Privileges and Conduct Committee

Baroness Young of Hornsey Excerpts

Monday 17th December 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord McNally (LD)]

My Lords—

[Baroness Young of Hornsey (CB)]

My Lords—

[Lord Taylor of Holbeach]

We will hear from the noble Lord, Lord McNally, and then from—

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Young of Hornsey]

My Lords, wow! I cannot tell your Lordships how sad it is for me to have to follow the noble Lord, Lord McNally. I have been a great admirer of his work. We have worked together on a number of issues relating to the criminal justice system. I bow to his knowledge and expertise in that area, particularly his stewardship of the Youth Justice Board. But I find his comments completely out of order and totally inappropriate. They demean the value of the debate we have had this afternoon precisely because they were not at all objective. They had no real sense of moving the debate forward. Indeed, he misunderstood, misinterpreted or misheard—or maybe the noble Lord, Lord McFall, miscommunicated—the fact that we all agree that these procedures need changing. Indeed, the House’s reluctance to change over the years has been one of the major problems in this place.

I will now say what I intended say. I declare an interest as a member of the steering group tasked with implementing the recommendations of the working party set up to address bullying and sexual misconduct, convened by the leader of the other place. As such, I had access to the views of all key stakeholders in this very important issue: Commons staff, Members of both Houses, trade union representatives and so on. As somebody has already said, we will have to deal with this issue time and again. Anybody who thinks that it does not happen here is hugely mistaken.

One of the critical issues raised during that series of discussions and consultations was historical cases. There is plenty of literature that describes why people take so long to come forward—not just women, but men too. I met a man last week at a conference on sports and human rights who had suffered appallingly at the age of 15 and only now felt able to come out and talk about it. That is what happens, for various reasons. I cannot put myself inside his head and tell noble Lords why, just as the noble Lord, Lord McNally, cannot put himself inside anybody else’s head and say why this is the case, but it happens. It is a regular pattern. The damage caused by these incidents and events has a ripple effect on not just the individual but their friends, family and professional contacts.

I do not want to rehearse previous arguments made on either 15 November or today because I am sure the House is running out of patience, but I support the remarks made by other noble Lords too numerous to mention that drew attention to the inequity embedded in this case. Again, I speak not as a specific friend of Lord Lester—again, I worked with him—and I do not know the complainant. But noble Lords will be aware that the original working party inquiry that covered both Houses, of which my noble and learned friend Lord Hope was a member, and the subsequent report by Dame Laura Cox were established by Parliament as a result of a steady flow of disturbing reports of bullying and harassment across all levels of staff and Members. While I hope that the severity and quantity of similar problems in this House will not be as great as it appears to have been in the House of Commons, I fear that some noble Lords may be shocked by the outcome of the recently commissioned independent inquiry.

I am trying to move the debate on a bit from where we are now. I say this because a number of noble Lords have expressed surprise at the idea that anything so awful could possibly have happened to somebody was, or involved anybody who was, their friend. It happens. Interestingly, others—maybe from different publics than those that other noble Lords have access to—have spoken to me of a range of examples of misconduct in this House. This House has prided itself on its integrity and belief in a code of honour. Sadly, that is just not enough now. Somebody mentioned the 21st century. I wish we could get that far forward in this House on some of these issues. We are often too slow to acknowledge changes that have happened in society, which are not being reflected in this House. The experiences some of us have had here give testament to that. I know because once people realised that I was on the committee, they would come to me with examples of things that had happened to them or that they had witnessed or heard about.

Part of our problem is that privilege and power have become normalised. We think we are owed the privilege and power that we have within this House. I do not believe that to be healthy, because in doing so we distance ourselves from the everyday experiences of most people in our society, which is highly problematic.

I am not going to go over the comments made on 15 November, but that debate reiterated for me that the concept of natural justice must be applied to everybody equally, not just to friends or to a privileged few with access to platforms from which they can continuously express their views.

