Windsor Framework (Retail Movement Scheme: Plant and Animal Health) (Amendment etc.) Regulations 2024
Lord Bew Excerpts(1 week, 5 days ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Frost (Con)
My Lords, I too can be quite brief, but there are a few points I want to register. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Hoey, for the Motion and for her helpful remarks.
These regulations testify to something we always feared: that differential arrangements for Northern Island, in which it remains closer to EU laws and rules, would end up being exploited to restrict our freedom and keep the UK-EU relationship one of high alignment, and that is what has happened. It has become harder to get the gains of setting our own laws in our own interests, and there is a risk that we remain in the political and psychological tractor beam of the EU. And so it has proved.
Ever since the original sin, as I regard it, of the joint reports in December 2017, it has been impossible to entirely undo the agreement about the imposition of EU law in Northern Ireland. The Johnson Government, both when I was responsible and under my successors, tried to water down commitments and made it clear they could not be durable, and eventually did their best to unpick it, culminating in the Northern Ireland Protocol Bill, which was so intensely disliked in this House. But that Bill fell, with Prime Ministers Johnson and Truss, and the Sunak Government, having promised one thing, then did another and agreed the Windsor Framework. This did little to improve the situation in practice, but the big change it did make was that the British Government were now actively committed to defending protocol-like arrangements, and that meant defending EU interests in areas covered by the protocol in Northern Ireland.
What we are seeing happen with the regulations today is what we always said would happen: the easy way out would always be taken, and we would increasingly choose to align ourselves with EU laws rather than go our own way. These regulations mark a new stage in that process. Hitherto, the Windsor Framework arrangements were confined to the GB-Northern Ireland “border”, but now we are also aligning a GB external border with EU laws—admittedly for a limited category of third-country goods. As others have said, including my noble friend Lady Lawlor, it will not end there. The Product Regulation and Metrology Bill, which is also being considered by your Lordships’ House, has exactly this purpose in mind, and is much more sweeping in what it can do. As the noble Baroness, Lady Hoey, pointed out, this pre-emptive legislative cringing to the EU hardly even brings us any benefits. It still does not improve the “border processes” between GB and Northern Ireland, and the same will be true of the product regulation Bill.
As I have said before, these arrangements make little sense unless they are the first stage in a process in which the second stage will be formal adoption of EU laws enforced by EU methods. That is, of course, how you get the paperwork to be eliminated, but at what price? We have the gradual watering down of this country’s democracy still further in favour of laws set elsewhere.
To conclude, there are only three possible destinations from where we are. I have just described one, which is the gradual, further dissolution of UK sovereignty in important areas of the economy. The second is an attempt to make the unworkable work, to constantly offset the complexities and the nonsensicalities of the Windsor Framework by more and more complex legislation, with more and more exemptions and special treatment, creating a bigger regulatory burden and, in practice, separating out Northern Ireland still further. If we go down this road, we will be dealing with more and more unsatisfactory pieces of legislation like this one.
The third route is the one that, one day, must be taken and has been referred to already, and that is the route of mutual enforcement, for the Windsor Framework to be ditched and for UK laws to apply in Northern Ireland, as they do anywhere else in this country. In my view, that is the right way forward. I do not think the current arrangements can or will stand. They are overcomplex, create too many political anomalies and simply will not work over time, and it is only a matter of time before that becomes clear. One day, we will sweep away the Windsor Framework and make this a properly United Kingdom once again.
Can the Minister say which of these three paths she believes the Government are on? What is their approach to the Windsor Framework, and what is the direction of travel?
Lord Bew (CB)
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Hoey, for giving us a chance to have this debate. I find myself in a slightly confused frame of mind, in that I agree with much of what the noble Lord, Lord Frost, has just said about the 2017 agreement and its consequences. However, we are where we are. There is as much chance of mutual enforcement becoming an acceptable solution to this crisis as there is of all the European countries and the United Kingdom deciding that the dictatorship of the proletariat is the best way forward for governance—in fact, there is rather more chance for the dictatorship of the proletariat. To tell the people of Northern Ireland to keep on going, that mutual enforcement is somehow a realistic option, is misleading.
On the disfranchisement of the people of Northern Ireland, the truth is that the Assembly will vote on this matter. I know there are those who dislike that. The major change between the Johnson agreement and the May agreement was putting in that there should be a vote in the Assembly on any new arrangements, giving the Northern Ireland Assembly a chance to vote. As for the talk about 1.9 million people being disfranchised, they are not being disfranchised—they are going to get a chance to vote. I understand the objection to the form of the vote, which is by a majority vote, although that is so because trade matters are actually the responsibility of the United Kingdom Parliament. It was a special concession to give a vote to the Assembly on this occasion. In 1938, at the time of the very controversial Anglo-Irish trade agreement, the unionist MPs all accepted it was nothing to do with Stormont; it was a matter for the Westminster Parliament even though they were concerned it was unfair to Northern Irish businesses. A special case has been made for this vote.
In 2017, there was a general election in Northern Ireland. The DUP got 36% of the vote—it is closer to 20% now. The total unionist vote is little short of 50%. When it was agreed in 2019 that the Assembly would have a majority vote on this matter, it was not so obvious what the outcome would be. Today it is, but when that was agreed to in 2019, it was not at all obvious that a majority vote would be acceptance of the Windsor Framework arrangements, as we are all sure it will be now. It was not at all sure, and it was not inevitable.
There is an argument that one reason why the unionist vote has collapsed is the constant putting forward of solutions which are not solutions, like the mutual enforcement scheme. There is nothing at all wrong with it, had it been serious five years ago. We are now three international treaties down the road, and the European Union is not going to change its mind, and Parliament voted by a huge majority for the Windsor Framework. There is more chance of the dictatorship of the proletariat being decided as the way forward for Europe and the United Kingdom than the idea that suddenly people are going to turn round and say, “Let’s try something else completely different”—considerably more chance.
I have made general observations of where we are, and it is with regret that I say some of this because I think mutual enforcement should have been more properly discussed. The 2017 agreement is deeply flawed and set a framework which leaves us with many remaining difficulties which we have to talk about. None the less, this is where we are. I hate to be so simple about it, but it is the case.
Protocol on Ireland/Northern Ireland: Follow-up Report (European Affairs Committee)
Lord Bew Excerpts(1 year, 1 month ago)
Grand CommitteeRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Bew (CB)
My Lords, like other noble Lords, I commend the very impressive work of the noble Lord, Lord Jay, and his committee and its staff.
