Holding the Line Against Tyranny and Anarchy (Constitution Committee Report)

Lord Foulkes of Cumnock Excerpts

Thursday 9th July 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Lab Co-op)]

My Lords, I am told that we should never start a speech with an apology, but I sincerely apologise if I have to leave before the end of the debate to get back up to Scotland—I had not expected the debate to be taken so late. I did not want to withdraw, as I was very keen to participate in the debate on this important topic, as a member of the Constitution Committee at the time.

It is a vital topic, though I was a bit sceptical about it. As members of the committee will know, I thought it would be hijacked by the lawyers into a very dry topic, but it has proved, as the noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, said, to be a really important issue. This is an excellent report from the Constitution Committee, ably chaired, may I say, by the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde. He and I have crossed swords in Ayrshire from time to time, but I have great respect for the way he chaired the committee through this report.

The most striking observation from the report is that the greatest threat to the rule of law does not come from a dramatic crisis but can emerge gradually through declining institutional standards, weakened scrutiny and political rhetoric which encourages the loss of faith in our democratic institutions.

Take the case of Henry Nowak. Okay, the police failed in their duty, but they are being held accountable and, as the report says, individual failures within an institution should not be used as an excuse to undermine that institution completely. Sadly, in the Nowak case, before the facts were established, Reform UK immediately sought to use that tragedy to claim, wrongly, that Britain has a system of two-tier policing against white people. That is the kind of dangerous politicking the report warns against.

The committee is equally clear that no individual or institution is beyond scrutiny. The conviction of Peter Murrell for embezzling more than £400,000 from the SNP is an example which reminds us vividly of the consequences of the failure of internal governance. This case exposed the prolonged weakness of accountability and oversight in one of our largest parties in Scotland and, with the more recent revelations of over £1 million missing from the Yes Scotland campaign, there is sadly more yet to come. An organisation where the leader and chief executive are a married couple, where anyone who raises questions—as people did—is summarily dismissed and where accountants resign in protest, is an example of the failure of the rule of law. The rule of law depends on transparency, independent oversight and the confidence that wrongdoing will ultimately be exposed, but that is not yet the case in the SNP scandal.

The committee’s most important message is that there is a difference between demanding better of our institutions and encouraging the public to lose faith in them, and that distinction really matters. When police make mistakes, they are investigated. If political parties fail, we should seek to reform them. If Governments overreach, Parliament should take them to task. Those are not signs that the rule of law has failed; they are actually evidence that the constitutional safeguards are working. The real danger is when political leaders suggest that the whole system is irredeemably corrupt or biased. Once confidence in democratic institutions is lost, it is very difficult for it to be rebuilt.

In this country, two of the threats to our democracy are, first, dark money—Russian, of course, but also from the USA, as we heard it in a Statement earlier today—influencing our politics and secondly, sadly, increasing disengagement in elections and politics, particularly among young people. That is why elsewhere, later on in this Session, I will be arguing that we should be closing loopholes in our electoral finance laws—we heard that again earlier today—and I will be supporting the introduction of compulsory voting, which has proved so successful in Australia. The most recent example of a crypto billionaire giving Farage £5 billion is not an isolated case, but it reminds us that there is a real danger of very rich people, both at home and overseas, taking or trying to take control of our democratic institutions unless we take urgent steps to avoid it.

To return to the report, it is about not just constitutional law but constitutional responsibility. It reminds us that the rule of law is sustained by institutions that are accountable, by Parliament exercising effective scrutiny, and by political leaders choosing responsibility over rhetoric. Recent examples—the exploitation of the Henry Nowak case by Reform, the Green Party’s failure to scrutinise candidates, and the corruption and lack of transparency of the SNP—show in different ways how confidence in our constitutional settlement can be weakened. However, the answer is not to diminish confidence in our institutions but to find ways, as the report says, to ensure that our institutions are transparent, accountable and worthy of trust, while resisting those who seek to turn any failures into evidence that the rule of law itself has collapsed. That, the report says, is the road to tyranny and to anarchy, which we must resist.