Reinforced Autoclaved Aerated Concrete: Public Buildings

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Wednesday 6th September 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

That was a huge array of questions more suitable for debate, but perhaps I can make clear that the Government have agreed to fund extensive RAAC mitigation works across the NHS and the education estate by capital funding allocations. We will consider the approach to any RAAC funding in other public sector estates on a case-by-case basis. As regards the MoD, the programme of surveys is ongoing, given the size of the estate, and I know that my right honourable friend the new Defence Secretary takes this matter very seriously.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, the Comptroller and Auditor-General wrote yesterday in the Times that the problems were caused by “underinvestment” in the physical estate and

“by the lack of a robust long-term programme of building maintenance and replacement”,

and suggested that that needs now to be urgently addressed. Can the Minister assure us that the Government are now willing to develop such a long-term programme and raise the level of investment in the public estate, or are they going to give in to the continuing demands from right-wing newspapers and their own Back Benches to cut taxes first and not put the money in?

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

The Government are investing and will continue to invest in public sector buildings. Take education: the Government have allocated £15 billion since 2015 to keep schools safe and operational. In this area, professional advice has evolved over time. Successive Governments since 1994 have managed the risk of RAAC and will continue to do so. I have explained the central advice given to help individual public sector bodies manage their responsibilities in the way that all building and property owners need to do.

UK Government Resilience Framework

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Monday 4th September 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

The statement is still in preparation. I take note of the noble Lord’s points and thank him for the contributions that he has made, notably on the debate that we had on resilience in January, which was very helpful. The Deputy Prime Minister has committed to giving a statement to Parliament this year. Both Houses will be given the opportunity to scrutinise this, and the Government intend to update both Houses in the appropriate way.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, the resilience framework statement is full of calls to involve the whole of society:

“we need a shared understanding of the risks we face … We are committed to working with partners, industry and academia from across the UK to implement this Framework … including UK Government departments, devolved administrations, local authorities, emergency services and the private … and community sectors … so we must be more transparent and empower everyone to make a contribution”.

I am not aware of any great public information campaign having started yet. Is that also planned?

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

I draw the noble Lord’s attention to the developments in openness that there have been. We now have a UK Resilience Forum, which was established to bring together the voluntary and community sectors, emergency responders, business and so on. We have published a very chunky National Risk Register, which is available for public comment—and, of course, we are gearing up the local resilience forums, which are led by the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities. We have announced new pilots this summer to work out how best to engage local communities, develop community risk registers and so on.

Electoral Commission: Data Breaches

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Monday 4th September 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

I do not have available any commercial information. It would be a matter for the Electoral Commission, and no doubt there is some information in its annual report. I am afraid I am new to this subject, but legislation sets out which individuals and organisations are entitled to receive copies of the open electoral register from local authorities. The commission, of course, uses the register for various purposes because it is a regulator. There are other organisations, as the noble Lord suggested, such as credit reference agencies, political parties and the Office for National Statistics—which does such an important job—which are entitled to receive copies of the register.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, the Elections Act extended voting rights to overseas citizens for their lifetimes. As it is implemented it will have to rely on a great deal of electronic communication, as the postal service will be far too slow. Have the Government considered that this lays our electoral records more easily open to hacking? Has thought been given to the problems of managing a system such as this? We want a great deal more people who live in distant countries to vote, but the time allowed in the electoral campaign for that will be very difficult to manage without the use of electronic systems.

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

Preventing interference in future UK elections is an absolute priority for the Government—we have to protect our democratic processes. The Government have set up a Defending Democracy Taskforce to drive forward work to protect UK democratic processes, which I hope will be of some comfort to the noble Lord. The taskforce works across government and with Parliament, the intelligence communities, the devolved Administrations, local authorities, the private sector and civil society—a whole of society approach. It has recently set up a new enduring election security capability: the joint election security and preparedness unit. This will make sure that we are fully prepared for the next general election and that there are not attacks on the integrity of our systems.

Cabinet Manual

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Monday 24th July 2023 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

To ask His Majesty’s Government when they plan to submit a draft revised Cabinet Manual to the appropriate committees of both Houses for their comments.

[The Minister of State, Cabinet Office (Baroness Neville-Rolfe) (Con)]

My Lords, the Government’s current intention is to share draft material for review in the autumn. The Cabinet Secretary wrote to the House of Lords Constitution Committee and the House of Commons Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee in June to set out this plan. Since then, officials have been engaging with the clerks of the committees, and they will continue to do so over the summer to provide the latest information.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for that welcome confirmation of news that progress is at last being made. It is now 18 months since the noble Lord, Lord True, in answering the debate on the Constitution Committee’s report, said he regretted that there had not yet been a revision. There have been five revisions of the Ministerial Code since 2015 and four of the special advisers’ code, but none of this code. Does the Minister agree that it is extremely important to have these consultations completed and the draft published in final form before the likely date of the next election, to ensure that the constitutional transfer of authority after the next election—to whichever Government are then formed—is conducted according to the rules laid out in the Cabinet Manual as revised?