I will make a distinction between the two reports before us. The follow-up report, published on 27 July 2022, is actually the more impressive of the two. Pages 58 to 62 on medicines are absolutely on the button and I think played a benign role in the eventual resolution of the question of medicines in the Windsor Framework. On the other hand, the new and more recent document on the Windsor Framework inevitably must deal with matters of unfathomable complexity, massive technical difficulty and a huge number of known unknowns. It is beyond the wit of any committee, no matter how wise, to produce an accurate crystal ball in this area.
I labour under the disadvantage of being the only person in this debate, so far, to have read the Government’s 32-page reply in the last hour. It is gritty and tough-minded. On page 18, for example, it calls for the committee to come to terms with certain factual errors in the initial report. It is a serious response, probably more so than is often the case in replies to the work of our committees, at least in my experience. However, I acknowledge that the technical complexity of these issues is so great that some degree of weakness, compared with the second follow-up report, was almost inevitable.
There is important evidence from the Irish ambassador in the follow-up report of July 2022. I broadly support the position taken by the noble Lord, Lord Dodds; when the Irish ambassador is questioned by the committee about the Good Friday agreement, it is very clear in the series of replies he gives—although everything he says about the importance of minority rights in the Good Friday agreement is perfectly correct—that the east-west dimension, strand three of the agreement, disappears and that, characteristically, throughout the last three years and until very recently, if at all, Dublin has defined the east-west relationship as Dublin to London. It does not include Belfast and Northern Ireland. Its model for harmonious relationships was clearly totally incompatible with, for example, what Dublin put its name to in the withdrawal agreement launched by the May Government, which did not mention any role at all for the Northern Ireland Assembly. It is to the credit of the noble Lord, Lord Frost, that the agreement he produced, which is unpopular in many areas, makes a fundamental democratic transformation in returning the role of the Northern Ireland Assembly. Subsequently, the Windsor Framework was an attempt to deepen that relationship.
I mention the Irish Government because of another point that was also mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Hannan: the tone of Irish nationalism at the moment, with the widespread singing of “Ooh ah up the Ra”. This is as important as any deliberation on the role of European law in making it difficult to get a return of Stormont. There are two problems. One is a certain glibness of tone by the Irish state itself, but the other is the popular culture, which is making it very difficult indeed. I am grateful to two people who were very important in 1998, Bertie Ahern and Rory Montgomery, a very important official on the Irish side, who have stood out against this crass, vulgar popular culture, which is more important than many of the technical difficulties in and around this report.
I absolutely accept that it is possible to accept the Government’s document completely, and even to say that the seven tests are completely met, and still not like the options for unionism on the grounds that European law continues to operate in Northern Ireland. What I want to say on this is quite simple: the union has always been impure. Dramatic examples include not having conscription in the Second World War and the failure of the Labour Party to organise in Northern Ireland. These are dramatic indications of the impurity of the union. None the less, it continues to survive and, on the latest polling from the Northern Ireland Life and Times survey, continues to have a solid basis ahead of it, but it is very important to understand that it is always evolving and that there will never be a union in accordance with the ideals of high unionism. Impurities—a role for European law is probably one for the future—are nothing new in the history of the union of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
Political Parties (Funding and Expenditure) Bill [HL]
Lord Bew ExcerptsFriday 10th March 2017
(7 years, 7 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Political Parties (Funding and Expenditure) Bill [HL] 2016-17 View all Political Parties (Funding and Expenditure) Bill [HL] 2016-17 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Bew (CB)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, for introducing the Bill. I declare immediately that I am the chair of the Committee on Standards in Public Life. The report of that committee in 2011 has a certain family resemblance to the themes of this Bill in regard to public funding and the £10,000 donation cap in particular.
As I have done before in this House, I concede that from the beginning the 2011 report of the committee did not claim the support of either its Conservative Party or its Labour Party membership. This does not mean that we can shelve the report. In some respects—its emphasis on the difficulties surrounding the big donor culture in British politics and the moral difficulties—the issues are still alive. I am not here to fetishise any detail of the report but to defend one of its key ideas, the need for cross-party consensus, and to move the issue forward. It cannot be left where it now is.
I want to make it clear that, in a number of important respects, the whole landscape has changed in the last five or six years in regard to these issues, and any reform will have to take into account that change. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord True, for indicating that there were certain elements of reform that he, as a Conservative Peer, would support. That could easily be the beginning of a discussion between the parties to find a consensus.
However, there are enormous difficulties around this issue. I support the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Tyler: at the beginning of her tenure, as she took office, the Prime Minister talked about public trust. I am not now talking about the polling in regard to the Conservative Party’s fortunes—everyone knows that the Conservative side is quite solid and we have had an historic by-election—but there was a sympathetic upwards spike in public trust issues in the immediate period after the Prime Minister took office. She talked about trust in politics and about these issues and implied that there would be change. However, I am absolutely certain—I know I am speaking to a Government who are rising on the crest of a wave with high opinion polls—that the massive distraction of Brexit will take up a great deal of government energy. However, this issue cannot be left where it is when the expectation has been raised that there will be some movement in this area, and then absolutely nothing happens. There was, as I say, this positive reaction and, if absolutely nothing happens, it would be very unpleasant for all of us to see it turn sour in public opinion.
The matter is very difficult. To put it simply, 80% of the public believe that people give money to political parties only because they want to become Peers, and 80% believe that they will not contribute to the upkeep of political parties. So there you have a problem. Even more dramatically, the Committee on Standards in Public Life posted in November last year—this was the work of Dee Goddard of the University of Kent, which I will draw on later—that 90% of members of the public believe, very disturbingly, that MPs behave in a way determined to some degree by party donors, possibly against their conscience. I do not believe this. I believe that the level of real trustworthiness of our Members of Parliament is far higher than is indicated in some of these jaundiced surveys of trust. Nevertheless, the fact that that level of suspicion exists cannot be totally disregarded. However, there is no magic way forward. Our similar polling shows that 42% of the public are not sure that they believe in a donation cap—that is quite a large chunk—and they are certainly not sure what the level of that cap on donations to political parties should be.
I am not denying for one minute that it will be difficult to resolve these issues and I am not convinced that an all-singing, all-dancing reform will be possible. However, I am convinced—we have already seen some of this in the Bill of the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, and in the speech of the noble Lord, Lord True—that there are elements where the parties could come together and at least be seen to respond to public concern on these matters. It is not good enough for the Conservative Party or all the other main parties to have commitments in their 2010 to 2015 election manifestos which are widely disregarded.
I should say in the name of fairness that, while there is a pile of dusty and non-committal letters in the Committee on Standards office from when we asked the leaders of all the parties what they were going to do on this matter and how they were going to live up to the language in their manifestos, there is also a dusty and non-committal letter from the Deputy Prime Minister in the previous Government, which also did not move the situation forward in any dramatic way. All three major parties have not distinguished themselves in their enthusiasm for reform in this area.