Abuse is invariably about asymmetrical power relations. Sadly, therefore, it was no surprise to me that the 74 members of staff sent that letter to the Privileges and Conduct Committee. That letter was from our colleagues—members of staff whom we work with here in this House—and they pointed in no uncertain terms the chilling effect of the thrust of that debate and the result of the Division. Indeed, others outside of this Palace of Westminster pondered the wider implications, including what happens in our courts when a criminal sexual offence has been committed and someone comes forward with an historic complaint.

The way we are set up here does not help. Those of us who have researchers and assistants, travel abroad and hold one-to-one meetings must ensure that we understand and adhere to appropriate standards of behaviour. Part of the problem is that there is no way of knowing definitively who does work alongside House of Lords staff and Members. This poses a significant risk, particularly to young people coming in, who may have little or no knowledge of the world of work, how power works and what kind of behaviour in this unique institution is and is not acceptable.

When the time comes, I hope noble Lords will embrace new procedures; I shall be interested to see how that debate goes. I hope those new procedures will be adopted as the basis, at least, for a reworked code of practice that brings this House’s way of dealing with misconduct up to date and into alignment with recently adopted procedures in the House of Commons. That is sorely needed to restore faith all round.

[Lord Newby (LD)]

My Lords, as noble Baroness the Leader of the House said at the start of this debate, I had not intended to intervene, and I strongly support the committee’s report. However, I must publicly dissociate myself from some of the comments made, particularly, I am afraid, by my noble friend—my old friend—Lord McNally. I strongly support the complainant and would not wish her to believe that the sentiment of the House is anything other than to give her support at this time, rather than criticism.

Public Disorder

Baroness Young of Hornsey Excerpts

Thursday 11th August 2011 Lords Chamber

[Noble Lords]

Baroness Young!

[Baroness Young of Hornsey]

My Lords, I will not repeat what other noble Lords have said. Many remarks have been made with which I am in full agreement. I have a four short points.

First, we need to recognise that we cannot arrest our way out of this. The short-term proposition that we are looking at right now is necessary, but how do we move on from there? In relation to that, as well as having robust custodial sentences, are any plans in place to lock restorative justice on to that? That is the kind of work that has a deep impact on people: to make these young people, and indeed the older people, who have been involved in these despicable acts face up to the communities that they have helped to destroy and get involved in work to repair those communities.

Secondly, this situation has been brewing for ages. People are fed up with the kind of government leadership that comes in at the last moment and says, “We’re going to set up an inquiry”, even if they say they are going to move away from academics in Whitehall. Any initiative that is around an inquiry needs to be much more community-based and community-focused. It needs to be led by people on the ground who have experience, ideas and knowledge. They know how they could fight back against some of the terrible things that blight their communities if they had the resources and the back-up support to make that work.

Thirdly, any such initiative needs to be multidisciplinary. We have talked about citizenship and education, but it is also about health and a whole range of other issues. There is no point in any initiatives unless we can involve all those different parts of Government, local government, sport and culture. All those areas have a role to play.

Fourthly, we ourselves need to take responsibility. If we talk about young people engaging in violent games and the kind of influence that that has on them, we must also say that recent publicity about the behaviour of the press, the media and politicians—people who are supposed to set examples in our society—has not been above reproach. We must look to ourselves and see what we can do, not only to ensure that our behaviour is a much better form of leadership and role modelling but to make active contributions to those communities.

[Lord Prescott]

My Lords, is there a recognition that this violent disorder is very different from past civic disorder? Do the Government recognise that and the need for a special policy? The announcements that have been made by the Minister about the policies that the Prime Minister has suggested today are covered by the Public Order Act and the Anti-Social Behaviour Act. Why did the Government not use this legislation for the very proposals that they have at this time? We might then have solved the problem earlier. Was it because there were not sufficient police to arrest people under those circumstances? Is it not time that we took a less partisan position on police numbers? The Government should consider how many police are needed for them to carry out their duties, and perhaps at the same time recognise—I welcome this in the Statement—that it is time we took on the criminals who clothed their faces to avoid being recognised in their criminal acts. I am glad that that proposal is there.