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

I thank the noble Lord. The Cabinet Secretary made it clear in his letter to the committees that the plan was to complete the work so that the new and revised Cabinet Manual could be published in good time for the next general election.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, to return to the general point, the Minister may have considered that we might be changing from one Government to another after the election, which will overlap with the United States doing the same. We have seen, painfully, from the last transfer of power in the United States that one should never take the constitutional transfer of power for granted. The Cabinet Manual is most useful during a change of government, as many of those who have commented on it have said. Is the Minister conscious that one needs to push to ensure that it is therefore available for all those who might be Ministers after the next election, well before the campaign starts?

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

The noble Lord makes a good point. I said that we are looking ahead to timing, bearing in mind the general election, and I repeat that undertaking. I am glad that he mentioned the United States, where there is a very different system, involving a written constitution. One of the strengths of our constitution, and indeed of our history, is its flexibility and ability to evolve according to changing circumstances. Since the last Cabinet Manual, we have had a lot of changes in circumstances—Covid, Ukraine, Brexit and so on.

Official Statistics Order 2023

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Wednesday 19th July 2023 Grand Committee

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Brixton, on the care and attention he has dedicated to this. I regret that I was not as thorough, although I did discover what JISC was, and one or two other things, as I looked at the list. I start with a confession: I do vaguely remember that there was a point when I understood the difference between national statistics, official statistics and other statistics, but I think I have forgotten. There were some very subtle, but nevertheless significant, distinctions between them. I was a Minister at the time, so I had to understand it.

I echo the recommendation made by the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Brixton, that we might have a fuller briefing when we return. It would be very helpful to know what the Government’s overall strategy on statistics is. I would also welcome, and I think quite a number of us would welcome, a government briefing on where we are now on the use of statistics across departments, as the Government go through the digital transformation.

I recall from my time in the Cabinet Office that there were tremendous barriers to sharing statistics across government, because the laws under which the Department for Work and Pensions operated were different from those of the Home Office. Therefore, when it came to something such as the Windrush scandal, where it was quite evident that there was material in other departments which would have showed whether or not the people concerned had been in Britain, in employment and registered with a doctor over the previous 20, 30 or 40 years, it was not carried through.

The digital strategy within government is extremely important to the future of government. It is also very much a non-party issue. It would be very helpful to have a briefing for all Peers to say where we are with that now. How far have some of those legal barriers been overcome? Is there now appropriate sharing across Whitehall? How far have some of the hesitations that so many people have about privacy and the use of their personal statistics been overcome?

I recall, at the time of the last census, a number of people, including the then Minister, Francis Maude, now the noble Lord, Lord Maude, saying that the question of whether we need future censuses ought to be moot, because one agency or other of our Government is collecting most of those statistics all the time. If one were able to put them all together, it would save us the effort and expense of a census and would provide us with a moving interpretation of what is happening in our schools, our ethnic communities, our ageing population, et cetera. So there were some very large, important questions there.

I welcome what the Minister said about providing a firm evidence base for government. We have, after all, been through a period in which a number of people, including at least one Prime Minister, were not entirely sure that evidence mattered, and one rather senior Minister decried government by experts as something we should get away from. I am very glad that the with the current Government we are getting back towards a concern with evidence-based policy-making.

I too was puzzled by the list of inclusions and exclusions. We would welcome a letter at some point to explain what that might be about, without delaying where we are now much further. From these Benches, we welcome the greater use of statistics. We welcome the wider publication of statistics, and we recognise that effective government for all British citizens precisely does depend on accurate information on what is happening, and on where there are problems which need to be identified. Good governance depends on that.

Vetting Social Media Accounts

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Wednesday 21st June 2023 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

To ask His Majesty’s Government what policies they have in place for vetting the social media accounts of speakers invited to address Civil Service events, and cancelling invitations where past postings are critical of His Majesty’s Government; and what assessment they have made of the compatibility of any such policies with their commitment to free speech.

[The Minister of State, Cabinet Office (Baroness Neville-Rolfe) (Con)]

My Lords, the Government are not in the business of limiting free speech. It is the Conservative Party that has consistently defended free speech against attacks from across the political divide. The only guidance we have produced is for cross-departmental diversity networks, to ensure that they conduct checks on external speakers before inviting them to participate in Civil Service events. The guidance helps to maintain impartiality, given that these events take place in Civil Service workplaces and workspaces. For anything beyond that, it is for departments to set their own approach.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, I find that a little difficult to accept, because we have slowly begun to hear about who has been cancelled. A chemical weapons expert was cancelled from a chemical weapons conference because of some social media tweets he made two or three years before on other aspects of government domestic policy. If we are going to cancel experts from expert conferences—experts on medical research, digital research or whatever—the Government are going to lose a lot, and not just freedom of speech. The Minister in the Cabinet Office said in the Commons that it is concerned only with

“speakers linked to abhorrent organisations”.—[Official Report, Commons, 11/5/23; col. 421.]