There are a number of difficulties in the Bill, one of which the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, has already acknowledged and addressed in his speech, and that is the fact that it does not deal with matters in and around referendums. I add a simple coda to that. I think he is right about private companies’ declaration of ultimate ownership when they donate to political parties. This is now a key issue that is likely to surface when the Electoral Commission carries out its projected analysis of the funding of the referendum campaign. There is a gap.
The second point I wish to address is third-party funding, which the Bill steps away from. To be honest, our own committee report in 2011 was criticised by the brilliant Oxford political scientist Michael Pinto-Duschinsky for its neglect of the third-party funding issue. We simply said that it was an issue and we wanted the Electoral Commission to deal with it. We did not devote any real space or analysis to it in our report and I can understand why there was criticism of that neglect and deficiency.
However, since then, we have had the important independent report of the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts, on third-party funding. It was published in 2016 and hits on the way in which the terrain of party-political campaigning is changing so rapidly in this country. This is important and reinforces my earlier point. Reforms such as ours were, essentially, designed to deal with certain realities—payments for leafleting, how the parties operated locally, how activists behaved locally—which, in some ways, had not changed since the 1850s. In the past five years a new world has been created. The report of the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, had the great merit of modernising our thinking on this key subject, in particular on the ambiguous way in which social media transforms traditional forms of campaigning. The parties show increasing skill in the exploitation of social media platforms for targeted advertising using big data. The ability to data mine remains difficult and expensive, and heightens the significance of the use of private money in our politics. There is a strong sense that in the last election—perfectly legitimately—the Conservative Party was well ahead of the game in this respect. Certainly, its expenditure was well ahead of the game as against that of the Labour Party. That is politics: you are either awake or you are not. I make no protest on that point; none the less it is something that will now have to be thought about.
The noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, for example, makes the point very strongly in his report that many of these processes involved are likely to take place before the regulated campaign begins. These are things we must at least take account of. We are not carrying out our political campaigns in the way we used to and any reform should try to address this. As so often with the internet, some of the ways in which these new procedures might be deployed are liberating, and in other respects they are ambiguous and potentially disturbing.
I stress my strong support for a key theme of the Bill, which is the need for reform of the situation in Northern Ireland. Obviously I have a personal interest as I am from Northern Ireland but my committee had this interest long before and has been addressing this subject since 2009. It is no longer acceptable to have secrecy over party donations in Northern Ireland. There may yet be a need for some transitional phase, but the fact that we have had this secrecy is part of the crisis that now grips Northern Irish politics. It is a small but not insignificant part, because the point is that the public believe that those who benefited from the renewable heating scandal and the alleged waste of hundreds of millions of pounds of public money are, in many cases, party donors. This may not be true. My neighbours all believe it to be true. It may be entirely unfair, but there is no doubt in my mind that it was a complicating and poisonous factor in the recent election.
We often wonder about transparency. It is perfectly true to say, as I look back through the minutes of the Committee on Standards in Public Life from before my time, going back 20 years, that there is an illusion among my very distinguished predecessors about transparency. They believed for sure that if only we achieved more transparency in this or that area of British public life, there would be an increase in public trust. In many respects this has not happened. It is an illusion, but it is also the case, as is very clear from the recent scandal in Northern Ireland, that the absence of transparency makes things worse: transparency is not the cure-all it was once believed to be, but its absence is poisonous.
In fairness, the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, mentioned only the issue of the Democratic Unionist Party. Let me explain the business of transferred funding. The option was open to the Conservative Party to exploit this idea that money would go to Northern Ireland. There is no suggestion that the Conservative Party, which organises in Northern Ireland, has ever used that route, which technically it could have done—hidden donations and shipped them into UK politics. Indeed, it is an option open to the Labour Party, which, while it does not stand candidates in Northern Ireland, has members who are allowed to vote for the Labour leadership, for example. There has never been a suggestion—I am confident it has not happened—that either of the main parties, which could have exploited the route now complained about in the press, has done so.
By the way, this is another indication of the point I was trying to make earlier that levels of trustworthiness in mainstream British politics are often higher than the public believe them to be. Technically, how can it be said to be illegal? Once you have donations to a political party in Northern Ireland, it may make you very uncomfortable, but where is the illegality involved? We have already conceded secrecy of donations in Northern Ireland, so where is the illegality involved in what I see currently being written about critically in the press? I do not quite see the illegality.
Just to complete the point that it is not just the DUP that is a problem here, current Northern Irish electoral law favours Sinn Fein also, in that it breaks another of our main principles, which is that political parties do not accept foreign donations. Because we are linked to the capacious definition that the Irish Government have of what it is to be an Irish citizen, and because Irish citizens are allowed to donate, it is perfectly possible that a chap in a Chicago business who has never been in Ireland in his life could be donating to one of the political parties. So the opposition we have to foreign donations is another fundamental principle that is flouted in the current legislation.
Suppose Sinn Fein had taken its seats in the last Government and, if the polls had been right, tipped the election towards a Labour Government. We could have had a Prime Minister elected in this country on the basis of a totally different franchise, in terms of the expenditure limits and expenditure contexts they were working under. Noble Lords will say that Sinn Fein do not take their seats, but one of the last public statements of Martin McGuinness was to suggest that perhaps Brexit was such a bad thing that it might be necessary for his party to revise its policy and oppose it in this Parliament.
I know that the Government have a consultative paper out and there is a hint that they are looking for change in this area. I would be greatly comforted if the Minister were able to say in his conclusion what the state of the Government’s thinking is on party funding in Northern Ireland.
Party Funding Reform
Lord Bew Excerpts(8 years ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Bew (CB)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, for his initiative in raising again this very important issue of party funding in modern Britain. I speak as chair of the Committee on Standards in Public Life. Our report of 2011 has been referred to a number of times, as well as my various letters to Prime Ministers—plural, now—and the leader of the Opposition on this subject. As I have said in this House before, the replies that I received from the Conservative Party have not exactly raised my hopes of dramatic reform in the near future. It is a matter of justice to say that today I received a letter from the Labour Party, and I can assure your Lordships that it did not raise my hopes either. There was really no difference in helpfulness in that hapless correspondence with my office.
During the passage of the Trade Union Bill, the 2011 report of the Committee on Standards in Public Life was discussed. I said then that we were aware of problems with that report. I genuinely believe that its basic approach, its insistence on consensus and cross-party agreement and its attempt to provide the basis for that was completely right. Although the Conservative and Labour members of our committee both dissented, I think they were sympathetic to the broad approach. They both had disagreements on points to which I will return. But I was also well aware that, five years later, some of the statistical material in our report was now out of date.
