Ministerial Gifts and Hospitality

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Wednesday 16th October 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)]

I am almost speechless. As I have said, the important thing is transparency. The only reason why there is information in the public domain about any gifts or donations is transparency. I am surprised that the noble Baroness did not comment on the changes being brought forward by the Government. It seems to be a terrible anomaly that under the last Government, Ministers who received hospitality gifts would have a quarter in which to declare them as ministerial hospitality gifts with no value, yet a Member of Parliament sitting next to them would declare them in a month, along with the actual value. That has to be changed.

I get why cultural events like orchestras, cricket, football and other sporting events are so popular, and why that is important. However, I struggle to understand why Ministers should not have declared these in the same way MPs did. They did not under the noble Baroness’s Government; they will under ours.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, as well as looking at gifts more strictly, should the Government not also be looking at subsidies for politicians? We read that Boris Johnson is receiving £4 million for the publication of his brief memoirs. Does this suggest that the Daily Mail and others are overpaying in order to support his political activities and lifestyle? We also read that GB News is paying Nigel Farage MP £1 million for a part-time job as a presenter, and six-figure sums to several others, like Jacob Rees-Mogg. GB News announced a loss of £30 million last year. If these are effectively subsidies for political activities, should they not also be investigated and reported transparently?

[Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)]

My Lords, any gifts, earnings, et cetera to Members of Parliament have to be declared in full. Of course, not all those whom the noble Lord mentioned are still Members of Parliament. I think all organisations would want to make a judgment on whether or not they were getting value for money.

Lords Spiritual (Women) Act 2015 (Extension) Bill [HL]

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 10th September 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, the Church of England moves slowly, but not as slowly as the reform of the House of Lords.

I grew up in the heart of the Church of England, as a chorister at Westminster Abbey, when it was very much a male Church. I then found myself taking my children to a local church with a very traditional vicar who did not believe that women should be allowed in the chancel during a service—something that shook my daughter to the point where she has not gone to church since. Happily, we have slowly moved forward. We have also moved forward on the Church working with other Churches and other faiths.

When I sang in the Coronation as a small boy, the cardinal archbishop who had been invited to attend the service in the abbey refused to give his recognition to what was going on in this Protestant ceremony by coming inside the building and sat in a gallery outside. At the 50th anniversary service, his successor for cardinal archbishop read the first lesson, with representatives of other churches sitting behind him in the chancel and representatives of Britain’s other faiths sitting in the lantern. I have attended services in the abbey in which there have been readings from the Koran by an imam, and another in which the choir for a Sunday evening service was provided by the Belsize Square Synagogue.

We have managed to move forward in a number of ways. One of the most difficult things for the abbey, which I have been involved in through conversations over many years, has now at last been resolved, and we have a girls’ choir, the St Margaret’s Choristers. One of the young women who sings in it is the daughter of a senior member of the Lords staff. I have heard them once and look forward to hearing them again.

I am an antidisestablishmentarian, unusually for my Benches. I believe, as Tom Holland’s recent book suggests, that a Christian culture and our national identity are deeply intertwined, and that the Church of England, in all its messy uncertainty, represents the sort of consensus that we need. The noble Lord, Lord Murphy, called himself a Christian socialist. I call myself a liberal Christian. Doubting Thomas is my patron saint, and the Church of England in that sense represents doubting Thomas’s view of Christianity —that we should not be too sure that we know what is right and what is wrong, and that we should always be questioning everything. That is a liberal faith.

I have happily watched the progress of women in the Church of England. The quality of the women priests we now have is remarkably good. It has strengthened the Church, which continues to do very valuable local work—I see it in Yorkshire, as well as in London—and to hold the community together.

When radical reform finally reaches this House—perhaps when my grandson is middle-aged—I have no doubt that we shall have to reconsider the role of the Bishops. I note that we already have some representation of other Churches and faiths in the House. I remind the House that my very distant cousin, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace of Tankerness, was Moderator of the Church of Scotland last year. We had the Chief Rabbi on our Cross Benches, and we have had those who speak for the Sikh faith as well. That is also, perhaps, in a reformed House, part of what would then be the appointed element, in what I would hope will be a predominantly elected House. I hope that we eventually move that far, but I fear that we will move towards reform only by a series of shuffles, rather than by radical reform. Having said that, I welcome this small shuffle and hope that the Bill will pass easily.

