Advisory Committee on Business Appointments

Baroness Browning Excerpts

Monday 10th September 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Young of Cookham]

The noble Lord refers quite rightly to the stern rebuke from my noble friend in her letter to the Foreign Secretary:

“The Committee considers it to be unacceptable that you signed a contract with The Telegraph and your appointment was announced before you had sought and obtained advice from the Committee, as was incumbent on you on leaving office”.

The former Foreign Secretary should not have treated with such insouciance the rules, which had been brought to his attention and which he acknowledged he had read as recently as January this year. I am not an apologist for the former Foreign Secretary—that requires a portfolio of skills that I do not have. However, in his defence, the rules are designed to prevent a Minister, using the knowledge he acquires and the relationships he develops in the department, from rolling the pitch for a lucrative job subsequently in a related organisation. In the case of the former Foreign Secretary, after two years he reverted back to a career in journalism, a career for which his qualities are perhaps better suited. Therefore, while I do not in any way undermine the seriousness of his offence, what he did was not quite the revolving door that one normally sees—and the revolving door ended up with him back where he started.

[Baroness Browning (Con)]

My noble friend will be aware that the full ACOBA rules were appended to the Ministerial Code at the request of the ACOBA Committee. The point about honour is very well made: any non-statutory body, whether it involves the Ministerial Code or the ACOBA rules, will only work if it is dealing with people of honour. I commend to my noble friend the definition of honour made at the funeral of the late Senator John McCain. Perhaps my noble friend could communicate to the Cabinet Office that as far as the Ministerial Code is concerned, for which I have no authority whatsoever at ACOBA, consideration should be given to in some way debarring people who do not behave with honour, or a penalty should be imposed so that they cannot hold public office for a limited amount of time—two years would probably be a good idea—after they have flagrantly ignored both the Ministerial Code and the ACOBA rules?

[Lord Young of Cookham]

My noble friend makes a good point about honour. When one joins your Lordships’ House we subscribe to the Code of Conduct, and part of that is an injunction to act,

“always on … personal honour”.

Those words have been used for centuries to describe the conduct that one should follow in the House. The former Foreign Secretary seems to defy the laws of political gravity. I certainly take my noble friend’s point: once you are no longer a Minister you are not subject to the Ministerial Code, so there is no formal sanction. However, as my noble friend suggested, I will certainly pursue her suggestion with the Cabinet Office. But at the end of the day, a Prime Minister is free to appoint whomever he or she wants, but I hope that whoever may hold that office will take into account the behaviour of Ministers when they defy the Ministerial Code.