House of Lords Conduct Committee: Code of Conduct Review

Lord Forsyth of Drumlean Excerpts

Tuesday 8th October 2024 Grand Committee

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean (Con)]

I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Manningham-Buller, for giving us this opportunity and for the brilliant way in which she has carried out the chairmanship of this committee, which I hope will go on for many more years. It is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Donaghy, who is very wise—and I think that we are all grateful for the work that she has done. However, the world has changed a bit, and we need to reflect that.

The noble Baroness, Lady Manningham-Buller, said at the beginning that the code was too long and too detailed, and I could not agree more. It is not just that it takes a long time to read it. Incidentally, the copies that have been provided in the Printed Paper Office do not include the appendices that were in the original document, including appendix B on page 56, paragraphs 19 and 20 of which were frankly just offensive. I hope that the fact that they are not included means that they are going to disappear for the foreseeable future.

There are trivial complaints made that should really be dealt with by the usual channels and not by the commissioner, and an abuse of the complaints system for political purposes is now happening, often through social media. The reputational damage done to an individual who may be subject to a vexatious complaint when the complaint is made public is enormous. The noble Baroness, Lady Donaghy, urged us not to talk about individual cases, but I am going to talk about one. We can see what has happened to the noble Lord, Lord Alli. Someone apparently made a complaint that he had not declared a particular interest. I do not know whether that is right or wrong, but it has resulted in pages and pages and day after day of coverage about him, and he is in a position where he is not allowed to comment on this or defend himself, which to my mind is neither fair nor right. One sees people doing this again and again. I do not make this accusation about any one party; we all have people in political parties who think that this is an appropriate way to behave, but I do not.

The other issue that worries me, which is again to do with Members’ vulnerability, is that if the commissioner is investigating a particular complaint Members are not allowed to have any legal representation.

[Baroness Manningham-Buller (CB)]

I said I was not going to interrupt. Anybody can have legal representation. That is not improper. What they cannot do is ask their lawyer to answer the questions for them. In fact, most people who are subject to serious allegations seek legal advice immediately and have it beside them at all stages.

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean (Con)]

I am aware of that; it is actually spelled out in the document on the basis that this is seen not as a legalistic procedure but as a more informal one. However, if your entire reputation is on the line, you should be able to have the basic standards of natural justice. In the case of a criminal prosecution, for example, no one would argue that your lawyer should not be able to make representations on your behalf. It is the business of confidentiality not being able to share that with colleagues; that is probably observed more often in the breach but, if you have been wrongly accused of something, it is all over the newspapers and you are not allowed to talk to any of your colleagues to get advice and help, that is a very unpleasant position to be left in. There is also the issue that it takes for ever for the matter to be decided. By the time it is, if you have been found to have been traduced, nobody is interested. You might get a single line in a newspaper. I worry about the process.

I am conscious of the strictures of the noble Baroness, Lady Donaghy, not to mention particular cases, but I also worry about a recent case where the commissioner decided on a particular sanction and then asked the complainant what they thought of the sanction. The commissioner then changed the sanction to make it more severe as a result of talking to the complainant. To me, that feels a little dodgy, to put it mildly. It is true that, in the legal system, we take evidence from people who have been subjected to a crime about its impact on them, but we do not allow them to decide what the sentence should be.

Picking up the comment made by the noble Baroness, Lady Donaghy, I agree that the House of Lords is different from the House of Commons. We should be. However, we are a part-time House while the Commons is a full-time House. Look at the sanctions that are applied in the other place: if people who have committed quite serious breaches of the code there and done some pretty stupid things are suspended for more than a set number of days, they can find themselves subject to a recall petition. The sanctions over exclusion therefore tend to be small numbers of days. However, colleagues in this House have been excluded for months—six months, in one case. The difference is that, in the House of Commons, if you are excluded for less than the recall period, you continue to be paid and to receive all your allowances, while Members of this House are unable to gain any of their allowances and go unpaid. Therefore, an extended period of exclusion is a far more severe penalty than would apply to Members of the House of Commons. Although I accept that we should be different, I do not really see why we should have such broadly different tariffs for breaches of the codes.

The other issue where I hope we will be different is where people have been accused of some criminal offence. It is essential that any decision to exclude them should be made only after they have been charged, not on arrest, for the obvious reason of maintaining the principle of innocent until proven guilty. I know that a different view has been taken in the other place but I very much agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Donaghy, that we should decide our own rules on these matters—although that does create a slight anomaly.