House of Lords: Composition

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Thursday 5th September 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)]

I have always admired the noble Lord’s ingenuity, and never more so than today. It is a bit of a reach to say that a Statement should have been made to this House first. This was first debated around the hereditary Peers by-elections, it was debated following the Labour Party’s manifesto commitment, and I have had numerous conversations since the election and will continue to do so. A Bill has been introduced in the other place today; it will come to your Lordships’ House and we will have our discussions in the normal way. The noble Lord says that there was agreement previously. It was because there was no agreement during the passage of that Bill that further discussions took place and temporary arrangements were made on a transitional basis to exempt some hereditary Peers from the legislation. This will complete that process. I remind the noble Lord that my comment to the press about the Bill’s introduction—made in the normal way—started by recognising the valuable contributions that many hereditary Peers have made to Parliament.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, I remind the House that my party is committed to further reform of this House, including the introduction of an elected element, which we first declared as party policy in 1911. I also remind the House that, during the last Parliament, a number of Conservatives—who know very well who they are—spent a great deal of time complaining that the Liberal Democrats were overrepresented in this House because of our small numbers in the Commons. It is now quite clear that one of our most immediate problems is the overrepresentation of Conservatives compared to their small numbers in the Commons. Can the Leader of the House tell us whether there have been any discussions so far about a voluntary reduction in the number of Conservatives in this House to reflect the new situation since the election?

[Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)]

I have had no approaches from the party opposite about its numbers. On the noble Lord’s point about wider Lords reform, for the last 25 years one of the arguments has been that nothing should be done until everything can be done—but no one agrees on what “everything” is. A piecemeal approach is by far the better way. The party opposite complains about Lords reform, but in the years that it was in government the only proposal it came forward with was to move the House of Lords to York.

Civil Service: Recruitment

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Wednesday 4th September 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)]

My Lords, I am confident that the rules in place mean that no Government have made dodgy appointments to the Civil Service—because the rules are very clear on this. On the first part of my noble friend’s question—why the current review is being carried out only from 1 July—apparently there is a regular, ongoing, routine investigation and audit by the commission, but this is exceptional and in addition to that. Apparently, the commissioner wrote to heads of department to say that it was in view of the “recent interest in appointments by exception”—but all appointments are part of a regular audit process.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, does the Minister agree with the statements that the noble Lord, Lord Maude, and the noble Baroness, Lady Finn, made on a number of occasions during the coalition Government that the Civil Service benefits from the recruitment of outside experts to senior roles? I declare an interest: I happen to have worked with one of the two people recently recruited for a short period of time in Labour Together and I never had any impression when working with her of any partisanship—she was extremely professional. Does she further agree with what Henry Newman, formerly a Conservative special adviser, wrote in TheWhitehallProject two weeks ago:

“There is nothing inherently wrong with appointing either individual, but it should have been done with transparency and through clear procedures”?

[Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)]

My Lords, there are clear procedures in place. The department has to be satisfied when bringing in external expertise at all levels of the Civil Service. We are talking about 9,000 out of 80,000, and these are not just senior appointments. We might need to bring in expertise for short-term reasons or for specialist knowledge. It might be because of the nature of the appointments; if they are short term, it might not be appropriate to have a long recruitment process. It is absolutely right that an appointment has to be signed off by the department, which must be satisfied that it is justified, relevant and complies with the Civil Service Code. I think it was the noble Lord, Lord Maude, who introduced those appointments to the Civil Service around 2010.

House of Lords: Nominations for Appointment

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Tuesday 30th July 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)]

My Lords, we have heard from the response from across the House how seriously those who are here in your Lordships’ House take their responsibilities. It is an honour to be appointed a Peer, and that brings with it responsibilities to the work that we do. I listened to the noble Lord’s comments on the King’s Speech about this, and I will look at and consider the issue. The House is large, and I think we have to ensure that we focus on the active contributions. Going forward, we will look at colleagues’ participation and the range of participation that Members are involved in—from voting in the Lobbies to taking part in committees to engaging in debates. I will take his views away and will take soundings from other colleagues across the House.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, does the Minister recognise that the prerogative power of the Prime Minister to appoint to this House remains absolute, as we saw under Boris Johnson? As a prerogative power remaining from the Middle Ages, the Prime Minister could announce that from now on the Prime Minister would not make appointments to this House without consultations with ACOBA and various bodies. Is that part of what is under consideration? Is there not a consensus now that it may be time for us to consider separating the honour of a peerage from the duty to attend the upper House?

[Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)]

My Lords, that is exactly the same point made by the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, about having two separate categories of peerage. I come back to the point that for all noble Lords it is an honour to be appointed to your Lordships’ House, but that brings with it responsibilities. I know noble Lords from across the House are very disappointed if colleagues are appointed and we do not see them, so I will take that back. Those who are appointed to this House at present do have a responsibility. I do not mean that everybody has to be here all day every day and be a full-time Peer, but we do have expectations that Members will be committed to the work of this House and play a part in it.

Government Standards

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Thursday 25th July 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)]

My noble friend has put a number of those questions to me over the years, given her interests and experience on this subject. She is right: public confidence can be improved by our being open and transparent about the decisions being taken. I can tell her that there are systems in place to ensure transparency around many of the issues that she mentions, but there is often a concern that they are not working as well as they could. As a first step, the Government have to ensure that they work better, including information being published on time but in a way that is easy to access and easy to understand. The ethics and integrity commission could look at this issue.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, practice matters as well as principles and regulations here. In terms of ministerial practice, will the new Government try their best to ensure that Ministers stay in office for at least two years each, rather than using constant ministerial reshuffles as a matter of party management? Can we also ensure that Ministers show us that government is not constant campaigning? There should be occasional weeks when neither the Prime Minister nor any other Ministers are shown in the press in fluorescent jackets running around offices rather than providing good government for the country?

[Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)]

My Lords, the entire Front Bench endorses the noble Lord’s comment and wants to stay in office. One problem of publishing information on a quarterly basis is that, in the last few years, by the time we got to the end of a quarter the Minister had gone and someone else was in place. There is a serious issue about continuity in office. As for fluorescent jackets, with a Government who are committed to infrastructure improvements in this country we may see some fluorescent jackets being worn, but the noble Lord makes an important point. Governance is a serious issue. We have seen that, because of election campaigning, political decisions that would be difficult for any Government, such as the issue of prisons that we have had to consider, have been delayed when they should have been taken in the interests of the country. I give the noble Lord a categorical assurance that we will act in the interests of the country, will not put off decisions because they are difficult but will take them when we have to, and will report back to your Lordships’ House.

House Of Lords: Appointments System

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Wednesday 19th July 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord True (Con)]

I very often agree with the noble Baroness, except I have never tweeted in my life, and I recommend her not to. The policy of the Green Party is to replace the system of appointment—which has given us all the excellent noble Lords here on these Benches in their parties—with a PR-democratically elected Chamber. Frankly, that would simply replace an accountable appointments system, where Prime Ministers are openly responsible for who they appoint, with an unaccountable appointments system of lists drawn up by secretive party secretariats.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords—

[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

My Lords—

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

My Lords, we have lots of time. Let us hear from the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, then we very much look forward to hearing from the noble Lord, Lord Grocott.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, when the last reform of the House took place between 1997 and 1999, the then Government stated clearly that, ad interim, it was the Government’s policy, agreed with the Conservative Opposition and the Leader of the Conservative Opposition in the Lords, that no party should have a disproportionate number of Peers in the Lords.

[Noble Lords]

Oh!

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

I remind Conservative Peers that on a current poll basis the Conservatives have exactly twice the poll percentage of public support that we do, so we are not overrepresented.

Particularly under Boris Johnson, the Conservatives have broken that agreement. Do the Government not accept that we are now in a position where any change of government would have to be accompanied either by the voluntary resignation of a substantial number of Conservative Peers or the appointment of a large number of new governmental Peers, which would be bad for the size of the House?

[Lord True (Con)]

My Lords, I think the question of “disproportionate” was answered by Members of your Lordships’ House rather than me, so I will not add to the pain of those Benches. I think that there needs to be—and I have advocated this publicly in the House and privately—better representation of His Majesty’s Opposition in your Lordships’ House. I do not think it is generally acceptable that His Majesty’s Opposition should have fewer representatives in this House than the Cross Benches. I recognise that, and for all the criticism of the previous Prime Minister, Mr Johnson, he approved the appointment of Labour Peers. I hope that will go forward.

Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Consideration of Commons amendments
Tuesday 21st March 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Lawlor (Con)]

My Lords, I apologise that I did not speak in the earlier debates on this matter because, as I recall, I had not made my maiden speech. I simply add my voice to those who regret my noble friend Lord Willetts’s Motion A1, which I do not support because, as other noble Lords pointed out, it waters down the small protection that existed with the original Clause 4 for academics in many institutions.

An institution has great power: it has powers of office, of man and woman power, of employment and of funds. The original Clause 4 gave a simple and cheaper way for an individual academic who was suffering because his or her freedom of speech was under threat. I assure noble Lords that it is under threat in many universities, and especially the one I know best: my own university, Cambridge. Hardly a day goes by without threat after threat reaching the newspapers of academic freedom being impinged on. I draw noble Lords’ attention to Arif Ahmed’s publications and submissions to an earlier Committee on the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill. The problem has not stopped.

For those reasons, I am worried about Motion A1 going through. It will make life much more expensive for individual academics, who often plough a lonely furrow against top-heavy and powerful institutions. I would like to restore the original Clause 4, which gives a straightforward and cheaper alternative to someone taking action against an institution. I do not believe that there will be vexatious causes that involve universities or institutions in long and litigious claims that cost money and time, because existing law covers these matters in many respects. Cheaper claims can be dealt with under protocols before action or by agreement.

So Clause 4 is necessary not only for free speech but for free thought. It is not just about student union bodies, although they should observe this; it is about how academics pursue their subjects and whether their reading lists and courses are in line with official thinking—universities have a powerful officialdom. For those reasons, I remind my noble friend Lord Willetts of his having to be smuggled into the University of Cambridge not many years ago. I do not believe that my noble friend’s amendment would prevent that happening again. I thank noble Lords for their attention.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, we have demonstrated that there remains a range of opinion about the nature and size of the problem, and the appropriate response to it. Therefore, a compromise amendment is perhaps the best point for us to end up at. Some of us feel that this is an unnecessary intervention into the autonomous institutions that are our universities, and conservatives are supposed to believe in the autonomy of institutions and in not promoting undue state interference. I remind those on the Conservative Benches that, if you are in favour of a smaller state and deregulation, particularly of banks and companies, you should be careful about how much you are in favour of detailed or excessive regulation of autonomous bodies like universities.

After all, our universities are very highly rated in global terms; they are an asset to this country. Boris Johnson, when he was Prime Minister, used to talk about them as one of the major planks of our soft power in the world. We need to be very careful that we do not damage them.

Listening to the noble Baroness, Lady Lawlor, I was thinking of my time as an undergraduate at the University of Cambridge, and the behaviour then was, in some ways, not entirely different from the way it is now. I recall the occasion when my wife and a number of other Oxford students prevented an ambassador from speaking at an Oxford student occasion, and of my first year as a university teacher at the University of Manchester, when a number of students blocked the Secretary of State for Education from speaking at a university event. These things are not entirely new.

As the Minister suggested, we have of course seen a number of cultural changes. While the cultural changes mean that universities have become more sensitive to student opinion because student funding has changed, another change is that social media has widened the debate about what is acceptable. It has imposed, from different directions, the new cancel culture among the young, which we did not have in my generation and in most of the time that Members of this House were at university. We all have to face that problem—it is not solely a university problem—and we have to answer it at the levels of political leadership and of society. I very much hope that, when the Bill returns to the Commons, the decision on this will not be reversed.

When we talk about culture, I am concerned about those who talk about a culture war. I have read two op-eds in the Sunday Telegraph in the last month which have suggested that the pursuit of a culture war is the way for the Conservatives to win the next election, and that they should imitate the example of Governor DeSantis of Florida, who is pursuing, so the articles argued, a successful culture war against wokeism, cultural Marxism and the universities of his state. I know that there are some on the right wing of the Conservative Party who would like us to go down that route, but it would be a very dangerous route. We do not want this country to become as divided a society as the United States has become, in which a governor educated at Yale and Harvard now says that he was exposed to communist ideas as an undergraduate at Yale—I suspect that that is a slight exaggeration—and who thinks that the way to ensure his path to a presidential nomination is by dividing the country between the educated and those who do not have higher education. We do not need that in this country, and it would be extremely dangerous for ring-wing Conservatives to try to take that direction.

