Conduct Committee

Baroness Falkner of Margravine Excerpts

Tuesday 20th April 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Falkner of Margravine (CB)]

My Lords, I do not think that I have any interests to declare, but, because I am a member of the independent committee of the Bank of England that does enforcement decision-making, and because I am chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, I emphasise that I am speaking purely in a personal capacity.

I have spent more than 30 years—18 of them in this House, the others outside it—dealing with foreign policy. I was not working for foreign Governments but dealing with foreign policy; I want to make that clear. There has been a profound change in how foreign Governments and their agents seek to undermine, disrupt, manipulate, contort and use their resources to advance their interests and to undermine other countries’ interests.

I am glad that the noble Baroness, Lady Donaghy, in presenting this report, has emphasised that this is not just about Russia and China, but it is about countries like Russia and China, and a whole lot of other states—many Middle Eastern powers and others—which use the UK’s open, transparent and democratic system to undermine our interests. That is what is at the heart of this. This may not have been the case 30 years ago but it is palpable and tangible, on a daily basis, to anyone who reads anything about foreign affairs in today’s world.

For me, there is nothing extraordinary in asking British parliamentarians who provide advisory services to foreign Governments to declare that and to declare the fee—in other words, their piece of gold—to advantage another Government. I use the word “advantage” advisedly. Most reasonable people would consider it a fairly proportionate ask. That these people are forbidden from providing such services is not what the report is calling for; all it is calling for is for them to tell us who they are working for and how much they are being paid. What is unreasonable about that? It would allow the public to assess the motivation of those Peers, our colleagues, working as lawmakers, and see where they are coming from.

I am grateful to Transparency International for providing a briefing which selected the numerous Members of this House who had declared in the register of interests working with or for foreign Governments. I have long watched that space—perhaps I have been more conscious of it because of the work that I have done. One of the interesting things that stands out is that those people are doing what we are now asking this other very small cohort to do. This is not that unusual. People already have to declare when they work for unsavoury Governments of all kinds, such as Bahrain, Kazakhstan, a host of “stans”, Russia and China, whatever. What is the outlier here? In the case of the work that we are talking about today, if the public want to know what is going on, and if we want to know what is going on, we have to open a national newspaper, where we will occasionally come across an interesting point that we had not been aware of.

It has been said that the information that people are being asked to provide today is of limited value. It may well be of limited value, because it is historic, but, nevertheless, it would be available. Even looking at historic information helps the public to know that somebody who is speaking about a law today might have had some interest in the past. That is the value of it.

Let me turn to the argument that London’s status would be diminished if a handful of lawyers potentially hold back from working for a foreign Government or its agents. London is not Andorra; it is not San Marino. The City of London’s reputation is solid and it will not be diminished; rather, it will be held in higher regard if it is known that, when you buy a British lawyer—potentially the best in the world, we are told—that will be known to all and sundry. I suspect that Governments would be proud to say to their domestic populations, “Yeah, we went out for the best”.

Of course, we will all be terribly sorry to lose the expertise of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Goldsmith —or indeed any other noble Lord who may wish to no longer participate—if he has to take a leave of absence. As the noble Baroness, Lady Stowell, said, we all make choices; we make choices as to whether or not to participate here.

Others have mentioned the fact that the clients of corporate law firms may have to forego using the lawyer of their choice. This may be so, but companies and clients around the world are frequently barred from using the lawyer of their choice simply because they cannot afford that lawyer. The bar exists in any event; it would not be a new innovation.

When it comes to the definition of “working” for a foreign Government or foreign power, there is the idea that giving advice is not “working” and does not imply support for the foreign power. But we know that public perceptions are important, and, for the public, of course it implies support—they are not going to go through the detail of professional standards at the Bar Council. If the public see in the register in retrospect that, historically, a particular lawyer has done a certain piece of work, and then that lawyer speaks with a level of expertise on a certain matter, the public can determine whether or not the expertise is warranted and whether to give any weight to it.

I have listened carefully to the very thoughtful points made by so many distinguished noble and learned Lords and lawyers today, but it is my view that if this is unfair—it might seem so, and it may even be somewhat unfair—then upholding the highest standards that we can and retaining public trust in our institutions is worth the curtailment of their freedom. If they wish to remain with us here in this House, they should rightly be prepared to take this step. We all make sacrifices in the interests of probity, integrity and democracy.