I promised on the Floor of this House that the Committee on Standards in Public Life would commission new research, and we have so done. The work we commissioned from the distinguished academic Dr Michael Pinto-Duschinsky, who has worked in this field for a long time and advised the committee on a number of occasions in the past, is published in your Lordships’ briefing pack for this debate. I will not refer to that work, which brings the figures up to date—although it touches on the point raised, for example, by the noble Lord, Lord Leigh, on whether there really is an arms race going on in electoral expenditure. That report has been published and in that respect, I have kept my promise to the House. I add that today we are publishing a second report, based on YouGov polling which we commissioned earlier, by Dee Goddard of the University of Kent. For simplicity, I will call it the Goddard report.
That report, Public Attitudes to Party Funding in Britain, has been published this afternoon by the committee and is available on our website. Because we have limited time, I will obviously not go through every point but it is an important addition to the already important work published by Dr Pinto-Duschinsky. The Goddard report shows that the issue of party funding is considered of greater importance than it was the last time YouGov did this polling in 2011. A substantial majority of respondents, 93%, believe that large party donations are motivated by hopes for influence or special favours—the most obvious example being peerages—from a given political party, while 79% of those asked believed that this was a common motivation for donors. Equally, on the other side of the argument, I totally accept that all our previous polling shows that 80% of the British people do not want to see state funding for parties. One immediately sees the complexity and inherent difficulty of this issue.
Ninety per cent of respondents in the new report believe that MPs “very often” or sometimes decide what to do based on what their donors want, rather than on what they really believe. Even 48% of those who said that they had high trust in their MPs believe that sometimes the interests of donors played a role in political behaviour. The public are clear in their belief that this behaviour is unacceptable: indeed, they are probably more concerned than they were over the role of large donations in British politics. That said, because nothing is served by presenting an oversimplified picture of this debate, when they were asked about a cap on donations 42%—a largish block—said that they did not know whether it was a good idea or what the level should be. Again, that indicates the difficulty and complexity of public attitudes. But it is the role of my committee to at least bring attention to the most up-to-date information that we can to further debate.
In September, the Institute for Government produced a report using data based on more recent polling—our polling was done in April and May. The report was headlined:
“Trust in government is growing”.
That surprised me as over the years I have read endless reports showing that it was dropping. The report showed that more people now believe that the Government are doing their best and have proper priorities than believed it in 2014. The figure is up by 8%. Equally, the number of those who believe that MPs are self-interested persons concerned only with their re-election is down by 8%. At the moment, there is a slight upwards spike—a better direction than the normal pattern of gloomy figures about trust in politics. I have never believed that one should take these figures too seriously because trustworthiness is a different thing, but the public have these concerns and we cannot afford to ignore them, while not taking these matters absolutely literally. There is a slight spike upwards and trends are more positive, but the Institute for Government is quite right to say in its headline that further work is needed on this point.
Expectations have clearly been raised by the change in government. There is no doubt that they have been affected by the Prime Minister’s speeches about standards in public life, and trust is an issue she has directly addressed. We are in a honeymoon period. We have temporarily reversed the downward trend, which is a good thing. If we choose to do absolutely nothing in these controversial areas of public standards—not just party financing, but lobbying and a range of other difficult issues, including revolving doors and so on—we will create a mood of disappointment, and things will plummet again. On party funding, it is clear that work could be carried out to promote small donations. It is entirely right to draw attention to these better figures, but I counsel against any complacency. Things cannot be left exactly as they are, even though I concede the inherent complexity of these issues of public funding.
Lobbying (Transparency) Bill [HL]
Lord Bew Excerpts(8 years, 1 month ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Bew (CB)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe, for his initiative in bringing the Lobbying (Transparency) Bill. I say immediately that I speak as chairman of the Committee on Standards in Public Life, which was established 21 years ago by John Major, with the objective of strengthening integrity and honourable behaviour in our public life. In 2013 we published a document on precisely this topic, Strengthening Transparency Around Lobbying. Indeed, next week we will publish a cognate document on ethics for regulators. As the noble Lord, Lord Brooke, said, there will be an explosion of activity in this area as a consequence of Brexit. I am grateful to him for creating a context for discussion about this important issue.
This is an extraordinarily complex issue. There are few, if any, easy answers. The committee has spent hours and hours of discussion trying to find viable ways forward. In the 2013 document I mentioned, at paragraph 2.7, the committee acknowledged the importance of lobbying to our public life. It says:
“Lobbying plays a vital role in the political process as it enhances informed debate”,
and provides “exact information” that,
“can be fed into the policy development process”.
Having said that, I remind the House that this week we have had excellent debates on the disabled and on charities. Everyone accepts that lobbyists are central to providing information in this field and to those debates. There is no challenge to that lobbying, even though one could say that these cases, like all cases, are in a sense self-interested. The truth is that the issues that are more sensitively felt are around what one might call crony capitalism, but it is worth saying that no serious democracy in this complex age can operate without a lively lobbying culture. We accept this in many areas of our life.
Our 2013 document suggested a series of practical steps that would strengthen transparency around the lobbied, so that officials, Ministers or Peers would be able to demonstrate probity to the outside world. The Bill before us in some way enhances that, in that it attempts to bring about greater clarity on who is or is not a lobbyist.
We recommended timely, detailed disclosure of all significant meetings and hospitality involving external attempts to influence policy discussions. The noble Lord, Lord Lansley, referred to this and to the work the Government have done in this area. We should acknowledge some positive improvements. He may concede that on timeliness of disclosure the Government’s record was not wonderful. There has been a lively correspondence between my office and the Cabinet Office on this point over the last two years. If we are to have this disclosure, which is helpful and has been a positive development, it needs to have as its counterpart no dumping of information on dead days, which has happened. That is counterproductive because we have a journalistic class that will not be deceived by such manoeuvres and will none the less go through documents, even if they are dumped on the eve of a public holiday at 4.30 pm, as has happened. We also argued, and the point has been made today, that:
“Disclosure arrangements should be widened to cover special advisers and senior civil servants as well as Ministers, Permanent Secretaries and Departmental Boards”.
We made other suggestions. I will pick out only one, because people will remember the public furore which, unfortunately, developed in this context. This is the suggestion—the obvious point—that Select Committees have become more and more important in recent years and the role of the chairmen of Select Committees more and more sensitive. We asked for consideration to be given to the idea that chairs of Select Committees should have,
“additional restrictions in relation to conflicts of interests and providing explicitly that Members should not accept all but the most insignificant or incidental gift, benefit or hospitality or payments from professional lobbyists”.
In the case of Select Committee chair positions, since we issued our advice there have been unfortunate public furores on exactly this point. My own view is that if there had been a more serious engagement or a debate on that issue, we might have avoided some incidents that have probably contributed to the problem that many noble Lords are aware of—the apparent decline in trust in politics.