On a different level, I find the argument that we should pass Bills so that we send a signal a rather worrisome idea; I think that we should pass Bills so that they actually do something, that they enforce something and that they change the way in which we behave. Sending signals is something which political speeches should do—not Acts of Parliament.

I ask the Minister about the time of the implementation of the future Act, now that the Bill has been delayed somewhat; it will clearly be delayed again by going back to the Commons. I hope that he can confirm that there will be no attempt to implement the Act in full by the beginning of this coming university year, because it will take universities some time to consider it. He may not be able to give me an answer at the moment, but that is an important fact that we now need to have addressed.

I hope that the Minister also takes note of some of the criticisms which the Committee on Standards in Public Life and others have made about the appropriateness of appointing committees. We heard the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, discuss regulatory capture, but we have also heard those who oversee public appointments committees talking about the inappropriateness of people who know very little about the subject for which a person is being appointed deciding on the nature of the appointment. There is a balance—which I hope the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, will accept—between regulatory capture and political appointments being made for political reasons, which is important when one is considering such a major asset to this country as our universities.

I welcome the Government’s acceptance of this amendment. I very much hope that the Common Sense Group and others on the right wing of the Conservative Party will not attempt to take it back when it comes to the Commons and that the Government will re-establish a relationship with our universities, both staff and students. The relationship between free speech for students and free speech for staff has, on occasions, been muddled in all our debates on this Bill. I hope, therefore, that this Bill as now amended will become law.

--- Later in debate ---

[Earl Howe (Con)]

My Lords, there is little more for me to say, other than to thank noble Lords for their contributions to this debate and for the way in which, amid many doubts and hesitations, Members of the House have been willing to look for compromise and common ground on what I know has proved a difficult set of issues.

I thank in particular the noble Lord, Lord Grabiner, especially for his positive comments and remarks on the role of the regulator, as well as my noble friend Lord Lucas, the noble Lord, Lord Triesman, and, for his words about the need for us all to look for consensus, the noble Lord, Lord Collins.

I simply say to the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, that I too instinctively fight shy of the suggestion that Governments should unduly interfere with the workings of our universities. However, some of his remarks suggested to me that he does not accept that there is a serious problem to be addressed. If that is his view, I believe that he is in a minority in this House.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

I think we have a large social problem, which has been partly raised by social media, in the intolerance of the young as a whole and cancel culture. It stretches across our society and we have to deal with it, but it is not purely a problem for universities, nor is it thoroughly based in universities—and it certainly does not result from indoctrination by left-wing staff.

[Earl Howe (Con)]

I am grateful to the noble Lord, but I think we all agree that universities, par excellence, are places that should be safe spaces for freedom of speech, as my noble friend Lord Willetts said, whatever may happen outside the confines of the campus.

As to the timing of the coming into force of the Bill, I can tell the noble Lord that it will not be before the start of the next academic year. The Government need to consult on the regulations and indeed draft them, which will take a little time.

I simply cannot agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, that my noble friend Lord Willetts’s amendments represent a fudge—in other words, a watering down of the tort or a “soft tort”, as my noble friend Lord Moylan put it. With respect to my noble friend, I utterly disagree with him that the amendments send a signal, or any semblance of a signal, to the other place or the world that the Government are not serious about protecting freedom of speech in our universities. The idea of watering down, I suggest, is more theoretical than real.

As I said earlier, the vast majority of complaints will be successfully handled and dealt with without any need to go to court. However, where a complainant believes that that has not happened, they will still have the option of going to court. In other words, the amendments from my noble friend Lord Willetts underscore what we think will happen anyway.

I hope that Members of another place will come round to that view and that both Houses of Parliament will reach the endpoint that Ministers and the Government have felt it their duty to try to achieve, which is consensus.

Democracy Denied (DPRRC Report)

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Thursday 12th January 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, this is an extremely important debate and, as the Government by Diktat report says, we are talking about

“the principles of parliamentary democracy, namely parliamentary sovereignty, the rule of law and the accountability of government to Parliament”.

The report says:

“In recent years, the balance of power between Parliament and government has shifted significantly towards the government, a trend that has been accentuated by Brexit and the pandemic.”


