Parliamentary Democracy and Standards in Public Life

Baroness Finn Excerpts

Thursday 11th January 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Finn (Con)]

My Lords, I declare my interest as the Conservative member of the Committee on Standards in Public Life. The CSPL has occupied a unique position in the standards landscape since its formation in 1994. Although it includes cross-party representation, the majority of its members are independent. It provides advice for maintaining and improving standards, based on evidence gathered from a wide range of people. The most recent report, Leading in Practice, published in 2022, looked at how a variety of organisations have sought to integrate ethical values into their policies and ways of working. It has been widely welcomed across the public sector. I pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Evans, who led the committee with distinction over the last five years, and welcome our new chair, Doug Chalmers, who is already starting a programme of engagement with regulators and those responsible for standards across the United Kingdom.

The late Lord Nolan set out three golden threads for standards: codes of conduct, independent scrutiny and education. The key question for your Lordships’ House is who should exercise that independent scrutiny, especially when ministerial conduct has been called into question. One of the central pillars of our unwritten constitution is that the Prime Minister, appointed by and chief adviser to the sovereign, remains in that position for as long as he or she commands the confidence of the other place. Other Ministers remain in post for as long as they retain the confidence of the Prime Minister. Not one of us in this place would object to raising standards in public life or disagree with the Nolan principles, but the Nolan principles work precisely because they are just that—principles and not rules. My noble friend Lord Forsyth mentioned the recent excellent Policy Exchange report on upholding standards, which deals with this. My fear is that, by the patchwork codification of standards, whether statutory or quasi-statutory, covert or overt, we erode the functions of political accountability that are the proper province of Parliament.

These political mechanisms of accountability are a great success of the British constitution and one that other countries struggle to emulate. We should not abdicate standards enforcements to ethics tsars or unelected regulators who are accountable to no one. If we do, we invite the unedifying prospect of judicial or regulatory pronouncement on ministerial appointments and dismissals. This, I fear, will not improve the standing of parliamentary democracy but diminish it.