The chemical weapons expert, whom I have met, is an active Liberal Democrat and an Anglican: I do not know whether the Government regard those as abhorrent organisations. Does the Minister accept that it may now be time to have a free-speech champion in Whitehall along the lines the Government insist on having for universities?

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

I like to think that we are free speech champions. Unfortunately, the matter the noble Lord raises is now the subject of ongoing legal correspondence, which means it would be inappropriate for me to comment at this stage.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

We certainly are not. I think the noble Lord does not understand what we are trying to do. In the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act, the Prime Minister recently stressed the importance of freedom of speech, and we have taken action through it in universities because challenge, debate and free speech are a vital part of British life and the British constitution.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, I am confused by all the references to the diversity network. My understanding from at least two of those who have been cancelled in this way was that they were invited, in their capacity as experts, to expert conferences. The chemical weapons expert was invited to speak again to a Ministry of Defence-led conference on chemical weapons at which, on the previous occasion, he had spoken alongside a Chinese Communist official who was also a chemical weapons expert. Importantly, the relevance of their views on domestic politics to their expertise is low and should not be a reason for cancelling them. If we are going to go down that road, the Government will be denying themselves a great deal of expertise which is valuable for policy development. Is that the direction in which we may be going?

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

Of course we need expertise in policy development—I am as keen on that as the noble Lord—but the guidance was developed by the Government People Group for the specific use of the cross-government diversity networks. I cannot comment further for the reasons I outlined at the beginning of the debate, although I believe the Ministry of Defence is looking into the circumstances of one of the cases the noble Lord mentioned, and I will keep him updated when I am able to do so.

Covid-19 Inquiry

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Thursday 8th June 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

My noble friend speaks powerfully, as always. However, this is a matter for the inquiry. We have set up this wide-ranging inquiry so that these points can be looked at. It is right that different witnesses are recounting their experiences and that the inquiry is able to call upon the sorts of findings that my noble friend has mentioned.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, does the Minister recall an earlier government-appointed judicial inquiry in which the Government chose what material to release to the judge rather than allowing the judge, under the rule of law, to choose for himself or herself? Also, does the Government’s recourse to judicial review mean that they have now reversed their previous attitude to limiting the judicial review and that therefore we can expect not to see ouster clauses in any future Bills under this Government?

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

Although this is a much wider inquiry even than other previous important inquiries, the process that has been followed by the Cabinet Office and across Whitehall is very similar in terms of providing information to the chair. There is a judicial review because of a specific technical point raised by the Section 21 notice that has been issued. In terms of judicial review, the noble Lord is right that judicial review must be used with circumspection. However, there is an important technical point here about whether it is right to provide unambiguously irrelevant material to the inquiry which is the subject of the review.

Covid-19 Inquiry: Judicial Review

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Tuesday 6th June 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

The Government set up the inquiry for exactly the sorts of reasons that the noble Baroness outlined. These questions need to be answered. As I said, the Government are making available all relevant information—anything related to Covid or decisions about it is being made available. The judicial review is on a narrow technical point about unambiguously irrelevant items, and I assure the noble Baroness that the Government seek to ensure that the inquiry and its chair have all the information and access to witnesses that they need, to ensure that the very important questions that the chair is asking are answered. That is why we are having an inquiry. Of course, we want it to get on, and we look forward to learning the lessons as soon as possible.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, does the Minister recognise that this is a particular example of the confusions and contradictions into which the Government have now slipped, in terms of our constitutional conventions and of maintaining public confidence in constitutional government? After all, we are being asked to accept that what the Cabinet Office decides is or is not relevant to the inquiry should be accepted, rather than what a judge who is heading the inquiry considers.

According to recent public surveys, public trust in government is now lower than it has been in my lifetime; this is not a decision that would help to restore public trust. I spent the last 24 hours leading a very interesting new Constitution Unit publication on the executive prerogative. This is, after all, an issue of executive dominance, or acceptance that the rule of law is dominant. We have had a number of arguments in this House over the last two years about executive dominance versus parliamentary scrutiny. We have also had a parallel argument about the rule of law, the role of the courts and the influence of lefty lawyers—as is so often said in the right-wing media—and of the damage that excessive judicial review was doing to decent executive government. Now, we have the Government reversing and wanting to use judicial review, which they have been arguing about limiting for a good time, so that they can defend themselves against their own inquiry.

