Parliamentary Democracy and Standards in Public Life

Lord Young of Cookham Excerpts

Thursday 11th January 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, I endorse everything that the right reverend Prelate and others have said about the need for integrity and high standards in public life, but what I found so dispiriting over the festive season was to read constant reports that the next general election will be the dirtiest ever. I quote from Oliver Shah, writing in the Times:

“It raises the prospect of the most expensive and dirtiest election battle in British history. The two main parties have already traded highly personal blows, with Labour running attack ads claiming that Sunak did not believe paedophiles should go to prison and Sunak accusing Labour of being in cahoots with criminal gangs in the perpetuation of illegal immigration”.


Then on Tuesday in the Times, Katy Balls wrote:

“Such tactics, though, are here to stay. While Labour and the Tories do not agree on much, strategists on both sides believe that this will be the dirtiest election to date”.


I believe that the leaders of our three main parties are decent people who have no appetite for this sort of campaign and realise the damage that it can do. It devalues the political currency, debases people in public life and discourages good people from standing. I do not believe that this is what the public want or deserve. I urge my noble friend the Leader to make the case for moderation in language. Theresa May’s book is called The Abuse of Power, but too many advisers seem to believe in the power of abuse.

Secondly, people do not trust government. Noble Lords have mentioned the Post Office scandal. What people want is competence, and failure to deliver generates disillusion. One reason for underperformance, as mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, is the high turnover of Ministers and senior civil servants. Who has been the most competent Minister in recent years? Ben Wallace. He was there for four years. Where is my party most exposed? On housing. We have had 16 Ministers there since 2010. When I was first elected, there were two Housing Ministers in nine years. Denis Healey was Defence Secretary for five years and Chancellor of the Exchequer for six. We then had two Chancellors in the next nine years. We have had six since 2016. This turnover has consequences. The same criticism was made in my noble friend Lord Maude’s excellent report on the Civil Service, which criticised

“the frequent and unplanned movement of officials from post to post, without regard to business need, at the expense of continuity and of developing and maintaining specialist knowledge and expertise”.

So I have two resolutions for promoting democracy in 2024: decency in political discourse; and stability and competence in government.