I will also say something about this House. The House of Lords responded more firmly in certain respects than the Commons to some of our recommendations. I pay particular tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Hill, the then Leader of the House, for that. For example, this House lowered the threshold for registering gifts and hospitality from £500 to £140, and introduced a new code of conduct for members of staff, with requirements to register interests in parliamentary lobbying and to abstain from lobbying or using access to Parliament to further outside interests in return for either payment or reward. The way in which the Lords responded—and that is only part of the Lords response—was helpful because at least in those areas we have not had big problems in the past two or three years. So it is possible to take certain types of surgical action to deal with some of these issues.
It has to be accepted that transparency is not the cure-all that I suspect 20 years ago my committee believed it would be. We have vastly increased transparency in our public life. My own view is that it is absurd to claim that we have lower standards in our public life than in the past, if only because that vastly increased transparency would make it almost impossible for those lower standards to exist—leaving aside the fact that I do not believe that human nature has deteriorated. None the less, we have a problem that there is massive evidence of public malaise with politics and the way in which it works, and a feeling among the public that it is all an insiders’ game.
Therefore, what I have to say in defence of transparency is limited. I will argue for greater transparency in this area. It will not take all the tricks. It is necessary simply as a deterrent to bad behaviour. That is its principal role and a more limited assurance to the public. The public, to be honest, will not be as impressed as we would like them to be. The obvious example of this is how the great clarity that now exists around MPs’ expenses has not had the benign effect on public opinion that many people quite reasonably hoped for.
I will conclude with a point that many Members have referred to: the tone of the new Government on this issue. The Government have raised hopes that there will be a more critical tone with respect to the operations of crony capitalism. There are really very complex questions here. We have heard enough already today to show how some of the detail in this Bill, and in the original Bill, works and how some of it does not and may not work. Already we can see how difficult it is to get the balance right. But this question cannot be left exactly where it is. There is no doubt in my mind that expectations have now been raised by the new Prime Minister—the tone of her speech in particular—which will require some public response and some movement by the Government in this area during this Parliament.
Charities (Protection and Social Investment) Bill [HL]
Lord Bew Excerpts(9 years, 3 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Baroness Deech (CB)
My Lords, this amendment also stands in the name of my noble friend Lord Bew. There is a little link with the discussion we have just had. The noble Lord, Lord King, mentioned the need to cut off the sources of funding that go to terrorists. This amendment is not just about terrorism—far from it, although it would have the side-effect that he has just mentioned if a charity were involved in such activities. It enables the victims of mistreatment by a charity to recover damages from the assets of the charity, not just from the trustees themselves. It by no means removes any responsibility or liability from the trustees personally: that remains. But sometimes when there is a victim—for example, of sexual abuse taking place at a charitable school which is not incorporated—the victim may need and deserve more damages than the personal trustee has at his disposal. It is only right, therefore, to go against the assets of the charity. The amendment would end the disparity between incorporated and unincorporated charities.
Charities, as we have heard frequently today, are not just about helping the poor, underprivileged and disabled. They are moving into the realms of big business. There are many areas now covered by charities, some of which operate without being incorporated: indeed, there is no requirement for them to do so. They include student unions, communes, Scouts, clubs and after-school activities. It is possible for there to be damage. We have heard a great deal about charities that harass the public when they are collecting funds. At the moment, only innocent trustees can be indemnified where there is a claim against them, but they remain liable. The amendment would in no way destroy the personal commitment that trustees feel towards the charity they are supporting.
Injured civilians currently have too little recourse against unincorporated charities that do them harm, some of which may be connected with terrorism. The remedies under the existing law are not adequate where the trustees of an unincorporated charity do not have sufficient personal assets and were themselves involved in the wrongdoing or were reckless or negligent and so are not entitled to be indemnified by the charity. While those creating or running a charity may be free to choose the legal structure, the victims are not, and this amendment is ultimately about protecting victims.
The position of a wholly innocent trustee would be ameliorated by the amendment. Instead of the victim having to claim against the trustee and the trustee having to claim against the charity under an indemnity, the victim would be able to claim against the charity directly and the charity will not claim a contribution from a wholly innocent trustee. This is a benefit, not a disadvantage, of the amendment. The amendment would apply where a trustee of an unincorporated charity is liable in tort by reason of his conduct in his capacity as a trustee of a charity, or a person employed by a trustee or trustees is liable by reason of his conduct in the course of that employment. It is just like a company which is liable when a director commits a tort in his capacity as a director of the company or an employee of the company commits a tort in the course of his employment by the company. This applies whether or not the act is ultra vires. This is elementary law.
We are calling for this law to be made more helpful to victims, without in any way disturbing the responsibility that trustees, rightly, bear. In the past, victims of sexual abuse by Scout masters have successfully claimed damages from the Scout Association, because it happens to be incorporated by royal charter. The victims can claim damages from the organisation itself, but many local Scout associations are unincorporated, and there are dozens of them. Victims of sexual abuse, if it were to happen in the course of the activities of these associations, may well find it difficult, or impossible, to recover substantial compensation. It is not right that the availability of a remedy for the victim of such abuse should depend on whether the particular Scout association happened to be incorporated.
A religious organisation may be established as an unincorporated charity. Former adherents may claim that it has been run as a cult and seek compensation for being imprisoned and deprived of their property by duress or fraud. The organisation may have substantial assets, since adherents are encouraged to donate generously, but the trustees may have no personal assets—so the claims by the victims are valid but completely worthless, because the trustees have nothing. They cannot demand that the trustees be indemnified out of the assets held on charitable trust since the trustees are themselves involved in the wrongdoing, in breach of trust.
In sum, this amendment will help victims and will bring to an end a difference between the incorporated and the unincorporated charity that has no justification. I beg to move.
Lord Bew (CB)
My Lords, this amendment is in my name as well as that of my noble friend Lady Deech. Since we moved this amendment in Committee on 1 July, the issue has in some ways become sharper because of widespread reporting in the press of the harassment of donors by those working for charities. The issue of the circumstances that might arise where a victim is unable to seek compensation from a charity has become sharper than it was even a very short time ago.
That said, I wish to reassure the noble Baroness, Lady Barker, and others that we are well aware that the charitable sector is fundamentally a source of great good in our society, and we are very concerned that anything that we propose today does not in any way reduce the legitimate freedom of activity of our charities. It is very important to keep this in mind and to try to get the balance right. The essential difficulty here, to which my noble friend Lady Deech referred, is the difference in status between incorporated and unincorporated charities—those in the latter category are now in the great majority. She gave the example of the Scout Association, which is a good one, where issues of sexual exploitation were able to be raised against the national Scout Association because it was an incorporated charity. However, it is a much more difficult and complex matter to do that against local bodies.