Does the Minister not agree that, after we come out of this, this Government or the next Government need to have a very thorough examination of the relationship between our courts, the rule of law and the Executive, and between the Executive and Parliament, to determine how they will restore wider public confidence in the balance between the institutions which hold our Government together?

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

I am grateful to the noble Lord for his thoughtful comments. Issues about the Executive and Parliament are ones that we debate. We have set up a very broad inquiry to learn the lessons and do the right things for the future. The Cabinet Office and other departments—because other departments are also party to the inquiry—have followed procedures that have worked well on a series of other inquiries. What we have found here is that there has been an issue about some unambiguously irrelevant information. That is not going to stop us making available all relevant material in relation to Covid. I think that people have just mistaken our intentions, but I am sure that it will be quickly resolved—obviously, that is my hope.

Ministerial Code: Investigation of Potential Breach

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Thursday 25th May 2023 Lords Chamber

[The Minister of State, Cabinet Office (Baroness Neville-Rolfe) (Con)]

My Lords, the Ministerial Code sets out the standards of conduct expected of Ministers and how they discharge their duties. As the noble Baroness said, the Prime Minister is the ultimate judge of the standards of behaviour expected of a Minister and the appropriate consequences of a breach of those standards. That is indeed why he decides, as she has explained, but in light of advice from the independent adviser. The Prime Minister moved quickly to appoint an independent adviser, Sir Laurence Magnus, on whose advice he relies.

The noble Baroness asked why this system is not set up independently. This subject has been looked at by committees. Indeed, last year, as we discussed before, we did make some changes to the independent adviser’s powers and gave him more support. We believe that having an independent system would be a problem. An independent commission or system would amass considerable unelected power over the workings of government in somebody who does not have an elected mandate, without the checks and balances and accountabilities of elected politicians. We are here to debate, in a democratic way, circumstances that have gone on including, of course, the Home Secretary and the issue of the speed awareness course, which was the subject of this Question earlier in the week.

The criteria for investigating a breach, of course, depend on the circumstances. As the noble Baroness will know, the Ministerial Code is very wide ranging. It is the Prime Minister’s code, so he is rightly the decision-maker. The criteria for a particular investigation will depend on the issue being investigated.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, this is a small issue concerning a larger problem, which is the unconstrained and unaccountable prerogative powers of the Prime Minister and the deterioration of relations between the Civil Service and Ministers, which has come up again and again in recent years. I am puzzled and disappointed by the Minister’s reply to the Leader of the Opposition. The Answer in the Commons made a very strong point of saying, “This is the Prime Minister’s code and the Prime Minister is, in effect, the judge and jury of everything that happens”.

Toward the end of the last Labour Government, there were some rather good committee reports in the Commons on whether we now needed to limit the Prime Minister’s prerogative powers. I wonder whether, if the Conservatives found themselves in opposition again, they would not perhaps wish to revive that debate. I would hope that a Labour Government—or another Government of some sort—would begin to address that problem. If the independent adviser is really independent, why does he not have the ability to start his own investigations and then present them to the Prime Minister?

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

I will not speculate on what might happen under a different Government. I remind the noble Lord that there have been a number of reports on ethics and integrity, including from Nigel Boardman and the Committee on Standards in Public Life, and, as I said recently, we will lay our responses in Parliament in due course. However, I draw the House’s attention again to Sir Laurence Magnus, who has been appointed and has set off in a robust way. His report, which I promised would come out in May, is due to be published today—it may already have been or will be any minute.

I also draw attention to the fact that we strengthened the remit of the independent adviser in 2022. Slightly contrary to what the noble Lord was saying, the adviser now has the ability to initiate an investigation under the Ministerial Code after consulting with the Prime Minister, and the normal expectation is that the Prime Minister would agree to such an investigation. We have also updated the code to include more specific references to the duty on Ministers to provide the independent adviser with information reasonably necessary for carrying out the role. As I said before, we have also strengthened the arrangements for the office of the independent adviser, providing him with a dedicated secretariat of civil servants. However, I come back to the point I made before to the noble Baroness: this must be elective—it has to be democratic. That is why the Prime Minister decides on these matters.

List of Ministers’ Interests and Ministerial Code

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Tuesday 25th April 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

The Government’s work on reforms to strengthen ethics and integrity in central government is now nearing conclusion and we hope to publish our response soon. There have been a number of reports, including Upholding Standards in Public Life, the recommendations of Sir Nigel Boardman’s report on supply chain finance, and PACAC’s fourth report, so we can look forward to a response.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, we welcome the belated publication of the latest version of ministerial interests. There is a related document which we are also impatiently awaiting, which is the Cabinet Manual. The Government have promised that they will publish it within the foreseeable future, and I understand that there is already a draft in Whitehall. Can the Minister give us any indication of when that Cabinet Manual draft will be complete and will be published?

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

Work is in progress and it will be published in due course.