19/5/26; cols. 280-81.]
However, yesterday, in the House of Commons, the Minister, Darren Jones, told the House simply that the terms of reference for the review will be published “very shortly”. So we have gone from a promised review before 31 December 2025, to an expectation last month that details were imminent, to a hope yesterday that the terms of the review will be published very shortly. It seems that each time, as time passes, we are getting further away from the completion of the review. What assurances can the Minister give us about the Government’s commitment to sorting this issue out and ensuring that this review is fully completed —and promptly?
Turning to the papers themselves, I have four questions. Running through much of the correspondence is the idea from officials that membership of the House of Lords exempts you from vetting requirements in many circumstances. It is a repeatedly expressed belief. Given the limited nature of the checks made on those of us who have the privilege of joining this House, and given that those checks have in many cases been carried out several decades previously, can the Minister confirm the Government’s position? On what occasions, and for which posts, would someone who otherwise has to be vetted be exempted from vetting by virtue of being a Member of this House?
Secondly, there is the email from a civil servant to Peter Mandelson on 21 January last year—volume 1, page 77—regarding the vetting team’s request for the names of his foreign contacts. The email said:
“I suggest you send over the handful of names you mentioned, even though you don’t consider them ‘close contacts’. That will reassure the vetting team that you’ve been comprehensive, even if it’s all quite artificial”.
That apparent coaching on how to mislead the vetting team with extraneous information is clearly concerning. Can the Minister tell us when the Government became aware of such exchanges, and what action has been taken to ensure that similar such coaching or advice is not proffered in future?
Thirdly, there is the curious email from Ailsa Terry to Peter Mandelson and Morgan McSweeney on 13 February last year—volume 1, page 386. It says:
“Olly has been clear about the need to delete all traffic on this”.
Why would a senior civil servant be telling those two people to delete all the records of something?
Finally, I turn to a matter of detail—it would be a useful one to clear up—regarding volume 3, page 128. It appears to show the noble Lord, Lord Livermore, arranging a meeting with a paid lobbyist, yet the Treasury’s list of declared such meetings does not have any matching entry. Did that meeting take place? If so, who attended it, and what is the reason for that meeting not appearing in the register?
I appreciate that, obviously, the Minister may not be able to give detailed answers to all those points now, but I hope she will be able to commit at least to writing to me, because clarity and transparency are crucial as part of not just the Government’s but the whole political system’s reaction to the scandal we have been facing.