It seems to me very difficult to justify this anomaly. The comparator is with company law, and my noble friend Lady Deech convincingly made the case that the comparator is not really operating in the way that one would expect in the case of unincorporated charities. We are arguing for the rectification of an anomaly, as my noble friend Lady Deech said, in the interests above all of victims.
The Minister has been very kind to us and we have had helpful discussions about this matter. I was listening to the discussion of an earlier amendment, when the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts, suggested that this amendment would not be welcomed by the Charity Commission. It would be helpful if we could have some sense of the Charity Commission’s view about the practicalities of this amendment, if that is at all possible—but I support the amendment at this point.
Charities (Protection and Social Investment) Bill [HL]
Lord Bew Excerpts(9 years, 4 months ago)
Grand CommitteeRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
“Damages for torts by trustees or their employeesDamages for torts by trustees of unincorporated charities or their employees
(1) The Charities Act 2011 is amended as follows.
(2) After section 284 (when and how section 282 resolution takes effect) insert—
“284A Damages for torts by trustees or their employees
(1) This section applies where—
(a) a trustee of an unincorporated charity is liable in tort by reason of his conduct in his capacity as a trustee of that charity; or(b) a person employed by a trustee or trustees of an unincorporated charity is liable in tort by reason of his conduct in the course of that employment.(2) Where this section applies, a person entitled to damages for the tort shall be entitled to recover those damages from the assets of the charity.
(3) Subsection (2) shall not affect the liability of any trustee, employee, or any other person.
(4) Where a claim is made under subsection (2), the provisions of the Civil Liability (Contribution) Act 1978 shall apply as if the charity had legal personality.
(5) Where a claim is made under subsection (2), or a contribution is claimed from the assets of a charity under subsection (4), the charity may be named as a party and may be represented by its trustees or such other person as may be appointed by the court in any legal proceedings.””
Lord Bew (CB)
My Lords, Amendment 15A is in my name and that of the noble Baroness, Lady Deech. The purpose of the amendment is to enable claims for compensation to be made against the assets of a charity where wrongful acts have been committed in the course of that charity’s activities. There is a gap in the current law, in that unincorporated charities are not liable since they have no legal personality, in contrast to incorporated charities or other companies or incorporated bodies.
It is clear from the Explanatory Notes to the Bill that the Government’s purpose with the Bill is in part to look at and perhaps clean up, if that is the right phrase, some unsatisfactory aspects of the charity/extremism nexus. The purpose of this probing amendment is simply to see if it is possible to add further gentle assistance in that project. However, I should add that the amendment is inspired not just by concerns about the relationship between charities and terrorism but also by concerns about certain cases of sexual exploitation.
In fact, it is best to start with that, as it is the best way to illustrate the key difference between incorporated and unincorporated charities. The Scout Association is a national body and, like many of the older charities, is in fact incorporated by royal charter. It has therefore been possible for victims of sexual abuse by scoutmasters to claim damages from the national body, the Scout Association. However, many local Scout associations—dozens of them, in fact—are unincorporated. Victims of sexual abuse therefore may well find it much more difficult or impossible to recover compensation. That creates an obvious unfairness and anomaly, and it is to that problem that proposed new Section 284A is directed.
Lord Bridges of Headley
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Bew, and the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, for their explanation of the amendment. This has indeed been an illuminating debate and I thank them for it. As has been alluded to, an amendment along these lines was first proposed by the Henry Jackson Society in its submission to the Joint Committee on the Bill, and the submission was published in the committee’s report on the evidence it received. It is worth pointing out that the Joint Committee did not recommend changing the law as proposed in that submission.
Perhaps I may briefly summarise our view around this point. As noble Lords will know, “charity” is a status rather than a legal structure. Organisations can choose from a range of different legal structures when establishing a charity. An unincorporated structure, as has been said, has no separate legal identity of its own, and so the trustees must hold the charity’s property and enter into contracts for the charity, where this is required, in a personal capacity. Unincorporated structures are usually simpler, and have fewer and less demanding reporting obligations than corporate structures, as the noble Baroness, Lady Barker, pointed out. The downside is that a trustee’s personal assets are at risk if the charity is sued and its assets cannot pay the debt. This personal liability is often a reason that many charities choose to adopt a corporate structure. Even so, many smaller organisations opt for an unincorporated form, such as a trust or unincorporated association, as the noble Lord just said.
In a corporate structure, the charity itself has a legal identity enabling it to hold property and enter into contracts in its own name. As directors, the trustees act as agents of the charity. If they act properly, they and the charity’s other members have the benefit of limited liability, protecting their assets from being available to creditors in the event that the charity’s assets are exhausted. However, the accounting, reporting and insolvency requirements that apply to corporate structures are usually more demanding. Many charities choose the structure of a company limited by guarantee, and an increasing number of small and medium-sized charities are opting to incorporate as charitable incorporated organisations—a structure designed specifically for charities and implemented in 2012.
If an individual or entity commences litigation against an unincorporated charity, usually all the trustees of that charity would be named as parties. This is because an unincorporated charity has no separate legal identity. This would include proceedings for tortious liability against a charity trustee in his capacity as a trustee of that charity or an employee in the course of his employment. The trustees of an unincorporated charity are jointly and severally liable for their actions, where taken on behalf of an unincorporated charity. If damages were awarded against the trustees, they ordinarily would be entitled, if they have acted properly and reasonably, to indemnify themselves from the assets of the unincorporated charity under the charity’s governing document. They could, however, be jointly and severally liable for any shortfall where the charity’s assets are insufficient to meet the level of damages awarded.
As an employer, the trustees of an unincorporated charity would be vicariously liable for the actions of an employee if they were acting on behalf of the charity and the same principles would apply, enabling a claim to be paid out of the charity’s assets. Indeed, a person suing the trustees of an unincorporated charity could seek redress from the assets of the charity and the personal assets of the trustees. For an incorporated charity, in the absence of any charity assets, there is limited redress against the directors and members. If a third party reasonably believes a trustee is acting on behalf of a charity, it may sue all the charity’s trustees. Ordinarily, the trustees would be entitled to an indemnity from the funds of the charity under the charity’s governing document. However, a trustee in breach of trust or duty would be unlikely to be able to rely on this indemnity, so would remain personally liable. In either case of a trustee or employee acting on behalf of a charity, liability is not likely to be, nor should be, automatic, as the amendment seems to propose; it would still need to be established by the court where the liability should lie, based on the facts of the case.