I am also worried about what I would describe as the committee’s mission creep; the chairman touched on that. It is highly inappropriate that Peers’ conduct not related to their parliamentary activities or role should be within the scope of the commissioner. I do not think that it is for him or her to look at that. I also cannot for the life of me understand why, under the code, you have to inform the Clerk of the House if you are subject to an investigation by a professional body. What has that got to do with the Clerk of the House? A doctor subject to a complaint to the GMC would have to tell the Clerk of the House about that. Why is that appropriate? Why should a company chairman, perhaps found to be in breach of health and safety legislation and subject to an investigation by the HSE, have to tell the Clerk of the House? What business is that of the House of Lords?

It is just wrong. We have a number of Peers in high-profile public and private roles. Where does it end? Does it apply to a head teacher who is accused of breaching employment law, or to a landlord/tenant dispute? I felt that the noble Baroness, Lady Donaghy, got quite close to touching on this: there seems to be a suspicion growing that anything that damages the reputation of a Peer damages the reputation of the House. That cannot be right, and it is dangerous.

There was a recent example in the debate the other day about VAT on school fees. A colleague on the Government Benches made an accusation about what had happened in a particular school. Someone then said that it was not true and made a complaint to the commissioner and, as a result, got a whole load of coverage about this person having misled the House. The newspapers put it rather more strongly than that. It is none of the business of the commissioner to look at what is said in the Chamber. Lots of things are said in the Chamber that are a matter for debate. If people think that someone has misled the House in some way, there are lots of processes by which that can be corrected or debated. I worry about the idea of mission creep and the perception of the role of the commissioner. They will say, “We’ve had a complaint that so-and-so didn’t tell the House the truth”, which then becomes a story. That is a real-life example. This is not a partisan point; in both cases I am defending people who are members of the government party. I was going to say opposition party, but that is me now.

I am sure that the independent members of the Conduct Committee do a great job, but I worry about the balance between external members and people who have detailed knowledge of parliamentary procedure and an understanding of the political process. I wonder if the balance is too far in one direction. An example of that is the requirement to declare your interests. It is absolutely impossible to declare your interests at Question Time without irritating the House. Therefore, people stand up and say, “I refer to my interests in the register”, which is frankly a waste of time. We do not have the register and we do not know what the interests are. If you are watching from the outside, you think, “Ah, he or she must be in someone’s pay”. It is a fatuous requirement. We end up in a situation where people are breaching the code, as is explained in the document.

I also want to re-emphasise the difference between paid advocacy, which is speaking in the House or to Ministers specifically about a business interest—it is quite rightly forbidden—and speaking on the generality of policy, which may impact negatively on a company from which they receive payment. While I was chairing a bank, I never asked any questions about issues which affected the bank because I felt vulnerable to being accused of paid advocacy, even though I know that the rules would have provided for the general position. It is undoubtedly the case that people are afraid of speaking on certain areas because this is not widely understood. Because it is not widely understood, mischievous journalists can make hay from it.

In short, I really welcome what the chairman of the committee said, because the committee needs to rewrite the code and to undertake a review of the approach which is taken, so that it takes account of the impact of social media and the increasing exposure of Members to unjustified reputational damage from malign political influences.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Evans of Weardale (CB)]

My Lords, I am grateful for the opportunity to contribute to this debate. I should declare that I am the former chair of the Committee on Standards in Public Life.

The Committee on Standards in Public Life is the custodian, so to speak, of the Nolan principles—the Seven Principles of Public Life—to which the noble Baronesses, Lady Donaghy and Lady Manningham-Buller, have already referred. When Lord Nolan drew up his seminal report on public standards, he envisaged that the principles would stand at the apex of the system but would not stand alone and would not be justiciable. He envisaged that there would also be two other key parts: first, codes of conduct, which we are discussing today, in order to read down those overarching principles into the particular circumstances of different institutions; and, secondly, training and an opportunity for people to learn and consider what standards meant in their particular environments. It seems to me that that model of how standards should operate has stood the test of time.

One of the privileges of being in that job as chairman of the Committee on Standards in Public Life is that one got exposure to a very large number of different organisations and the way they approach these problems. We took evidence from government, Parliament, the private sector, charities and other organisations. Of course, the issues are different in different parts of the system, although one of the things that I was struck by was that the seven principles seemed to command considerable support even, for instance, from people in the corporate sector. They took notice of them and an interest in them and in how we applied them in public life, so we have something there that we can be proud of. I was also struck that quite often there would be delegations from a variety of countries coming to talk to the UK about the way in which standards issues were managed here. You might say from a purely UK perspective that that was slightly surprising if you read the papers at the time that I was chairman. Respect for public standards was not the most evident aspect of what was going on, but nevertheless we have traditionally had quite a strong reputation in this area.