I recall the noble Lord, Lord True, in his previous position, declaring that Boris Johnson was accountable as Prime Minister to the British people rather than to Parliament, as ratified by both the 2019 election and the Brexit referendum—popular democracy against the alleged elitism of parliamentary democracy. I hope that, now we are on our second Conservative Prime Minister who has not been immediately ratified by the British people, the Leader of the House, with his customary flexibility, will now return to arguing that it is parliamentary democracy that supports a Prime Minister and a Government, rather than popular democracy as such.

I am worried about the extent to which a number of current Ministers have preferred a sort of permanent campaign to recognising that the hard business of government is worrying about detail and difficult choices, and that the devil is very often in the detail. We have talked about the problem of skeleton Bills. The DPRRC report says

“the principal aspects of policy should be on the face of a bill and only its detailed implementation left to delegated legislation”.

Some of us have been dealing with the Procurement Bill in recent weeks. The beginning of Part 2 is headed “Principles and Objectives”, and it states:

“A Minister of the Crown may publish a statement setting out the Government’s strategic priorities in relation to procurement … Before publishing the national procurement policy statement, a Minister of the Crown must … carry out such consultation as the Minister considers appropriate”.


That is as good a definition of a skeleton Bill as one could find.

The National Security Bill, with which we are currently dealing in Committee, has an entire part—Part 3—introduced in Committee in the Commons without pre-legislative scrutiny or very much detail at all on how it is to be implemented. The Minister in last night’s debate assured me that one needs to implement the possibility of guarding against threats to Britain’s national interest as strongly as against the Netherlands, China, Iran and Russia. I think it requires a little further scrutiny than it has so far had. We have heard from others already about what we expect with the Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill.

I am concerned, as I think many of us are, about the declining quality of legislation coming into this House. The proper legislative process should start where necessary, with complicated Bills, with pre-legislative scrutiny, a Green Paper, consultation with stakeholders and early publication of draft secondary legislation and guidance. That has not happened with too many Bills currently before the House. There should then be post-passage scrutiny of secondary legislation, carefully undertaken as it goes through—and, if necessary, that draft secondary legislation should be sent back. We have to grapple with that one.

The likelihood of a change of Government in less than two years’ time should surely concentrate the Government’s attention on proper parliamentary government and the need for effective opposition in challenging Government as they go forward. Perhaps we can expect again cries of electoral dictatorship from the Conservatives as soon as they are in opposition. It is the role of this House to work to ensure that legislation is workable and easy to understand. I was struck in Committee last night by the ranks on the Cross Benches who knew a great deal more about national security and the intelligence services saying they did not understand parts of the legislation as currently framed. Legislation has to be clear and, as it goes through, command public consent, sufficient consent to last beyond the next change of Government. That is the role of this House as a revising Chamber, and that is what we should defend.

Cabinet Manual: Revision (Constitution Committee Report)

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Friday 16th December 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, I, too, start by welcoming the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy, back. It is tremendous to see him again. We have missed him greatly. I gather he was compared to Bagehot, not Dicey. I have also always doubted the value of Dicey as a constitutional expert since I first read his views on Irish home rule. They seemed to bias his entire approach to sovereignty, the rule of law and almost everything else. Unfortunately, he still takes rather too much credit for the values which some address to the idea of unified sovereignty.

I recall being one of those who in 1996 invited the then Peter Hennessy to give a lecture on how to form a coalition Government, just in case we needed to have some obiter dicta when it came to the 1997 election. Indeed, I looked in the Cabinet Manual again to see what it says about government formation because I note that the report says:

“it is in the processes of elections and the formation of government that the Cabinet Manual most often comes out and is used.”

That probably adds to the argument for wanting to update it in the coming period.

We may or may not be about to face an election that will not lead to an overall majority, but I think we are now clear that coalition does not lead to chaos and single-party government does not necessarily lead to stable government. We have had the chaos of single-party government over the course of the past year, and to move, perhaps, back to a coalition would at least mean that formal meetings would have to take place between both sides. We shall see.

There were a number of things that were not right in the coalition. Indeed, I remember an occasion when the Secretary of State of the department to which I was attached changed, and the new Conservative Secretary of State, who obviously had not quite understood what a coalition meant, said that he did not need to have ministerial meetings inside the department more than once every six weeks just before Commons Questions and appeared not to be at all fazed when I pointed out that I was there in the department partly to make sure that arguments between the two parties did not escalate to the quad. So, there were problems with the coalition, but it does suggest that stable government is one of the things that it produced.

