Standards of Behaviour and Honesty in Political Life

Baroness Wheatcroft Excerpts

Thursday 23rd June 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Wheatcroft (CB)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Morse, for giving us the opportunity to debate this important issue. I am delighted to follow the noble Lord, Lord Balfe, and grateful to him for reminding us about the characteristics of the current incumbent of No. 10.

I must begin by declaring an interest. I am proud to be a Member of this House, and proud of the vital work it does in our constitution. I am devastated by what this Government are doing to trash the reputation of this Parliament. I spent most of my career as a journalist. In the eyes of the general public, there are few who come lower than journalists but here I am, and it is even worse.

I begin by talking about the trickle-down effect—but not in relation to wealth, where the idea is that if the people at the top make lots more money, everybody will be better off; this does not work. When it comes to corruption, the trickle-down effect is dramatically successful. Take the example of Putin’s Russia. According to the Ukrainian Research Institute’s intelligence, 90% of the tanks that the Russians are currently trying to get out of mothballs are unusable because vital parts have been taken away and sold; the circuit boards are worth something on Alibaba. The generals have decided that, if it is right for Putin and Co. to make their millions, they too deserve a cut. That is one reason why things are going more slowly than the Russians would like in Ukraine.

The tone comes from the top. As others have said, the fish rots from the head. We know where the rot started with this Government. Franklin D Roosevelt said:

“The Presidency is not merely an administrative office … It is pre-eminently a place of moral leadership.”


In his private life, he may not have been a perfect moral character, but, in his leadership of the States, he was. Whatever personal failings there may be in our Prime Minister, sadly, they also translate into his leadership of the country. That reflects badly on all of us, damages the way this country operates and trashes its reputation abroad.

Others have referred to the Nolan principles. I cannot resist going through them again, slowly, and thinking about them in the context of the No. 10 we have today. They are: selflessness; integrity; objectivity; accountability; openness; honesty; and leadership. If it were not so sad, it would be laughable. All those characteristics are discernibly missing from what goes on at No. 10 at the moment.

The effect of that on our democracy—the subject of this debate—is already being felt. Our Civil Service has been badly damaged by the way it has been treated by Ministers who will not take responsibility but expect civil servants to carry the load for them—Ministers who bully their civil servants but do not resign, even when they are told that they should. Of course, nobody now wants to take on the senior Civil Service roles. Why would they? Who can blame them?

Equally, voters are looking at what is going on and being turned off democracy. Earlier this year, an IPPR report found that 53% of adults believe that donors, big business and lobbyists are more powerful in influencing government policy than voters. Only one in 20 people believed that voters had the most influence on government policy. The democratic process is undoubtedly being damaged badly by what is going on at the moment.

That disillusionment is particularly pronounced among young people. The Bennett Institute for Public Policy in Cambridge published research, 18 months ago, that led it to the conclusion that those in their 20s and 30s are the first generation in living memory to have a majority who are dissatisfied with the way democracy works. It is a global phenomenon but in the UK, it is far more pronounced.

Is it surprising, though, when only today in the Times, the Conservative former Solicitor-General, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Garnier, writes that the proposed Bill of Rights will further bolster the concerns of those who believe, with some justification, that this Government have a reckless disregard for domestic and international law? That is the verdict of a Conservative former Solicitor-General. No wonder people are disillusioned.

What is to be done about it? I listened to the noble Lord, Lord Butler, and his reluctance to legislate, but things have reached a stage where legislation is the only way. Perhaps I have become far too disillusioned. The noble Lord says that he would like to see the gradation of penalties being proposed, but surely this Government would see everything as just a minor infringement rather than one that deserved a significant penalty. Would we feel confident that this Government would do the decent thing? Of course, there may be those in the future who would, but we are dealing with a very difficult state of affairs.

We have the Boardman recommendations, which would certainly be distinct improvements. There are 19 recommendations and five suggestions, and the Government have yet to respond in full to them. Can the Minister tell us when we will hear a full response to the Boardman suggested regulations and when they might be implemented? That would at least be a start towards improving what is currently looking like a very sorry state of affairs.