Of all the areas that we looked at, the most difficult was Parliament. I say that for two reasons. The first is the immense complexity of the arrangements in Parliament at both ends, and of the systems, some of which are specific to particular Houses, some of which are common across Parliament. The interplay between them takes a considerable amount of detailed work to understand. I remember spending a lot of time talking to all the relevant stakeholders to try to work out how the bullying aspects, the conduct aspects and so on relate to each other, so I strongly support the suggestion that there should be greater clarity. However, I do not underestimate how difficult it is to achieve that clarity, partly because it is much easier in an environment in which everybody is an employee and you can set a policy and say that if you do not like it, you can leave. That does not apply in political life or in your Lordships’ House.

The Code of Conduct in the Lords in some ways bears even more weight and does more work than is the case in the Commons. The reason I say that is that ultimately in the Commons there is a political price to pay for individuals who breach public standards. Partygate and the many other scandals that we saw over recent years led in due course to a political price, but Members of your Lordships’ House do not have that electoral jeopardy if they breach standards in a way that the public would find unacceptable. Therefore, it is particularly important that the Code of Conduct here should be as effective as it possibly can be. It is also particularly complicated because of the fact that Members of the House are not on a salary, and in that sense what is and is not acceptable in terms of payment for various aspects of individuals’ lives is difficult, and some of the complexities in the Code of Conduct reflect that. I suspect that, looked at from the outside, most people in the street would find the system perplexing. Certainly, the postbag that I used to receive when I was in that role suggested quite low levels of confidence that standards were being appropriately upheld in Parliament—probably more critical than the reality, so there is an issue of reputation and an issue of credibility that is an important part of the work that is currently in hand in the Conduct Committee.

Certainly, from my perspective, the Code of Conduct needs to do two things. It needs appropriately to regulate the business of the House so that we can be confident in the integrity of the way in which Members approach their responsibilities in the House, but it also needs to protect the House’s reputation and project the integrity of the House to a very sceptical public. Without that, our role, and the role of the House in general, is undermined.

Against that background—I have submitted specific evidence in writing—I highlight two things. The first is that I support a clause that suggests that anybody who undermines the reputation of the House is breaching the Code of Conduct. I recognise that there are those who feel that that is overreach, and I hear that, but it is completely normal in many environments for that to be included. If you look at the way in which the professional bodies look at their responsibilities today in the regulated professions, the question of who is a fit and proper person is taken into consideration.

I declare an interest as a member of the board of the KPMG Anglo-Swiss partnership. The regulator for audit looks at the way in which audit is done but also takes at least a glance at whether individual auditors are fit and proper people to take on that trusted role as an auditor. I find it difficult to understand why we would not expect a similar approach to those who are taking on the trusted role as a member of a parliamentary body. I believe that there should be a clause in respect of reputation, and that in doing so, we are not over- reaching; we are doing what is actually quite widespread in many organisations. If you looked at the concerns that certainly I have seen expressed about Parliament, you would see that people do not understand why things are so different now. In many ways they need to be different, but in a number of other ways they are different without needing to be so.

I have a second suggestion. I realise that in suggesting this I am tilting at windmills, but I will tilt anyway. I personally believe that—

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean (Con)]

On this point about the reputation of Parliament, which is obviously very important, what is the noble Lord’s view on former chairmen of the Committee on Standards in Public Life who appear regularly in the media to provide a commentary about how dreadful standards are? Is that not far more damaging than anything any individual would do?

[Lord Evans of Weardale (CB)]

I do not want to comment on my predecessors in the role, but I point out that I have not appeared myself in the media to comment on that, despite many invitations. Rather similarly to the people who run the security service, it is probably better to shut up and go. Although predecessors in the committee take their own judgments on these things, it does not seem to me that opining on matters about which you have no current knowledge is necessarily a wise approach. But that is a matter for myself.