In our view, the current legal position already supports the provisions within the amendment that damages may be recoverable from the assets of the charity, whether it is incorporated or unincorporated. Apportionment of liability between the trustees of an unincorporated charity is already possible under the Civil Liability (Contribution) Act 1978 if a claim is not brought against all of the trustees. The amendment would also run counter to the long-established principle that unincorporated associations do not have legal personality. I would be delighted to meet the noble Lord, Lord Bew, and the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, to discuss all this further, but, in the mean time, I invite the noble Lord, Lord Bew, to withdraw his amendment.
Palestine: Recognition
Lord Bew Excerpts(9 years, 9 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Bew (CB)
My Lords, as chairman of the Anglo-Israel Association, I listened with great respect and interest to the words of the noble Lord, Lord Steel, as he introduced the debate. I was particularly struck by his reference to the words of Sir Vincent Fean, a fellow countryman of mine, who was formerly our consul in Jerusalem and before that our ambassador in Libya. Indeed, I spent a very instructive time as part of a delegation sent by the previous Government to negotiate certain matters with the then Gaddafi regime. I spent a lot of time listening to Sir Vincent’s advice, and I know that he is an expert on the affairs of the region.
The test for projected acts of good authority by this Parliament is an important one—the test of strengthening the moderates on both sides. It is three and a half months since this Motion was debated in the House of Commons. It is interesting to look at the impact, such as it was, of the Motion and the vote. For example, on the Palestinian side, in the wake of the recent murders in Paris, the Palestinian Daily—not a Hamas propaganda sheet—declared that it was the work of Mossad, which was the only force that would benefit from this. That tells us something about the quality of opinion—84% of Palestinians, according to polling, agree. That is the response to what happened recently in Paris within that community. There is no indication that moderates have been strengthened as a result of the projected act of good authority of our Parliament three and a half months ago.
If we look at Israel, noble Lords will be aware that there is an intense debate in Israeli society about the peace process and the future strategy in that area. It is an intense debate, above all—as it should be—about negotiation with Hamas, and whether or not it is plausible. Noble Lords will be aware that the intelligence services are divided. Senior people in the intelligence services are well known to take views different from those of the current Government. They will be well aware of the fact that senior military people take different views and that the political class in Israel is divided on these matters.
There is an intense and vigorous debate. Is there any indication whatever that the debate in our own Parliament three and a half months ago has played into this in any particularly positive or interesting way? I detect absolutely no sign of that. The debate went on before; I see no sign, however, of moderates being strengthened in any particular way. There is a reason for that. It is very hard to perform a moral airlift in a situation where there are incredibly complex, difficult, strategic decisions to be made—most of all, negotiating with opponents who pledge themselves to your destruction. It is very hard to achieve a moralistic input from outside in such a sharp and difficult situation.
I conclude, however, by saying something about a two-state solution, which I, along with so many Peers, strongly support. I urge against pessimism on that subject. In general, I do not accept analogies with the Irish peace process, because the situation is so much more bitter in the Middle East and because of the selfish strategic interests of a number of outside powers—something we have not talked about—selfish strategic interests that did not apply in the Irish case. However, one analogy I will accept is that for a long time, since the first serious attempt to do it in 1974, it was clear that there was only one way to achieve an historic compromise in Ireland. There had to be power sharing, and there had to be respect for an Irish dimension and respect for the principle of consent. It took 28 years to get back to that and it is now the basis of a settlement. If intelligent, rational opinion looks at the problem and says that there is only one possible outline of an historical compromise, that is because there is only one possible outline of an historical compromise. It is the case in the Middle East. It sometimes takes far too long to achieve it and it is not just around the corner, but it is still the case.
Deregulation Bill
Lord Bew Excerpts(10 years, 4 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Bew (CB)
My Lords, like the noble Lord, Lord Brabazon, I praise the golden words to be found in paragraph 40 of Schedule 20 to the Bill:
“Omit section 13 of the Defamation Act 1996 (which allows an individual litigant in defamation cases to waive the ban in Article IX of the Bill of Rights on proceedings in Parliament being impeached or questioned in court)”.
As the noble Lord said, this was the view of the Joint Committee on Parliamentary Privilege, which he chaired so ably. We are very much indebted to the members of that committee in another place who pushed this matter forward so skilfully, but it was the view not only of our committee, but of the committee chaired by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Nicholls of Birkenhead, in 1999. What it does is effectively to resolve the ambiguities created by the Neil Hamilton case of 1996. We are indebted to the Government for finally grasping this nettle and I offer my support to this part of the Bill.
However I register a caveat. In the debate occasioned by the Second Reading of the proposed legislation of the noble Lord, Lord Lester of Herne Hill, on this topic on 27 June, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay, made an important point. I also pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Lester, who has played a major role in bringing about the change envisaged in the Bill. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay of Clashfern, made a point that must be reflected on, even by those who are extremely enthusiastically in favour of this change, when he said that,
“the question is whether it is right that a Member of Parliament can be defamed by people in respect of something that he or she has said or done in Parliament and that, if that happens, he or she has no remedy”.—[Official Report, 27/6/2014; col. 1522.]
There is a problem here. In my view, the balance is right. The principle of parliamentary privilege cannot be, as it were, individualised. That was the problem with the situation we had from 1996 to the present. It must be placed at the level of Parliament as a whole if it is to be understood and respected by the public. None the less, a difficulty is created. I draw the parties’ attention to the duty of care that they will have, particularly to new Members, in the next Parliament. It is related also to another piece of legislation, which is in the Queen’s Speech, for recall. In both these cases, if they get it wrong the consequences for a new MP could be really dramatic. That is the way we are going.
There is a sense that Parliament understands that the public expects higher standards from Members of Parliament than they do from other public servants and Parliament is trying, through these measures, to address public concerns about honesty in our public life. The impulse that is leading Parliament to act in this way is entirely reasonable, but it does mean that Parliament has a duty to ensure that new Members understand the ways in which legislation is changing. There are vulnerabilities now that did not exist in the past and prices to be paid if we get these things wrong.
It is perfectly reasonable to argue that IPSA has effectively resolved the issue of expenses—that the recent issues have been historical ones that go back to before the time of the new IPSA regime. However, anybody who believes that issues around lobbying, or even cash for questions, have disappeared and are issues of the 1990s simply has not been reading the newspapers in the past three or four years. Therefore, it is all the more important that the induction programme for new MPs should help with these questions.
At the beginning of the previous Parliament, the Hansard Society put on an induction programme that was poorly attended. The ethics section was particularly poorly attended. The parties must have a major role here. They should encourage new Members in the new Parliament, explain where public opinion is and explain the ways in which legislation is changing. They should also explain, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay, pointed out on Friday 27 June in this Chamber, that Members now have a vulnerability they did not have before: they do not have the protection that they previously had over what they say in the Chamber. These are important matters and it is the responsibility of Parliament, and particularly the responsibility of the parties, to take them on board.