I have just read the excellent review of Sebastian Payne’s latest book, on the rise and fall of Boris Johnson, in the House magazine, by my good friend, Keith Simpson, a stolid Conservative MP. He remarks on how shocked he was by the degree of chaos that existed in No. 10 and, in the heart of the chaos and the atmosphere, the belief that conventional rules did not apply to him. I have on my study table The Bonfire of the Decencies to read over Christmas, and I have no doubt that that will have more to say on the same subject.

We may now hope that, with the Sunak Government, the chaos will subside and we will perhaps return to the constitutional government which, in his accession oath, the King swore to uphold. One of the things that pained me over the past 18 months was to have to witness the noble Lord, Lord True, defending some of the chaotic and convention-bucking behaviour of the Government, which I suppose he felt he had to do. I also welcome him back to constitutional conservativism, and I am sure that he will feel much more comfortable in that position.

The UK is a parliamentary democracy, as the Cabinet Manual sets out. It is not a populist democracy in which the Prime Minister owes his accountability only to the people—whoever they may be. Government is a complex process in which dialogue with other parties and scrutiny by both Houses of Parliament, and by others, is a necessary part. That is part of the complexity in which we live. We know the damage that the populist surge has done to our convention-based parliamentary democracy, and the Cabinet Manual, as well as the Ministerial Code and the associated codes, are part of what has begun to set out those conventions rather more clearly than they were.

Although the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, has now gone, I cannot resist saying that I could not find anywhere in the Cabinet Manual a conventional principle that was quoted at me by the Cabinet Office some weeks ago as a reason why I could not put down an amendment—the principle of the indivisibility of the Crown. It was not a convention I had heard of before. The noble Lord, Lord Lisvane, assured me that it existed in the 17th century, but I am not sure that it needs to be referred to any longer now.

There is a range of things which we need to reassert as regards conventional behaviour, and we need to make sure that they are agreed among the parties. As the report says, it is important that this, as an operating manual,

“has cross-party recognition and political legitimacy.”

So consultation, as the Cabinet Manual is revised, is also an important point.

We recognise that, if there is a change of Government, in no time at all we shall have the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, leaping to his feet to tell us that they are behaving unconstitutionally, as he used to do. But he will need to be able to quote sources in order to be able to say that they are behaving unconstitutionally. The Cabinet Manual is, for that purpose, extremely important.

The noble Lord, Lord Howarth, mentioned many of the things that have gone wrong: the relations between Ministers and civil servants, which are worse than I can ever remember since I started my career; bullying and harassment, and low morale in the Civil Service; and breaches of conventions and codes in public appointments. That all now needs to be addressed. The noble Lord, Lord True, shakes his head but I hope he agrees that we need to make sure that the standards are maintained, even if he wishes to insist—I understand why he might wish to try to do so—that these standards have not been breached as badly as we all consider them to have been.

There seem to be some incremental changes which we could pursue. Training for Ministers is desirable. The Institute for Government is developing some, and training for the Opposition and before an election is clearly an important part of that. A reduction in ministerial churn is vitally important. One of the things that is most unfortunate about the culture of government is that ministerial reshuffles have now become an aspect of party management, so that many Ministers are not in office for more than about nine months at a time, when we all know it takes 18 months to two years to master a subject when you are in office. Let us hope that ministerial churn will now be resisted.

I very much appreciate the suggestion of a prime ministerial oath, and I hope that that will be pursued further. A new Parliament will need to look again at the whole concept of the prerogative and how far prerogative power now extends. There were a number of Commons Select Committee reports on that in the late 2008-09 period, and it is time for us to go back to that.

I hope that noble Lords will be looking at the Private Member’s Bill in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, on public service, ethics and integrity. It is unfortunately rather low down the list of Private Members’ Bills at the moment, but it sets out a process whereby we would make the independent adviser to the Prime Minister, the House of Lords Appointments Commission and the Advisory Committee on Business Appointments more statutory and firm in their basis. Those are incremental changes that we could make, but let us start with a clear commitment that the Cabinet Manual will be revised before the end of 2024, that there will be adequate consultation with committees in both Houses and with the Opposition, and that we are returning to constitutional government.

[Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)]

My Lords, I too thank the committee for what I was going to call its timely report, but of course it has been published for some time now. I am extremely grateful to my noble friend Lady Drake for her excellent introduction to what is a relatively short and concise report. Its recommendations are pretty concise too. The fundamental question to which I hope the Minister will be able to reply is the one on timetable and consultation; he has already conceded that there will be a revision.

As the noble Lord, Lord O’Donnell, correctly said, one of the problems is this “from time to time revision”. But we now have the relevant technology, and in the previous debate we talked about how technology can be used for efficient government. One way to do that, as it is a manual and not a code, would be to revise it on a weekly basis, which could be done. There is no need for a delay, especially as it does not need the sort of approval that a code might need.

As the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy, said, the manual is a survey map of existing codes and laws. I too welcome back the noble Lord; I am pleased to see him here. One of his excellent skills was being able to sit down with me and make sure I gave him all the secret information I could from my conversations in the party and within politics; he is very good at that.

We have talked about the connections of codes, the Nolan principles and why they were developed, and where boundaries are drawn. I was struck by the reference made by the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy, to “good chaps” government. As a historian, where do you learn most about what happened? I do not think you learn from codes, laws and manuals. As the noble Lord knows, we learn the most from the published diaries of politicians. I have mentioned on previous occasions that I am currently ploughing my way through three volumes of Chips Channon’s diaries. If anyone wants to know about hypocrisy in Parliament and among politicians, they should certainly read that. Having failed to do so on previous occasions, I pay tribute to Simon Heffer, who has done an amazing job of editing those diaries, making sure that for all the nasty references there are good footnotes. One amazing thing is that I have been able to speak to many noble Lords in this House about what was said about their families.

It comes back to the fact that our system of government has become far more transparent, and the transparency that we now have places a bigger obligation on us to abide by codes of practice. In the past, the things that Chips Channon talked about would never have been published, especially as most of the media that people read at that time was controlled by six of the politicians who were in this House. It is an amazing thing that we now have to face up to; that transparency places an obligation on us all.

I like the idea the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy, had for an oath. We would expect every Prime Minister to abide by certain standards—it is a given—especially the Nolan principles. An oath places greater transparency on the person; the public would know that certain behaviour is not acceptable and that that person is breaking it. One of the issues of a written manual is the point that the noble Lord, Lord O’Donnell, mentioned: when does a precedent become a convention? That is a difficult one. I was listening to a Radio 4 programme “Archive on 4” about when an original phrase becomes a cliché. The issue is when it is repeated, and that is what we have to expect. Some of the best speeches are now clichés if they are repeated often enough.

The noble Lord, Lord Wallace, talked about stable government and coalitions. In Chips Channon’s diaries you learn a lot about the coalitions in our political process, which are not coalitions formed from different parties. The biggest coalitions we have in our political system are political parties themselves—which is why we have many of the problems. One of the tensions in our parliamentary democracy—I suppose I am entitled to say this—is that the political parties have to learn the lesson about the temptation to engage with their party memberships on how they elect their leaders. It imposes all kinds of problems on our parliamentary democracy in terms of collective responsibility. I said in an earlier debate that I was old-fashioned new Labour. Some things we have to learn from. I do not suppose that the Conservative Party will be too tempted to turn to its party membership again to elect a Prime Minister. Of course, that is what we are doing when we elect leaders of our political parties.

To return to the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, on coalitions, one of the problems with coalitions is that with a single-party coalition at least we know who takes responsibility when things go wrong but with multi-party coalitions parties never want to take responsibility when things go wrong. I certainly found that with the Liberal Democrats, but I am sure the Minister will remind us of that.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

Yes, certainly.

[Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)]

In conclusion, this is a good, straightforward report, which requires a straightforward response. One thing about the standards of Prime Ministers is the question of the independent ethics adviser, which I know the Minister has responded to. In a previous debate, we had a long debate with his ministerial colleague, the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, about the problems of recruitment in the public sector. This is certainly one post which seems to have a big problem with recruitment. Why has it taken so long? It is a very important part of the range of codes and responsibilities. Issues are now not being addressed by an ethics adviser—who should have been appointed—but we are getting to the stage of employing casual labour, as it were, to do the job. If there is a specific complaint, they bring in someone to deal with it. Surely that cannot be right. We need somebody who can be properly held accountable. I hope that the Minister will respond not only on the timetable on the Cabinet Manual but on the timetable for appointing an ethics adviser to the Prime Minister. We have waited too long for that.