My second point, my windmill, was that I personally do not think that the phrase “acting upon personal honour” is very helpful. As the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, said, things have changed a bit. Although we in the House of Lords understand what we mean by that, almost anybody looking at it from the outside would roll their eyes and say, “What on earth is that about?” I realise that we have definitions which are derived from it, all of which I think I support. Nevertheless, the use of the phrase, despite the fact that it is time-hallowed, is difficult reputationally to present. It suggests an approach to standards which is not actually the one that we see. There has been very considerable progress on the way in which standards issues are tackled in your Lordships’ House, but I do not think that that is the way in which it would be perceived through use of language which I think would be widely misunderstood.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I too thank the noble Baroness, Lady Manningham-Buller, for this discussion. I share a lot of the concerns already raised, especially those from the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth of Drumlean, because I have a dread of mission creep. Like the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope of Craighead, I will look at some of the specific wording in the code, because I have read it several times and will raise some things that worry me.

I encourage one aim of the review—that is, to shorten the code. At present, there seems to be an overly complicated deluge of details on rules that, dangerously, threaten to drown out the general principles around standards that we are so concerned about—the very standards that the noble Lord, Lord Evans, has just indicated are so important. We have to be able to see them very clearly. At present, the problem is that the rules are all you can see.

There is also a danger of turning the code into a counterproductive box-ticking exercise, if it is dominated by rules in this way. It means that you can feel virtuous obeying the letter of the rules rather than believing in or having any feel for their spirit. We have seen over recent weeks with the “glasses for passes” or Taylor Swift ticket sagas and so on that the “We are acting according to the rules” defence does not engender public trust, regardless of whether it was within the rules.

My main reason for wanting to speak today is that my interests and knowledge are in relation to how, in broader society, straightforward do’s and don’ts about, for example, professional conflicts of interest have gradually seeped into the more subjective and intimate spheres of interpersonal relations and the problems that can create. The devil is often in the detail, and later I shall raise questions around problematic parts of the small-print definitions of bullying and harassment. But there is actually an absence of detail in the part of the code that is mandatory for all noble Lords. The code demands attendance at seminars designed

“to raise awareness of, and to prevent, bullying, harassment and sexual misconduct”.

Yet there is no detail about the contents of these compulsory sessions. How can we debate their effectiveness here without being able to scrutinise what they say? That is hardly transparent. These compulsory seminars have created headlines in the last couple of years when various high-profile noble Lords were disciplined—indeed, named and shamed—for non-attendance. But I challenge the value of these courses per se.

I raise this with some trepidation, because the implicit accusation lurks in the code that not taking these courses somehow implies that you are not taking bullying or harassment seriously. Yet these sorts of training modules, which are ubiquitous throughout the public sector and of notoriously mixed quality, can be politically contentious, deploying the worst and most divisive EDI stereotypes and using an insultingly patronising and hectoring tone. Worse, they act as a form of compelled speech. You have to nod along and give the correct answers to prove that you are not guilty of harbouring some dodgy or malign attitudes. Why are there compulsory seminars only for these behaviours? Why not have courses on financial propriety or the correct use of political donations? Given the mission creep front, I am not suggesting that, of course. Yet somehow, bullying, harassment and sexual harassment are treated as especially grievous.

The backdrop to some of my reservations over the part of the code relating especially to bullying and harassment is the way that, over the last 20 years or so, interpersonal relations in the workplace have become politicised while, conversely, the ordinary conflicts of public life, such as political disagreements, are being conducted in personal terms. Politics has become personal in the worst possible way. What is more, the accusation that a public figure has behaved inappropriately towards another person can exact a far greater price than any amount of corruption. That alone means that it can be too easily weaponised.

I first encountered this a couple of decades ago when I cut my teeth as a trade union rep at an FE college. Shortly after management added bullying to its disciplinary procedures, there was a spate of complaints. I represented two members of staff, one of whom was accused by an incompetent fellow member of staff and the other by a student who struggled academically. Both, as it turned out, were victims of false allegations and were eventually totally exonerated, but the process dragged on for months. At the end of it all, one of the accused took early retirement and, after an exemplary 30 years as a lecturer, was left feeling bitter and betrayed. The other had a nervous breakdown.

I learned then that, often, the process is the punishment. I have tracked similarly destructive ways in which anti-bullying and harassment codes have spread in universities, as well as how they are often used by activists to cancel speakers and hound and silence lecturers whose so-called toxic views are deemed bullying by some students.

Only recently, closer to home, the Equality and Human Rights Commission eventually closed the case against the noble Baroness, Lady Falkner of Margravine, after many hellish months. She was being investigated because EHRC employees filed bullying complaints that seem to have been ideologically motivated because of her completely correct stance, as chair of the EHRC, in clarifying the protection of biological women’s rights.