I welcome this new legislation. It is absolutely correct in principle but there is a caveat: there is a responsibility on the political parties that are pushing the legislation through to make sure that newly elected Members know exactly where they stand and where the law now stands. It is not, in this matter, where it has stood since 1996.
Standards in Public Life
Lord Bew Excerpts(10 years, 9 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Earl Attlee (Con)
My Lords, I understand that my noble friend Lord Phillips of Sudbury would like to speak in the gap. If all noble Lords adhered to three minutes we could accommodate my noble friend. When the Clock indicates “3”, a noble Lord’s time is up.
Lord Bew (CB)
My Lords, the Committee on Standards in Public Life is an independent committee that provides advice to the Prime Minister. Its remit is to promote high ethical standards across the public sphere, not just Parliament. Its first ever report, in 1994, recommended seven principles to guide the behaviour of those who serve the public in any way: selflessness, integrity, objectivity, accountability, openness, honesty and leadership. Those principles are popularly known, after the first chairman, as the Nolan principles.
The committee published its fifth general survey of public attitudes last autumn. The committee has conducted the survey every two years since 2004. It is a unique long-term, independent study and source of information about what the public think about standards in public life. The issue here is general probity. It is important to check our perception of the standards that the public expect of public servants and organisations, and the extent to which those are being met, against reality. We cannot afford to assume that we know what the public really think about these issues.
The survey was published at a time when a variety of research showed an increasing disengagement from the political system and some national institutions seemed to be engulfed in a series of scandals. The apparently—and I stress apparently—engulfing nature of scandals is a particular problem of the modern era. At least in some media discussion the impression exists not just of a few bad apples but that entire institutions lack probity: the BBC, Parliament, the police, et cetera.
The survey draws on all four previous surveys to chart changes in attitudes over the past 10 years. All surveys have consistently demonstrated what members of the public expect from people in public office. It is: to be committed to public rather than private ends; selflessness and integrity, as in the Nolan principles; to be honest and open in decision-making; to make decisions in the light of the best evidence; objectivity; to be held accountable; and for some senior public figures to lead in some respect exemplary lives—the principle of leadership.
Over the lifetime of the survey, there has been a continuous and substantial decline in the number of respondents rating standards as quite high or very high. In the latest survey, 28% of respondents rated conduct as either quite low or very low. There was also an increase in the proportion of people thinking that standards had got a lot worse. In relationship to Westminster MPs, the public broadly share a set of expectations that are in line with the seven principles of public life. However, they have consistently lower levels of confidence that MPs meet those standards. In the latest survey, pessimism was less marked than in 2010, when attitudes were sharply affected by the then recent events of the expenses scandal, but levels of confidence have not returned to their 2008 levels.
Although absolute levels of confidence are low in particular types of national public officeholders and professions—for example, Ministers, MPs and tabloid journalists—that should be contrasted with higher and rising confidence in institutions, processes and those administering the process. For example, as in most countries that have low and falling levels of confidence in politicians, there is, paradoxically, higher confidence in national institutions such as Parliament itself and much higher confidence in the legal system. For Parliament, it might be argued that there was something that looked like the possible beginnings of a crisis of legitimacy in the 1970s, but there is no sign of such a crisis today
Questions of trust are valuable tracking devices for changes, but there are dangers that we should be alert to in generalising about the public perception of probity. For example, we are sometimes a bit disappointed that only the broad, negative perceptions of MPs are reported in the media. There is a great deal of complex, sometimes counterintuitive material in the research which has messages for those working in public life. For instance, our survey showed a widespread belief that respondents would receive fair treatment from a wide range of front-line public services. Less than 15% of those surveyed expressed concern that they would be treated worse than others, and there are clear messages that the public expressed more confidence in the probity of those working in the public sector as against those working in private services.
The data also give us a picture of those groups who are most likely to feel sceptical and, to some degree, alienated. That is particularly the case for those lower social grades from white British or white Irish backgrounds, middle-aged or older, and who have little engagement with the political system. The growth in the size of that group presents a challenge to all of us involved in public life.
The Committee on Standards in Public Life recognises that it is important to place those findings in a wider context, and it is now doing further research and assessing the results from our British survey compared with those in other countries, to see if results are potentially affected by domestic factors or reflect citizens’ attitudes across western democracies in general. We also appreciate that perceptions of trust and public confidence can include a range of issues which have nothing to do with integrity and genuine trustworthiness and are much more to do with the policy process and the process of delivery.
It is important that the public have confidence in the integrity of public institutions and that those who work in them are alert to a certain level of public malaise and, where necessary, willing to challenge the status quo. At a recent committee meeting with academics, there was a wide-ranging discussion about some issues which might address some of those perceptions: whether or not a less adversarial style of politics might help; or whether or not a better level of political reporting would help. An interesting point was made that MPs in the Netherlands considered that they have a role as a public educator. It is not quite as clear that MPs in United Kingdom consider that to be an important part of their role. There were a number of other interesting ideas for discussion and debate.
The broad context is clear enough. Modern politics became less ideological when the era opened up by the Russian revolutions closed in 1989. Politics became, it is often said, more about values and individuals and ideologies, but we still have a gladiatorial style, seen most spectacularly at PMQs, inherited from a more ideological age. The result is a displacement of inevitable popular resentment, which used to have a more ideological form of expression, to individuals in a more modern version of Brecht’s socialism of fools.
My committee believes that there is scope to improve and maintain levels of public confidence and trust by public officeholders and institutions by improving their own trustworthiness; by consistently and reliably exemplifying high standards of ethical behaviour, openness and accountability, as our recent report, Strengthening Transparency Around Lobbying, discussed; being more attentive to and active in addressing emerging ethical standards issues as they arise, rather than waiting for pressure for reform; establishing and promulgating robust mechanisms to detect and deal with wrongdoing; and creating a culture where high standards are built into everything the organisation does and genuinely seen as everyone’s personal responsibility.
Following a recommendation of the committee’s recent triennial review and understandable budget cuts across the public sector, that was the last such survey produced by the committee. I must say that since my arrival in the chair in September, the importance of the survey has been borne in on me in a way that was not the case before, and I began to appreciate its value in a way that I had not before. To have that steady survey over a period of changes and transitions in public mood is, I think, of great value. We regret losing in-depth analysis of the public view, especially when there are signs of disconnect between the public and the political process.
The focus of my committee’s immediate work programme will be on working collaboratively with public sector officeholders and organisations to promote and reinforce ethics and practice. We need to increase our understanding of the factors at play in building and maintaining public confidence. I believe that the committee and its research has a role to play in trying to move the debate on from the position so often heard—“They don’t get it”—to a different and better position, which is, “What can we do about it?”.