One reason we see such cases is that the charge of bullying can be used as a political weapon in a witch hunt to discredit opponents, since the definitions of bullying are so nebulous and subjective. This is even admitted in the code’s appendix, which details these definitions:

“Bullying may be characterised as offensive … behaviour … that can make a person feel vulnerable, upset, undermined”,


et cetera. We are told:

“Whether conduct constitutes bullying will depend on … the perception of the person experiencing the conduct”.


Perhaps less cynically, the data shows that, once anti-bullying procedures are formalised by an organisation, claims of victimisation inevitably grow. That is hardly surprising; increasing prevalence may be less a response to actual behaviour and more about people’s changing interpretation of that behaviour.

Much of what is listed in the code seems almost to incite complaints about minor incidents. Under bullying, we have “being sarcastic”—I mean, what? I have just done it. It also lists using “inappropriate nicknames” and “practical jokes”. We are told that bullying can be verbal or non-verbal,

“may be persistent or an isolated incident and may manifest obviously or be hidden or insidious”.

That is a very wide brief. Can the committee explain how such vast parameters will not encourage trivial complaints? What procedures exist—

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean (Con)]

I think I am right in saying that, in the case of bullying, the identity of the complainant is kept from the person being complained about, which makes this even more egregious.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

It just gets worse and worse; that is all I can say. I want to know what procedures exist, or will exist, in any review to avoid vexatious complaints. How will the use of accusations, either in pursuit of vendettas or due simply to misinterpreting harmless personality clashes, be dealt with? Who decides what is actionable, and using what criteria?

The definition of harassment in the code is arguably even more troubling. We are told that harassment

“can be intentional or unintentional”

and, again, that it depends on perception. There are some extraordinary quotes; I urge noble Lords to read them because they are frightening. It says:

“A person may … be harassed even if they were not the intended ‘target’”.


The example that made me gulp was that

“a person may be harassed by jokes about a religious group that they do not belong to”.

What on earth censorious identitarian doors does that open? Then there is—wait for it—this example: “Deliberately”—I do not know who decides on that—

“holding meetings or social events in a location that is not accessible for an individual … by reason of religious prohibitions”.

So, a get-together in a bar, which some practising Muslims will not want to attend, could be seen as harassment; that is the word used.

Finally, the code refers to the use of “unacceptable or inappropriate language”—again, who decides what is unacceptable or inappropriate?—

“or racial or other stereotypes (regardless of whether the complainant is in fact a member of the group stereotyped)”.

Is this harassment? It insults the victims of proper harassment to say that. Using a recent controversy, perhaps I can claim harassment here. I heard one noble Baroness call a member of the public a “coconut”, which I consider a racial slur. Well, it does not affect me, but I heard it. I am harassed, am I? I am certainly offended, but let me assure noble Lords that I do not need a code to say that; I will just argue back instead.

It is a mistake to encourage people to police their conduct or language using an ever-prescriptive code. If anyone actually read this code and took it literally, or if it was heavily enforced, it would stifle frank and open debate and undermine us holding each other to account in public. Two of the seven Nolan principles denoting standards in public life are openness and honesty. What gives us the ability to be honest and open is not a bureaucratic code but an unapologetic commitment to free speech, so I am glad to see on page 6 of the code—I hope this will stay and be highlighted even more—a recognition of the primary consideration of the principle of free speech in parliamentary proceedings to allow Members to express their views fully and frankly. Hear, hear to that.

I wonder how we all feel about a rather disappointing letter, not directly to do with the code but part of mission creep, that we were sent by the Chief Whips across all the parties in which we were asked to mind our language. At the start of the new term on 2 September, we were asked to ensure

“debate that does not descend into vitriol … or use of rhetoric designed to offend and inflame”.

I find that chilling, perhaps because I wrote a book entitled I Find That Offensive. I know that attempts to purge so-called offensive speech can be a less than subtle code for telling people “You can’t say that”. I want us to avoid reducing political rhetoric to carefully manicured, rehearsed lines from a sanitised script and instead stand up for what we believe to be right with passion and plain speaking. If that sounds vitriolic, so be it. To be honest, there are so many challenges in national and international politics at present that deserve our vitriol that maybe saying it out loud is the mark of honourable public service, far more evidently than following any code of conduct, which, broadly speaking, I would cut, cut and cut again.